Building the ONRS website: a technical postmortem
How we built a bilingual editorial website using Notion as a CMS, Astro as the renderer, and Cloudflare Pages for hosting — and what we would do differently next time.
Articles and interviews
Conversations, essays and interviews.
Read interviews, essays and reflections from our events, speakers and wider cultural programme.
Latest
A reading room for talks, films and memory work
The samizdat playlist: underground music in Putin's Russia
From banned rappers to encrypted Telegram channels, how Russian musicians are circumventing censorship to reach their audience.
Galina Timchenko on exile, journalism and Russia today
The co-founder of Meduza discusses independent media in exile, the cost of telling the truth and why solidarity matters.
Mapping the diaspora: where did everyone go?
A data-driven look at Russian emigration patterns since 2022 — the top destination countries, demographic breakdowns, and what the numbers miss.
Masha Gessen on language, identity and the politics of naming
The acclaimed journalist and author discusses how language shapes political reality, the power of naming, and writing in exile.
Borscht diplomacy: food, identity and the diaspora table
Who owns borscht? A lighthearted but pointed essay on how food becomes a battleground for national identity — and how the diaspora kitchen might be the place where peace is made.
Anton Dolin: Cinema from Brother to The Boy's Word
Notes from a conversation on memory, genre and post-Soviet film culture.
The Lost Libraries of Moscow
A deep dive into the fate of private book collections confiscated during the Soviet era and the ongoing efforts to catalogue what remains.
Saturday schools: how the diaspora teaches its children Russian
Across Europe, weekend Russian-language schools are booming — but the curriculum has become a minefield. What do you teach children about a homeland that is waging war?
The weight of two alphabets
A personal essay on growing up bilingual in Russian and Ukrainian, and what happens to language when borders become walls.
Watching Tarkovsky in Tbilisi
An essay on how Georgian cinema clubs have kept the spirit of Soviet-era art-house film alive, and what it means for a new generation.
Permafrost and politics: climate research in Siberia under sanctions
International sanctions have severed scientific collaborations that tracked melting permafrost across Siberia. The data gaps are growing — and so is the methane.
Five books that shaped the Russian dissident imagination
From Bulgakov to Shalamov, a curated reading list exploring the literary roots of Russian dissent.
The long arm of the law: extraterritorial prosecution of dissent
Russia's use of Interpol red notices, in-absentia criminal cases, and diplomatic pressure to pursue critics abroad. A legal analysis.
Voices from Berlin: Three stories of relocation
A short documentary featuring three Russians who relocated to Berlin after 2022, exploring what they brought, what they left, and how they are rebuilding.
Rehearsing in exile: the Meyerhold Project in Amsterdam
A short film following a group of exiled Russian theatre actors as they rehearse a new production in Amsterdam, grappling with language, identity, and the meaning of performance without a homeland.
Artemy Troitsky — Two Centuries of Rebellion: A Russian Rock Story
Legendary critic Artemy Troitsky traces two centuries of rebellion through the story of Russian rock and music as resistance.
Anton Dolin: The Bad Russians — Cinema from "Brother" to "The Boy's Word"
Film critic Anton Dolin on Russian cinema's morally complex "bad" heroes, from Balabanov's Brother to The Boy's Word, in conversation with Artemii Levkoy.
Returning the Names
How public remembrance, archives and student communities can meet.
Frontline Journalism: In Conversation with Luke Harding
Guardian foreign correspondent Luke Harding on frontline reporting from Ukraine and Russia, in conversation with Artemii Levkoy.
How to Study a Closing Country: A Lecture by Ekaterina Schulmann
Political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann on studying a closing Russia by rational methods — what the system learned from mobilisation, and what brings authoritarian regimes down.
Meduza's Mirror: Independent Media in Exile — In Conversation with Galina Timchenko
Meduza co-founder and CEO Galina Timchenko on building Russia's largest independent newsroom, reporting from exile, and surviving the Kremlin's "undesirable organisation" ban.
Reporting from a Lost Country: Public Interview with Elena Kostyuchenko
Novaya Gazeta reporter Elena Kostyuchenko on her book I Love Russia and the risks of reporting from an authoritarian state.
Abyss: Art Presentation and Public Interview with Pavel Otdelnov
Artist Pavel Otdelnov on memory, Soviet history, and ressentiment, in a public interview with Artemii Levkoy.
ROARing Times: Linor Goralik on War Poetry and Her Novel "Bobo"
Writer Linor Goralik on her antiwar journal ROAR and her novel Bobo, an elephant's journey through a dystopian Russia.
Poetry and Power in the Post-Stalin Era: Interview with Andrei Zorin
Oxford professor Andrei Zorin on the entangled relationship between poetry and the Soviet state, in conversation with Egor Sokolov.
Beyond the Mother Tongue: Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry on Her Debut Novel and Exophony
Novelist Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry on her debut novel, exophony, and writing across languages, in conversation with Artemii Levkoy.
No articles in this category yet.