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).
The Pushkin Club is inviting Alexander Frolov and Larisa Melikhova, both originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, to present the collection of anti-war poetry of Russian poets Bitter Copper (editions 1 and 2).
Svetlana Dokudovskaya and Alexandra ‘Sanya’ Ilkhovskaia, both originally from Moscow, will talk about Svetlana’s book “Operation Montparnasse”, which describes how they helped Ukrainian refugees in a Paris railway station in the Spring of 2022.
At the end of 2022 Alma Classics published the final volume – Volume IV – of their ground-breaking edition of Pushkin’s Complete Lyrics and Shorter Poems. This is the first time that such a comprehensive edition of the work of Russia’s foremost poet, with original Russian texts and English translations, copious notes and background information, has been published in the English-reading world. To celebrate this landmark event the Pushkin Club has invited the experienced British Pushkinist Roger Clarke, editor of this collection, to introduce some of its highlights at Pushkin House on Tuesday 16th May.
The Pushkin Club invites you to a discussion with Svetlana Shnitman-McMillin about her new book, The Burden of Chivalry, about the life and writing of one of the greatest post-war Russian writers, Georgi Vladimov. Georgi Vladimov was not a prolific writer, but the publication of each of his books became a huge event for Russian literature and around the world. He was also one of the leaders of the dissident movement in Russia, the head of the Moscow branch of Amnesty International, and was a personal friend of the academician Andrey Sakharov. The conversation will be held in English.
The Pushkin Club, Rights in Russia and RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in War) invite you to an evening with Svetlana Gannushkina and Tetiana Sokolova, the winners of the Anna Politkovskaya Award. This award is presented annually by RAW in WAR, an International Human Rights NGO, to women human rights defenders from conflict zones around the world who, like Anna, stand up for the victims, often at great personal risk. The 2022 Anna Politkovskaya Award will be presented on 12 March 2023 at a special event ‘Refusing to be Silenced’ as part of WOW (Women of the World Festival) at the Southbank Centre in London to the two winners: Tetiana Sokolova, a courageous midwife from the city of Mariupol in Eastern Ukraine, and Svetlana Gannushkina, a brave human rights defender from Moscow.
The Pushkin Club invites you to join Yelena Lembersky for a presentation of Like A Drop of Ink in a Downpour, a memoir written by her and her mother, Galina Lembersky. The memoir traces Yelena and Galina’s experiences in the 1970s and 1980s, exploring the bond between mother and daughter, the realities faced by Jews in the USSR, and the value of art and culture as a means of truth, hope and political resistance.
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.
The Pushkin Club invites you for a discussion and reading of Disbelief: 100 Russian Anti-War Poems with poets and translators, including Maria Bloshteyn, Robert Chandler and Julia Nemirovskaya.
The Pushkin Club invites you to a talk by Stephania Kulaeva and Olga Abramenko, experts from the Anti-Discrimination Centre Memorial. The Anti-Discrimination Centre Memorial (ADC) is one of many organisations that make up the Memorial movement, which came into existence during the years of perestroika in the Soviet Union. The organisation has become renowned for its human rights and historical work in the Russian Federation and is now being developed in many European countries. Its work focuses on discrimination and protection of vulnerable groups, minorities and women.
The Pushkin Club invites you to a talk by Roland Elliott Brown, author of Godless Utopia: Soviet Anti-Religious Propaganda, for a journey through the style and techniques of Russian propaganda, and an exploration of its use to demonise, or exploit, religion for regime benefit.
Translators Alissa Valles and Antonia Lloyd-Jones will be in conversation with Masha Karp to discuss the extraordinary life and writings of Polish painter Józef Czapski – one of a very small handful of people to survive the Katyń massacre in April 1940. His Memories of Starobielsk recalls these doomed men with the vivid detail of a portrait artist, as Czapski describes their struggle to preserve dignity and hope in hopeless circumstances, and the additional essays on art, history and literature show his profound ties to Russian culture and his argument for defending what is best in it at a time when it was in a totalitarian stranglehold.
My Duty to Not Stay Silent is a documentary by imprisoned Russian politician and historian Vladimir Kara-Murza, with an introduction by Evgenia Kara-Murza. It tells the story of Father Georgy Edelstein, a remarkable man in a remarkably difficult era. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Evgenia Kaza-Murza.
Irina Potanina is a writer from Kharkiv who has published more than 30 books across various genres. Her first solo novel was published in Moscow by AST in 2001, and her series of retro-detective novels, set in Kharkiv in the 1930s and 1940s, holds a special place in her heart. The main character is a real person, based on Irina’s great-grandfather, the famous theatre critic and journalist Vladimir Morskoy, who was arrested in 1950 and perished in Stalin’s concentration camps.
