Russia without us, a Moscow-based zine founded by Andrey Urodov, is one of a small number of new online publications redefining how Russia’s new generation document their experiences today. It’s sardonic, ironic, and makes excellent use of user-submitted photography to present a range of personal stories from across the country.
The website is funded by user subscription, and its labour of love has seen great successes online withroughly 30,000 visits a month, and 100,000 subscribers to its page on vKontakte, a popular Russian social network. Urodov's project offers an independent, and radically new way of addressing social issues in Russia today.
The daily grind conjured up by Russia without us is a bleak one, but not without hope. What lessons can the site offer for similar initiatives in the Russian media landscape today?
