I Love Russia
Russia

I Love Russia

by Elena Kostyuchenko

Society & Class Non-Fiction Memoir History Political Writing 2023

Summary

I Love Russia brings together investigative reporting and personal essays to portray a country through the lives of people often excluded from its official narrative. Journalist Elena Kostyuchenko writes about sex workers, LGBTQ+ people, residents of neglected institutions, and communities affected by violence and political repression. Her reporting also follows the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, examining the human realities behind state propaganda and military aggression. Rather than presenting Russia as a single, uniform society, Kostyuchenko reveals its contradictions through the experiences of individuals whose stories challenge dominant political narratives. The book explores the complicated relationship between love for one’s country and the responsibility to criticise its government, presenting journalism as an act of witnessing, resistance, and moral commitment.

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About the author
Elena Kostyuchenko
Elena Kostyuchenko

Elena Kostyuchenko is a Russian journalist and author known for her deeply reported, human-centered work on contemporary Russia, social inequality, corruption, and war. Born in Yaroslavl in 1987, she began working as a journalist as a teenager and went on to spend seventeen years reporting for "Novaya Gazeta", one of Russia’s leading independent newspapers. Kostyuchenko’s reporting has taken her into some of the most difficult and overlooked corners of Russian society. She has covered political protests, the persecution of marginalized communities, the Pussy Riot movement, and the war in eastern Ukraine, often focusing on the lives of people rarely represented in mainstream narratives. In March 2022, she traveled to Ukraine to report on the full-scale invasion and its consequences. Her first book published in English, "I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country" (2023), combines investigative reportage with personal essays to create an intimate portrait of a country undergoing profound political and social transformation. Kostyuchenko has received several major journalism awards, including the European Press Prize, the Gerd Bucerius Award for Free Press, and the Paul Klebnikov Prize. Her writing is distinguished by its close attention to individual lives, its willingness to confront uncomfortable realities, and its belief in journalism as a way of bearing witness to people and places that might otherwise remain unseen.

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Details
Published
2023
Author
Elena Kostyuchenko