Lives in Russia

20 March 2025, The Tablet

‘In Pskov, Moscow was a long way away’

Alexander Kozlov / flickr | Creative Commons

For 70 years Russia has been the enemy of the West, first as the brooding heart of Soviet Communism, and now as Putin’s gangster kleptocracy. Life in Russia has been universally reported as grim, a cowed population eking out a subsistence existence with few comforts. Being a natural sceptic, I wondered how much of it was true.

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