We are pleased to invite you to our annual Book Lovers’ Picnic, a social event held in Bloomsbury Square Gardens just outside Pushkin House. Come along, meet other book lovers and discuss what you’re reading at the moment! Snacks will be provided but feel free to bring your own as well. The picnic will be hosted by our Community Engagement Curator Alisa Oleva and Bookshop Co-Curator Sasha Padziarei.

The Pushkin House Bookshop and Prototype Publishing present the launch of Deceit, the lost debut novel by Russian émigré author Yuri Felsen, published for the first time in English. Together translator, editor and regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement Bryan Karentnyk, translator and specialist in Russian literature Josephine von Zitzewitz and journalist, broadcaster and the Fiction and Politics Editor of the Times Literary Supplement Toby Lichtig will explore Felsen’s ground-breaking debut novel and the life of this exceptional modernist author which was tragically cut short. In-person and online event.

Imperialism continues to be part of Russia’s political and social reality, as the war in Ukraine clearly demonstrates. Taking a close look at the colonial regimes of the former Russian and Soviet empires, as well as examining the process of their fall, thus feels more important than ever.

In this context, Pushkin House presents the British premiere of Sergei Loznitsa's Mr. Landsbergis. Winner of the top prize at IDFA, the film tells the absorbing story of Lithuania’s fight for independence between 1988 and 1993. This epic documentary focuses on music professor Vytautas Landsbergis, who became the first Head of Parliament of Lithuania after it left the Soviet Union, and the peaceful protests that came to be known as the “singing revolution”.

As part of our Book Weeks we are inviting you to a social event in Bloomsbury Square Gardens just outside Pushkin House. Come along, meet other book lovers and discuss what you’re reading at the moment! Snacks will be provided but feel free to bring your own as well. The picnic will be hosted by our engagement curator Alisa Oleva. Free, in-person event.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the gaining of independence by its former republics were accompanied by a number of territorial disputes, military conflicts and collective traumas. 30 years later, the historical reality of these events has only become more complex. In her film What We Shared, artist Kamila Kuc addresses these themes by exploring the nature of memory and archives in relation to Abkhazia, an autonomous region on the Black Sea. The 1992-93 military conflict in this territory between the Abkhazian and Georgian armed forces led to the loss and displacement of many who lived there. What We Shared serves as a powerful force that connects different generations and geographical zones to resist dominant power structures. In-person event.

Pushkin House invites you to a discussion about how the past can be understood in the context of the war in Ukraine and what anti-imperial futures can be imagined. Author Boris Akunin and journalist and writer Viv Groskop will join the director of Pushkin House, Elena Sudakova, to assess if there is hope in the form of anti-war movements; how cultural workers can respond to the hideous crimes committed in their name; and how Russians have to change in order to put an end to the war and prevent this from ever happening again. In-person and online event.

Join us for REVERB, a site-specific writing workshop which will explore concepts related to collective memory, historicity and personal archives. Together, we will engage with the unique story of Pushkin House as well as the surrounding area of Bloomsbury, an area of social and literary significance. We will consider poetics and politics, narratives marginal to the historical record, and the ways in which the event is made manifest by different techniques and styles of writing. The session will be led by Bella Marrin & Elaine Tam from Fieldnotes. In-person event.

Join Pushkin House for a workshop with acclaimed memoirist and the Sunday Times bestselling author of Write It All Down (2022) Cathy Rentzenbrink. The workshop will build on Rentzenbrink’s latest book which offers a wise and practical toolkit for new and seasoned writers. Its aim is simple: to get you writing and help you overcome some of the typical psychological obstacles to expressing yourself freely on a page and enjoying the end result.

In-person and online event.

On Wednesday 8 June, leading translators of Russian classics Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear will present their current project at Pushkin House: a new translation of Alexander Pushkin's complete plays which will be published by the Vintage Classics Series in New York in January 2023.

The reading will be followed by a discussion led by translator Sarah Vitali about Russian literature, the challenges of literary translations of Pushkin, and what the Little Tragedies can teach us today.

The event is organised as part of Pushkin Book Weeks – a series of events dedicated to Russian culture and its translation at a time when the Russian state is waging war against Ukraine.

The Pushkin Club invites you to a talk by Robert Chandler in celebration of Pushkin’s birthday on 6 June and by way of introduction to his recently published selection of Pushkin’s prose, Peter the Great’s African.

Pushkin was acutely aware of the many schisms that Russia has suffered over the centuries: between the Orthodox Church and the Old Believers; between Slavophiles and Westerners; between liberals and authoritarians. He attached ever more importance to his work as a historian and, above all, to his study of Peter the Great. Chandler will discuss the various texts in the collection Peter the Great’s African and Pushkin’s great work of prose, The Captain’s Daughter.

Pushkin House invites you to an evening with one of the leading Russian anti-war figures, writer Dmitry Glukhovsky, in discussion with the British journalist David Aaronovitch. Glukhovsky is famous in the UK as the author of post-apocalyptic and dystopian science fiction novels (including the popular Metro 2033 series); since the invasion of Ukraine he has become one of the leading public intellectuals of his generation speaking out against the war.

Come to hear Glukhovsky and Aaronovitch discuss the right-wing radicalism of Russian propaganda, the new global order, the significance of sanctions and the role of mythological thinking in Russia and beyond.