Last Saturday, the Paris resource center Espace Libertés Reforum Space hosted a presentation of Ksenia Kirillova’s poetry collection, illustrated by Masha Moskalyova, «A Hillock on Canvas.» This is the first release of the Most.Media publishing program, the first publication experience for the 16-year-old artist, and the first in-person meeting of all participants in the creative process. At the public talk, together with Masha’s father, Alexey Moskalyov, we discussed creativity in political emigration — as well as the circumstances that led all participants in this discussion into emigration: the war in Ukraine and the repression in Russia against its opponents. We are publishing an abridged transcript of our conversation for easier reading.

#recruitment #WarinUkraine #children #DianaandIrinaLoginov #discussion #dissidents #west #MashaandAlexeyMoskalyov #prose #repressions #Parents #Russia #SergeyEfron #resistance #specialservices #poems #Emigration

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After traveling through Russia in 1839, the French aristocrat Astolphe de Custine wrote a book that still shapes Western politicians’ views of the country. But beyond criticism of Russian customs, it also contains an unexpected political theory.

#19thcentury #AstolphedeCustine #bestseller #Decembrists #dissidents #europe #WestandEast #foreignersinRussia #historicalmemory #conservatism #finance #PyotrChaadaev #politicaltheory #Poland #rightandleft #revolution #reforms #RussianEmpire #France #civilization

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Exactly 60 years ago, the USSR began the trial of writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, which marked the beginning of the Soviet dissident movement. One of the prosecution witnesses at this trial was the Orientalist Sergei Khmelnitsky — the father of historian of Soviet secret services and «Most» columnist Dmitry Khmelnitsky. Dmitry himself was 12 years old at the time. A couple of years later, Dmitry learned that his father had been a secret NKVD informant, whose denunciation in the late 1940s led to the arrest and imprisonment of two of his friends. After being released during the Khrushchev Thaw, they publicly exposed Sergei Khmelnitsky, and all his close friends turned away from him. Among them was Andrei Sinyavsky. However, few people know that the famous writer himself was recruited by the NKVD at the same time as Khmelnitsky and continued to cooperate with the KGB. Dmitry tells how it all happened in his forthcoming book «Khmelnitsky, Sinyavsky, and the KGB.»

#dissidents #denunciations #interview #historicalmemory #kgb #personalexperience #thaw #SinyavskyandDaniel #repressionsintheUSSR #parentsandchildren #specialservices #France #Emigration

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Boris Akunin has been sentenced in absentia in Russia to 14 years, Dmitry Bykov declared wanted: two of the most important Russian writers have been subjected to exemplary criminal repressions. This is a milestone and another signal, as they say, for the entire intelligentsia. Although what signals are there, everything is already clear. Rather, this is a milestone for the repressive apparatus itself, which is worth noting.

#akulin #bulls #dictatorship #dissidents #intelligentsia #kgb #movie #literature #aftertheUSSR #Putin #repressions #series #Sovietpower

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