Pushkin House Podcast

An audio guide to the 'Amateur Bird Watching at Passport Control' exhibition by Alina Bliumis. Borimir Totev follows Belarus-born, New-York based artist Alina Bliumis around Pushkin House, while exploring her work built around a paradox that birds, the ultimate symbol of freedom, are used on documents controlling international movement.

In conversation with librettist of Pushkin, the Opera, and direct descendant of Alexander Pushkin, Marita Phillips.

872 days that cost of almost a million lives make the siege of Leningrad one of the longest and deadliest in modern history. Clem Cecil talks with Pushkin House Book Prize 2018 winning author, Alexis Peri, about her book ‘The War Within: Diaries From the Siege of Leningrad’. Alexis shares the tragic story of how citizens struggled to make sense of a world collapsing around them. We explore how residents recorded in intimate detail the toll taken on minds and bodies by starvation, bombardment, and disease. For many, diary writing became instrumental to survival.

Get ready to take a leaf out of Viv Groskop’s life book. Borimir Totev talks (and plays a game) with Viv Groskop, author of 'The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature', who offers us a number of life fixes for some of the most common and absurd scenarios. Viv has discovered the meaning of life in Russian literature. As she knows from personal experience, everything that has ever happened in life has already happened in these novels: from not being sure what to do with your life (Anna Karenina) to being in love with someone who doesn't love you back enough (A Month in the Country by Turgenev) or being socially anxious about your appearance (all of Chekhov's work).

Help! It's Eurovision and we need a doctor. Borimir Totev talks with Paul Jordan, a.k.a Dr. Eurovision, about the trends and concepts surrounding the contest. We explore the role the Eurovision Song Contest plays in terms of nation building and its wider implications concerning minority rights, freedom of expression and national identity.

An audio guide to the 'On the Eve' exhibition by Victoria Lomasko. Borimir Totev follows Victoria’s metaphor of a snowy landscape, that muffles and hinders ideas and movements., exploring the meaning behind the murals in the main room of Pushkin House.

How different are the ordinary lives we take for granted when lived in Russia? Borimir Totev talks with artist and activist Victoria Lomasko who travels through the former Soviet Union to chronicle the daily lives of ordinary people rarely represented in the media. We touch on her work with marginal grassroots groups like striking truck drivers, humble housewives, protesting Muscovites, invisible and voiceless slaves of the metropolitan bourgeoisie, and the LGBT+ community.

Are we living in an Animal Farm like Orwellian present? Borimir Totev talks with ex-BBC Russian Service features editor Masha Karp about her new George Orwell biography and the parallels we can draw to our contemporary reality.

What is it like to live in the most polluted city in Russia? Borimir Totev talks with curator Anya Stonelake about the Russian city of Norilsk. The city’s collective memory includes traumas that are inscribed into its expansive housing blocks, infinite mines, quarries, and factories, and a permafrost extending towards the horizon in every direction.

Unearthing stories of the construction of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Borimir Totev talks with Niall Hobhouse from Drawing Matter, Economist writer, Tim Abrahams, and Pushkin House Director, Clem Cecil, about architectural visualisations, realities on the ground, and a few of President Trump's tweets.