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Russia

Activism

Pussy Riot's Maria Alyokhina tells the story behind the headlines

Punk, prison and prayers — The Russian activist reveals all in Riot Days – her shocking new memoir detailing prison life, protests, and the rise of Pussy Riot. Read an extract here.

Written by: Maria Alyokhina, introduction by Biju Belinky

Art

The art behind Russia’s revolutionary uprisings

Painting politics — A new show at London’s Tate Modern uncovers the history of political Soviet art – from leaflets and banners to propaganda posters and periodicals.

Written by: Dominique Sisley

Photography

The dark, gritty underbelly of the post-Soviet east

Absurd in Abkhazia — After finding his first camera in a skip, Petr Barabakaa has been photographing the streets as only a skater could: fleeting and accident prone.

Written by: Ellie Howard

Photography

The queer Russian couples refusing to apologise for their love

We are together — Photographer Anna Milokumova meets queer couples in Russia who exist and resist in a political landscape keen to see them fail.

Written by: Biju Belinky

Culture

A photographer's epic quest through the former USSR

Couchsurfing along the fringe — Nomadic photographer Gianluca Pardelli hitched his way around the former Soviet Union, searching for identity in a cultural vacuum.

Written by: Cian Traynor

Reportage

LGBT Londoners stand with tortured gay men in Chechnya

'Hands off the gays' — Queer people and their allies descended on the Russian embassy in London last night after it was reported that gay men in Chechnya are being rounded up and killed.

Written by: Michael Segalov

Outdoors

The Russia you'll never see on postcards...

Street life, St. Petersburg-style — Award-winning photographer Alexander Petrosyan has spent decades discovering what makes his home town tick: the everyday comedy and drama of a city built on contradictions.

Written by: Cian Traynor

Photography

Revisiting the wreckage of Russia’s Krokodil epidemic three years on

Krokodil’s toxic legacy — Photographer Emanuele Satolli documented the height of the Krokodil epidemic in 2013. Three years later, he returned to Yekaterinburg to survey the damage.

Written by: Alex King

Activism

Pussy Riot are back with a song to celebrate the vagina

Patriarchy is boring — Russian punk activists Pussy Riot release a new song that hails the vagina in all it’s glory at a crucial time in global politics.

Written by: Ella Guthrie

Activism

The story of the Russian activist who nailed his scrotum to Red Square

Flames of resistance — Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova threw down a gauntlet in 2012, but it’s been picked up by flame-throwing performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky. The Moscow City Court will this week consider an appeal against his sentence, after he was found guilty of setting fire to the Moscow headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB). Huck headed to Moscow to hear Pyotr’s story in person, while he sat in prison, from the two people who best understand his elaborately defiant acts.

Written by: Natalia Antonova

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