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.
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.
The Pushkin Club invites you to a reading by Robert Chandler celebrating the life and work of Teffi.
Nadezdha Lokhvitskaya – the writer we now know as Teffi – was born on 21 May 1872. This year sees the 150th anniversary of her birth and the 80th anniversary of her death in Paris on 6 October 1952. Originally Robert Chandler had intended to celebrate these dates by reading from Other Worlds, a recently published collection of stories foregrounding her witty and paradoxical treatment of Russian folk religious beliefs. Instead, however, he will read from Memories, her account of her last journey across Russia and Ukraine in the early days of the Russian Civil War.
Pushkin Club presents a screening of Something about Georgia (2009) and a Q&A with Its director, Nino Kirtadze.
“This film has a universal value for all wars with their fundamentally intolerable violence” - Jean Perret
Nino Kirtadze’s documentary Something About Georgia was made in 2009, soon after Russia’s war against Georgia in August 2008. The director has the clarity of vision to consider dramatic events in their complexity: the amazing beauty of her native land being destroyed by war; the incomprehension of ordinary men and women behind their ruined windows and in front of their destroyed houses; President Saakashvili, who tried to turn his country towards democracy, seen here both as a powerful leader and in moments of anxiety and dismay.
In Georgian with English subtitles.
Join Pushkin Club and Sir Tony Brenton for a talk entitled “Shakespeare the Russian” and readings of Russian poetry from the 19th and 20th centuries which was inspired by Shakespeare or Shakespearian themes. Sir Tony is the former UK Ambassador to Russia (2004-2008), was an Economic and Scientific Counsellor in Moscow (1994-1998), and is the author of several publications on Russian culture.
In his talk he will explore the meaning, importance and the attractiveness of Shakespeare for Russians and Russian culture. Have the Russians created their “own” Shakespeare? What is the link between Shakespeare’s heritage, Russian history and Russian culture?
This reading of poems by Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) in English translation will demonstrate his achievement as the classic voice of Ukrainian identity. The translations to be read are mostly from Vera Rich’s acclaimed selection Song Out of Darkness: Selected Poems (1961), with a couple of present-day translations (e.g. by Boris Dralyuk) and also some poems to be read both in the original and in Russian translation.
The centre of the programme will be the narrative poem The Dream, which compresses virtually the whole of Russian-Ukrainian history with unforgettable power. Also to be read are Shevchenko’s most famous short poem ‘Testament’ and some of the great lyrics he wrote during imprisonment awaiting sentence in St Petersburg.
Join the award-winning former BBC correspondent David Loyn as he reflects on Russia’s dilemmas in Afghanistan in this latest instalment of the Pushkin Club.
Russia’s early support for the Taliban takeover has been replaced with unease at the developing situation. As the Afghan state collapses into an unprecedented refugee crisis and famine, is Russia courting disaster?
The Pushkin Club commemorates the 180th anniversary of Lermontov’s death with an illustrated talk by David Brummell about the poet’s life and work. The evening will include readings of a selection of Lermontov’s best-known poems: they will be recited in Russian by Alla Gelich and in David Brummell’s English translations by Lucy Daniels and David Brummell.
Illustrated narrative in English via Zoom, with readings from Gumilyev’s poetry in English and Russian.
The Pushkin Club is devoting this evening’s event to a celebration of the life and work of Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev (1896-1921) and commemoration of the centenary anniversary of his death. David Brummell and Lucy Daniels will read the poems in English translation, and Alla Gelich will recite them in the original Russian.
The Pushkin Club presents an illustrated Introduction in English, with a musical interlude and readings from Pushkin’s 'Mozart and Salieri' and his poem 'The Upas Tree'.
Dramatic-style readings from Pushkin’s works in English and Russian, with an illustrated introduction in English and a musical interlude
The Pushkin Club will devote an evening to the theme of people confronting statues – and vice-versa – in Pushkin’s work. This will be explored with reference to three of Pushkin's masterworks: The Stone Guest (1830), The Bronze Horseman (1833) and The Tale of the Golden Cockerel (1834).
On 9 June, the Pushkin Club gave us a glimpse of some of the masterpieces Pushkin wrote at the end of 1830 in three months of quarantine during a pandemic of Asiatic cholera, among them excerpts from the Little Tragedy A Feast during the Plague. Now, this event offers a rare chance to hear a rehearsed reading of this extraordinary piece by five actors, complete in a translation by Antony Wood.
