The Factory of the Eccentric Actor exploded into Petrograd in 1921. Two youngsters from Kyiv and Odesa, Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, determined to make their mark, were soon hailed by such literary grandees as Viktor Shklovsky and Yuri Tynyanov, and began making films from 1924. Their manifestos and early scripts are now available in a new illustrated book which Ian Christie will present.

Pushkin House presents a new edition of Seven of Clubs – an interdisciplinary event series on the cross-section of arts, sciences, society and entrepreneurship.

The unique format of this info-tainment salon will allow guests to hear speakers candidly share insights into their area of passion and expertise within the intimate setting of Pushkin House.

By paralleling our body with a topographical object, this workshop invites participants to adopt autotopography as the method and re-examine how our physicality informs our identity. Through practices that delve into our scars and wounds, akin to exploring every site of flood, drought, and landslide, our individual and collective identities take shape, as does our bodily landscape.

Envisioned in the context of the Black Pushkin discursive strand, this event reflects on and discusses the importance of cinema to histories and theories of decolonisation and to the construction of postcolonial identities, seeking to understand their role and possibility in today’s political and film landscape. It does so through a screening and discussion of the 2003 documentary film Kuxa Kanema, directed by award-winning filmmaker Margarida Cardoso and led by Prof Maite Conde. 

How did the ever-changing colonial agenda determine the choice of genres, topics and artistic forms in these pieces to express various political, ethnographic, orientalist and gender tropes and how they are perceived by different observers today? In the context of the discursive strand Comparative Imperialisms, Alexey Ulko presents the development of colonial representation in Central Asia through a series of paintings and photos depicting human bodies in different Central Asian contexts.

What does it mean to ‘monumentalise’ today? What can we do with the complex legacies of imperial histories imprinted in cities’ architecture, squares, cultural institutions and museums? What are we to do with the collections of looted artefacts and dispossessed cultural heritage in the Global North? 

In the context of Mykola Ridnyi’s solo exhibition The Battle over Mazepa, a leading critic of the persistent (neo)colonial practices and the author of The Brutish Museums (Pluto Press, 2020), Dan Hicks, will address the imperialist roots of archaeology, museology and collecting in the nineteenth century through the prism of what he calls “World War Zero” – the Crimean War (1853–1856).

In the first Online Reading Group of the year we will discuss Kolyma Stories by Varlam Shalamov, translated by Donald Rayfield. This masterpiece of twentieth-century literature is an epic array of short fictional tales reflecting the fifteen years that Varlam Shalamov spent in the Soviet Gulag.

The meeting will be held on Zoom and facilitated by our bookshop co-curator Sasha Padziarei and engagement curator Alisa Oleva.

Join the Pushkin Club for the launch of the ground-breaking new translation of Andrey Platonov’s Chevengur by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler, published recently by Harvill Secker (UK) and New York Review of Books (US).

Make your mark with artist Anka Dabrowska in this stencilling placard workshop using found urban materials. We will creatively explore what our queer and other utopias might look like beyond the realms of our current realities. This space invites playfulness through placard-making and conversation to dream into creative possibilities for our queer and other communities. While we are embracing the community and its history, and the deep and rich value of being (queer or other), Anka would like to invite you to portray a view of a utopian future for yourselves and the LGBTQI+ community and others.

Join us on 11 January 2024 for the next Social at Pushkin House. Taking place on the first Thursday of each month at our bar, the Socials are hosted by prominent cultural figures, activists, authors and others, who will bring you a varied and engaging evening.

YOUNG is our special meet-up space and programme for people aged 18-26, a place to explore, imagine and create together with others. Join our monthly meeting to connect with your peers over arts and culture and realise your ideas by hosting your own events with the support of our team at Pushkin House.

In the first Reading Group of the year we will discuss Kolyma Stories by Varlam Shalamov, translated by Donald Rayfield. This masterpiece of twentieth-century literature is an epic array of short fictional tales reflecting the fifteen years that Varlam Shalamov spent in the Soviet Gulag.

The meeting will be facilitated by our bookshop co-curator Sasha Padziarei and engagement curator Alisa Oleva.

In this month’s Reading Group we will discuss Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov, one of Ukraine’s most prominent contemporary authors. It tells the story of a beekeeper living in the Donbas grey zone between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatists following the 2014 invasion.

The meeting will be held on Zoom and facilitated by our bookshop co-curator Sasha Padziarei and engagement curator Alisa Oleva.

Pushkin House is please to host a Winter Special party, where a variety of musicians, DJs and performers will be taking over the whole building. The space will be transformed into a haven of theatre decorations and masquerade, so prepare for a celebration that blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, where introspection meets kitsch aesthetics.

Join us for a uniquely curated night finest selection of London's experimental electronic music.

The Pushkin Club invites you to join us on the evening of 13 December for the British premiere of The Dmitriev Affair (2023) – a new documentary by Jessica Gorter telling the story of historian Yuri Dmitriev who uncovered and documented mass graves in his home region of Karelia, containing the bodies of thousands of people secretly executed during Stalin’s 1936–1938 Great Purge. The screening will be followed by the Q&A with the director.

