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.

George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four is one of the defining works of the twentieth century – and alarmingly has seen sales increase in recent years as its relevance to our politics seems only to increase. Join us for a discussion of the novel and its legacy with Sandra Newman and Dorian Lynskey, two writers who have written very different books inspired by Orwell's work. 

Join us on Friday 22 September for a conversation between political scientist Dr Jade McGlynn and journalist and documentary filmmaker Vladimir Raevskiy. Focusing on Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin's Russia (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), the new book by McGlynn, the speakers will discuss the role of history in the production of Russian identity in the 21st century, popular involvement with historical narratives, and the combination of facts, myths and ideological frameworks that justify the Russian aggression for both decision-makers and regular Russian citizens.

Join us on Thursday, 14 September at 6pm either in person or online to hear a discussion about the stages, layers and crucial nuances of the economic conflict between Russia and the West, led by the United States, that has been waged for the last decade and escalated significantly following Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Maximilian Hess, the author of Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict Between Russia and the West will discuss the findings from his book and the future of this conflict with Andrei Movchan, economist, financial manager and the founding partner of Movchan’s Group.

Please join us for the launch of Professor Gulnaz Sharafutdinova’s book The Afterlife of the 'Soviet Man’, which she will discuss with Professor Svetlana Stephenson, revealing the social and behavioural impact of Soviet ideology on contemporary Russian society and the need to re-evaluate our approaches to generalisations and typologies.

For those living in the Soviet Union, Orwell's masterpieces, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, were not dystopias, but accurate depictions of reality. In her new book the Orwell scholar and expert on Russian politics Masha Karp explores how Orwell's work was received in Russia, when it percolated into the country even under censorship. In this event, she will discuss her book with Edward Lucas, and together they will explore how Orwell's writing is read and received in today's Russia. 

Pushkin House and Dr Natasha Rulyova are delighted to launch a series of conversations with authors of Russophone literature. The first in the series is an event with the award-winning Tatar author Guzel Yakhina. Her three novels — Zuleikha, My Children and A Train to Samarkand —  have been highly acclaimed and translated into dozens of languages.

The Pushkin Club invites you to the presentation of the new book by Alan Philps: The Red Hotel: The Untold Story of Stalin’s Disinformation War. The author reveals how the Soviet leader transformed his wartime image from blood-soaked dictator to cuddly “Uncle Joe”. The book tells the story of Stalin’s wartime propaganda campaign though the experience of foreign journalists and their Soviet translators who lived and worked in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow.

Join us to hear Harriet Crawley discuss her latest novel, a love story and political thriller, with the former British ambassador to Russia, Sir Roderic Lyne. The Times has included The Translator in its list of “the best new thrillers”, and the reviews praise author’s descriptions of the everyday life in Moscow, her ability to create suspense, and the political relevance of the plot at the time when the Russian state has once again become a major geopolitical threat.

We invite you to join Brigid O’Keeffe in conversation with Natalya Chernyshova about O’Keeffe’s new book, The Multiethnic Soviet Union and its Demise. They will discuss ethnic politics in the USSR that aimed to mobilise and suppress the minority groups that made up the Union, and how these policies have shaped contemporary Russia's relationships and conflicts with its 'post-Soviet' and affected Eurasia and the world ever since. 

The Pushkin Club invites you to join Timothy Phillips and Masha Karp in conversation about his new book, The Curtain and the Wall: A Modern Journey along Europe’s Cold War Border. In his major new book Phillips travels the length of the Iron Curtain from the Arctic Circle to the Caucasus, exploring the clash of civilisations at its height during the Cold War, meeting those who lived through times of drastic change, and discovering the root of many of our world’s current disputes.

Following its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s future seems almost as uncertain as its past. Over the past thousand years it has evolved into the largest, and one of the most powerful, countries in the world. Russia is not an enigma, but its past is violent, tragic, sometimes glorious, and certainly complicated. Like the rest of us, the Russians constantly rewrite their history. They too omit episodes of national disgrace in favour of patriotic anecdotes, sometimes more rooted in myth than reality. Expert and former British Ambassador to Moscow Rodric Braithwaite unpicks fact from fiction to discover what lies at the root of the Russian story, more relevant to the rest of the world now than ever.

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.

Join us for the announcement of the winner of the 2022 Pushkin House Book Prize in the company of the shortlisted authors and judges. Worth £10,000 to the winner, the prize recognises the very best non-fiction writing on Russia. This year the dinner will be held at the London Library.

Thirty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the waves that originated in the process still shake the world that we live in today. The collective traumas, wounded egos, misdistribution of resources, contested identities and struggles for reform have resulted in conflicts and even wars. One of the worst is taking place right now in Ukraine.

Join Professor Vladislav M. Zubok, author of Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union, shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2022, for a masterly analysis of the implosion of the Soviet Union and its effect on the world 30 years later. Zubok will be in conversation with Professor Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, who is currently researching the reaction of Russian society to the invasion of Ukraine.

The remarkable subject of Deyan Sudjic’s shortlisted book, Stalin’s Architect: Power and Survival in Moscow, is architect Boris Iofan. He became the Soviet Union’s most celebrated architect under Stalin and developed grand designs like the House on the Embankment and the unrealised but iconic Palace of Soviets. But when architecture and politics come hand in hand, what did Iofan have to sacrifice to stay alive in the midst of Stalin’s purges?

