Irina Smagas text is a letter in the form of poetry which tells the story of missing a language you don’t know, and how alienation becomes home – the place where you spend most of your time.
The Russian imperial politics have throughout history limited the Kalmyk culture, from the early oral epos “Dzjangar” to contemporary poetry. In this lyrical essay by Dordzhi Dzhaldzhireev, it’s clear...
In “Reindeer caravan” we get to follow a child with insight in the state of things: the aunt wants to operate her eyes round, children are taken away from their families for six whole years, the...
In this text by Svetlana Edygarova we are presented with an aspect of losing a language that is rarely brought up: that language is connected to emotion, and emotions to the body. What concequences...
Where does being in the middle take place? Perhaps between novruz and christmas, different geographical places, between two languages where one of them brings literature but first after cutting up the...
Meat ties this epic poem by the Tatar poet Elvina Valieva together. The bitter taste of colonialism exists side by side with the love in the broth, and the fact that your home always remains home...
The Tatar language is unintentionally left in the childhood kitchen for many years. We get to follow the language from childhood with əbika, to school and university where it’s ignored, and to Berlin...
In this nuanced literary essay, Putin opponent Dmitry Kuzmin tries to answer the question of whether all Russian culture is evil. He is a Ukrainian-to-Russian translator and editor-in-chief of the...
How does one handle an epidemic when conspiration theories are given space in national television and when politicians and doctors alike deny the existence of the virus? Liza Aleksandrova Zorina...
“In conditions of shrinking freedom and fewer independent media, the internet became filled with jokes, anecdotes and lampoons,” says the Russian author and human rights activist Liza Aleksandrova...
Political oppression in Russia has led to an eroded public arena and the country is being drained of well-educated innovative cosmopolitans. Alexander Etkind, history professor with a focus on Russian...
