Russian documentary film: extinct, or almost. Interview with Vitaly Mansky

Mumin Shakirov 6 September 2010
In the late 80s Russians flocked to documentary films to find out about their ‘lost’ history. Now they’re becoming extinct. Putin’s regime doesn’t even use them for propaganda purposes. Mumin Shakirov interviews the celebrated documentary film maker Vitaly Mansky. Part one

The Poet and the Tsar

Olga Sherwood 23 August 2010
When Putin sat down to tea with artists and musicians before a charity concert last month, he could not have expected difficult questions, writes Olga Sherwood. He had not counted on DDT's Yury Shevchuk, who found the courage to stand out from the crowd and launch a memorable and principled criticism of the current political course. The article was first published on July 1st, 2010

Soviet anti-religion has returned, claim Europe's last surviving pagans

Geraldine Fagan 28 July 2010
In their remote forest republic 400 miles east of the Moscow, the pagan Mari people are once again being harassed by the authorities. While the administrative lever used today is different — charges of “extremism” — their approach is more than reminiscent of the way their Soviet counterparts dealt with dissent.

Gastarbeiters in kino: Russia's invisible class gets its big break

Mumin Shakirov 22 July 2010
At the recent Kinotavr film festival — "Russia's Cannes" — the main competition featured no less than three films dealing with the hitherto ignored plights of Russia’s migrant workers. For various reasons, all three films fell short of painting a realistic picture of the situation. But their production is just the start: many more Russian gastarbeiter movies are just around the corner.

Coats and turncoats: translating Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter

Robert Chandler 19 July 2010
Translating Alexander Pushkin’s novel The Captain’s Daughter launched Robert Chandler on a journey of revelations into this ‘most subtly constructed of all nineteenth-century Russian novels’. The story leads Chandler to reflect on the fate of translators: as mediators between two cultures, maybe they will always be suspected of being turncoats against their own

Liberating Pushkin

Susan Richards 19 July 2010
Russia’s greatest poet Alexander Pushkin is notoriously hard for non-Russian speakers to appreciate. So Susan Richards welcomes a concise new biography of the poet by his translator Robert Chandler which strips the varnish off

Forbidden Art verdict: they're in mourning for Soviet censorship

Tatiana Shcherbina 15 July 2010
On 12 July, the judge found Andrei Erofeev and Yurii Samodurov, organisers of the exhibition Forbidden Art – 2006, guilty of inciting hatred and enmity, and insulting human dignity. Samodurov was fined 200,000 roubles, and Erofeev 150,000 (some $12,000 in all). But they have not been sent to prison. The poet Tatiana Shcherbina, disgusted, sees a people in mourning for the Good Old Days when the state controlled everything

Russia back in the dock over 'Forbidden Art'

Andrei Zorin 8 July 2010
Three years ago an exhibition at Moscow’s Sakharov Centre of previously banned work entitled Forbidden Art led to the trial of its curator Andrei Erofeev and the director of the Centre, Yuri Samodurov. The prosecutors want them sentenced to three years in prison for ‘debasing the religious beliefs of citizens and inciting religious hatred’. The verdict is due on 12 July. If they are found guilty, it will not only change the political climate in Russia, argues Prof.Andrei Zorin. It will destroy the country’s reputation. Sign the petition..

Poetry in pictures: a film about Joseph Brodsky

Natalia Rulyova 8 July 2010

Andrei Khrzhanovskii’s recent Russian film about the poet Joseph Brodsky evokes elements of his childhood, internal exile and emigration with history and stunning footage of St Petersburg. But above all, it is an homage, a cinematic celebration of his poetry

Voznesensky: elegy for a fashionable poet

Elena Fanailova 5 July 2010

The poet Andrei Voznesensky died on 1 June. One of the former “big 4” Soviet poets, he managed to hang on to his cult status until the 1990s as that of the outspoken Joseph Brodsky rose ever higher. The poet Elena Fanailova reviews his position in the pantheon of Soviet writers and assesses his contribution to Soviet and Russian poetry.

Skating on thin ice in Sochi

Sufian Zhemukhov 4 June 2010
The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi threatens to be overshadowed by a centuries-old row between Russia and the disposessed Circassian nation, writes Sufian Zhemukhov. Russia should take the opportunity to engage and impress its way to a lasting solution.

Lev Tolstoy: world literature’s first pop star

Oleg Yuriev 4 June 2010
Relief at being freed from the deadening Soviet tradition of grandiose literary anniversaries, and socialist realism’s didactic canonization of the Tolstoyan panoramic novel may have something to do with the comparatively muted Russian response to this year’s centenary of Lev Tolstoy’s death. But world literature’s first pop star still shines undimmed

The house that Melnikov built

Clementine Cecil 2 June 2010
Moscow’s superb legacy of Constructivist architecture has suffered since Neo-Classicism became the official style in the 1930s. But thanks to President Medvedev's intervention, the house of Konstantin Melnikov, one of Russia’s most important architectural masterpieces, looks set to become a State Museum…

Siberian Shamans Come in From the Cold (part 3)

Ken Hyder 17 May 2010
After decades of repression, Siberia’s shamans are re-emerging. Ken Hyder is a musician who performs with a Tuvan shaman. His novel describes the culture of contemporary shamanism as it emerges after decades of repression. Part three of three.

Mayor Luzhkov and the reconstruction of Moscow

Clementine Cecil 13 May 2010
On 5th May the Moscow authorities approved a new General Plan described by its critics as “the death-knell” for the city. It is yet another strong-handed move by Yuri Luzhkov, whose personal tastes and business interests have left a strong mark on the city since he became Mayor in 1992. A trend for sham replicas has flourished during his tenure, causing experts to fear that Moscow has turned into an ‘ersatz city.’

The Russian media

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Russia-China

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The new year in Russia

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Russia's new economy

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Russian rights at the crossroads

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Beyond the gastarbeiter: post-Soviet migration

Madeleine Reeves (Manchester University, UK) presents the other side of post-Soviet migration.

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Regions

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Russia's year of elections

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Women, tradition and power in the North Caucasus

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Project_ID

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Privatizatsiya, twenty years on

Russian economy: trying to please people doesn’t help, Dmitry Travin

Privatisation, but no private property, Andrei Zaostrovtsev

Is corruption in Russia's DNA?, Pyotr Filippov

The Russian banking system: between the market and the state, Pavel Usanov

Russia’s crony capitalism: the swing of the pendulum, Vladimir Gelman

Russian reforms, twenty years on. Introduction to the series, Dmitry Travin

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