Join us for a conversation with Elizabeth Wilson, author of Playing with Fire: The Story of Maria Yudina, Pianist in Stalin’s Russia, shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2022, to explore Yudina’s extraordinary life and musical career under the tumultuous and bleak Soviet regime.

Join Dr Jan Matti Dollbaum and Dr Ben Noble to hear them discuss Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future? (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2021). It has been translated into eight languages so far, was selected by The Financial Times as one of the best books on politics in 2021, and has been nominated for the Pushkin House Book Prize. Dollbaum and Noble will discuss their understanding of Russian oppositional politics, its development in the wake of the Russia’s war on Ukraine, as well as the political prospects of Navalny and his allies. The conversation will be moderated by Yulia Taranova, a doctoral researcher at King’s College London.

In the presentation of their book On the Edge: Life Along the Russia-China Border, which has been shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2022, authors Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey will take us on a journey through the little-explored borderlands between Russia and China. They will reveal extraordinary contrasts between Russia’s slumbering forest villages and China’s dynamic urban sprawl; the frequent tension and occasional war between two of the world’s political giants; the revival of indigenous cultures in some places and the adoption of foreign symbols in others; and the buds of cross-border connection despite the ruling regimes’ discouragement.

Pushkin House invites you to a discussion about the fraught state of relations between Russia and the West over the past thirty years, and about the man who has fanned the flames of the crisis. Authors Mary Elise Sarotte and Timothy Frye, both shortlisted for our Book Prize 2022, will explore the state of the modern Russian political system; challenge the conventional wisdom about the ruler who stands at its helm; and assess the fraught stand-off unfolding between east and west. What could the future hold for Russia? Could we see an end to this geopolitical and humanitarian nadir?

Join us for an event to mark the publication of a new stand-alone edition of Azerbaijani Akram Aylisli’s Stone Dreams in English and a discussion on the writer and his work, with Aylisli’s translator and 2022 Pushkin House Translation Residency awardee Katherine E. Young, and Caucasus expert Thomas de Waal. The novella Stone Dreams caused a sensation when published in 2013. Engaging with the taboo topic of pogroms against Armenians in Azerbaijan, it was hailed as a sensitive and ground-breaking work of literature by some, but led to the vilification and persecution of Aylisli in his native Azerbaijan. In-person and online event.

This illustrated talk by Professor Simon Franklin explores the relationships between the history and the ideologies. Stripping away the polemical myths, it introduces Rus itself, before exploring what lies behind the conflicting modern claims to ownership of the remote past.

The Pushkin Club is delighted to welcome Anna Starobinets, a journalist, scriptwriter and novelist who has recently fled Russia, and Katherine E. Young, a translator and laureate of the Pushkin House translation residency. They will discuss Anna's recent book, Look At Him – a 'beautiful, darkly humorous, and deeply moving' memoir that explores the moral and psychological effects of the loss of a pregnancy and its aftermath. Starobinets and Young will also discuss the overall publishing situation for writing about women's lives and family wellbeing in Russia and describe Look at Him's journey beyond Russia in translation. Both Look At Him and the author herself are life-affirming, honest and engaging, and this promises to be an incredibly special evening. Online and in-person event.

Join Pushkin House for a discussion with Lucy Ward about her new book The Empress and the English Doctor, charting Catherine the Great’s attempts to bring new science, inoculation, to Russia with the help of Quaker physician Thomas Dimsdale. A timely tale of science, a deadly virus, and the struggle between fear and innovation.

Konstantin Paustovsky was the standard-bearer for the liberal tradition in Russia and an outspoken critic of Soviet repression at the time of his death in 1968. Set amidst the bloody turbulence of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and Civil War, The Story of a Life, Paustovsky's epic autobiographical masterpiece, captures with rare lyrical beauty and power the writer's humane vision and his abhorrence of violence in all its forms. In a review of Douglas Smith’s new translation, the Spectator observed that “A more gloriously life-affirming book is unlikely to emerge this year.” Now, at this dark hour in the history of Russia and Ukraine, Paustovsky’s voice is needed more than ever.

Join us for the winner announcement of the 2021 Pushkin House Book Prize in the company of the shortlisted authors and judges. Worth £10,000 to the winner, the prize recognises the very best non-fiction writing on Russia. This year the dinner will be held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

As part of Pushkin House Book Prize 2021, we are delighted to welcome Jonathan Schneer to speak about his shortlisted book The Lockhart Plot, a deeply researched work, and a true historical thriller, a romance and a spy story. Jonathan will be in conversation with award-winning author and journalist, Jonathan Steele. This is a hybrid in-person and virtual event.

As part of Pushkin House Book Prize 2021, we are delighted to welcome Archie Brown to speak about his shortlisted book The Human Factor. Archie will be in conversation with Sam Greene, professor in Russian politics and director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London. The discussion will be in front of a live audience at Pushkin House, as well as to those who wish to join online.

Shortlisted for the 2021 Pushkin House Book Prize, Andrei Zorin’s succint biography of Leo Tolstoy pieces together the great writer’s life, offering an account of his deepest feelings and motives, and an interpretation of his major works, including the celebrated novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Andrei will be in conversation with writer and broadcaster Viv Groskop, author of The Anna Karenina Fix.

As part of Pushkin House Book Prize 2021, we are delighted to welcome Catherine Belton to speak about her shortlisted book Putin’s People. Catherine will be in conversation with Ben Noble, Associate Professor in Russian Politics at UCL in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. The discussion will be in front of a live audience at Pushkin House, with an on-demand option available to those who are unable to join in person.