The transformation of the Russian political system under Putin for almost a quarter of a century raises questions about the factors of its longevity and the implications of its ageing. In this invigorating conversation, Alena Ledeneva, UCL’s Professor of Politics and Society, and Vladimir Pastukhov, Honorary Senior Fellow at the UCL School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, will unpack ideas about Putin’s sistema that often lead to misunderstandings, misinterpretations and over-complication of the modus operandi of informal governance in Russia. Denis Maksimov will moderate the event.

fake_trailers is a project created by Leonid Kotelnikov 

His performances are all about amazing sound, going through postmodern sampledelics, broadcasting spiritual turmoil and incomprehensibility of the Real world. The songs are very relevant in the context of the war, the lyrical hero of these songs is in the atmosphere of permanent confusion, fear and pain.

Join us on Thursday 7 December for the next Social at Pushkin House. Taking place on the first Thursday of each month at our bar, the Socials are hosted by prominent cultural figures, activists, authors and others, who will bring you a varied and engaging evening.

Our December Social is led by political scientist Dr Ben Noble, Associate Professor of Russian Politics at University College London in School of Slavonic and East European Studies, and Associate Fellow at Chatham House. He is the series editor of New Perspectives on Eastern Europe and Eurasia, published by Hurst and a co-author of Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2021), which was shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2022.

On Monday, 4 December Anna Arutunyan will discuss her recent book Hybrid Warriors: Proxies, Freelancers and Moscow’s Struggle for Ukraine (Hurst, 2022), now published in paperback edition, with Mark Galeotti. The book describes the background and complex dynamics between various groups and factions involved in the Russian military aggression in Ukraine: from genuine enthusiasts and political adventurers to practical businessmen and cynical mercenaries; and outlines the chaos that led to the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

We are very excited to announce next Zine Fair at Pushkin House. It will be a chance to come together and share the zines you have been making, or just to find some beautiful and unique zines for yourself or as perfect gifts. The Zine Fair will bring people together and offer a space for sharing and promoting your work. 

In this month’s Reading Group we will discuss Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov, one of Ukraine’s most prominent contemporary authors. It tells the story of a beekeeper living in the Donbas grey zone between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatists following the 2014 invasion.

The meeting will be facilitated by our bookshop co-curator Sasha Padziarei and engagement curator Alisa Oleva.

Join us on Thursday, 30 November for a conversation with Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov, the leading specialists on the history and practices of the secret services in Russia. The event will be moderated by Grigor Atanesian (BBC World Service) and together they will discuss the changes that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought about in the more clandestine activities of the Russian state.

Audiovisual artist Jasmine Kahlia is pleased to present an open zine-making workshop at Pushkin House!  Together we will be looking at themes of memory, nostalgia and trusting in our voices.

Pushkin House presents a new edition of Seven of Clubs – an interdisciplinary event series on the cross-section of arts, sciences, society and entrepreneurship.

The unique format of this info-tainment salon will allow guests to hear speakers candidly share insights into their area of passion and expertise within the intimate setting of Pushkin House.

Youngsook Choi holds the space Slow Sips with Earth, proposing the tea mix as a way to write embodied prayers for the Earth. This gathering creates a humble moment of grieving and geological temporality out of tea mixing, collective poetry writing and ceremonial sips. 

In the context of Mykola Ridnyi’s solo exhibition The Battle over Mazepa, Pushkin House is excited to welcome the prominent contemporary philosopher and cultural theorist Keti Chukhrov, ScD, who, over two days, is going to share her thoughts on decolonial and anti-imperialist agendas; first giving a lecture on Thursday, November 16, and after facilitating a workshop on Friday, November 17. You can attend one or both events.

In this month’s Reading Group we will discuss Contemporary Georgian Fiction, a landmark anthology bringing together stories from nineteen of the most influential contemporary authors to have emerged from the Republic of Georgia.

The meeting will be held on Zoom and facilitated by our bookshop co-curator Sasha Padziarei and engagement curator Alisa Oleva.

In the context of Mykola Ridnyi’s solo exhibition The Battle over Mazepa, Pushkin House is excited to welcome the prominent contemporary philosopher and cultural theorist Keti Chukhrov, ScD, who, over two days, is going to share her thoughts on decolonial and anti-imperialist agendas; first giving a lecture on Thursday, November 16, and after facilitating a workshop on Friday, November 17. You can attend one or both events.

In an age of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and complete shutdown of freedom of speech at home, the future of theatre in Russia is bleak. As theatre is instrumentalised by the state in line with its “patriotic cultural policy”, prominent directors and writers have been forced into exile. Putin has effectively cancelled Russian culture.

But what about outside of Russia? How can we portray Russia onstage? Should we?

Join the Pushkin Club for an evening with Erica Whyman (acting artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, director of My Neighbour Totoro and Hamnet) and Roxy Cook (writer and director of A Woman Walks Into a Bank).