Join Elena Kostyuchenko, the author of I Love Russia, shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2024, for a stimulating conversation about Russia as a cultural memory site and reflections on the ethics of personal and collective responsibility in the context of the present and possible future. The conversation will be moderated by Luke Harding, journalist, writer, and an award-winning author with The Gurdian. Kostyuchenko's work as a journalist and political activist stands firmly as a powerful testament to the transformation of Russia in the last decade. She has bravely reported on human rights violations and the increasing repression of civil society institutions, and her book focuses on the experiences of those at the edges of society who face systematic oppression, but whose voices are rarely heard. The discussion will touch upon several crucial questions. What can we say about the roots of neofascism in contemporary Russia? Which unwritten rules define life in Russia? How can the role and responsibility of independent journalists in Russia be defined?

Read the interview with Elena Kostyuchenko about her work and her book here.

Elena Kostyuchenko is a journalist, writer and LGBTQ+ activist. She has covered highly resonant stories of civil disobedience, including the punk protest of Pussy Riot in Moscow, the Zhanaozen massacre in Kazakhstan and various protests in Russia. She has been assaulted several times and arrested for her work. In 2015, she received the European Press Prize, and in 2018, she was the Paul Klebnikov Russian Civil Society Fellow at Columbia University's Harriman Institute. In 2024, she will be the Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Luke Harding is a journalist, writer and award-winning foreign correspondent with The Guardian. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow, covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, and since February 2022 he has spent a significant time reporting from Ukraine. Between 2007 and 2011 he was The Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief, and in February 2011 the Kremlin deported him from the country in the first case of its kind since the Cold War. Harding has written a number of books about the political system under Putin, including Mafia State: How One Reporter Became An Enemy Of The Brutal New Russia (2011) and Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russia's Remaking of the West (2020), and his latest book, Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival, was published in 2023.

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