The European Studies Council presents a Book Talk with Elena Kostyuchenko, journalist and author:
“I Love Russia.”
The European Studies Council, The Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale, and the Slavic Colloquium present Elena Kostyuchenko, journalist and author of the book “I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country” published this month by Penguin Random House. Moderated by Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History (Yale).
A fearless, cutting portrait of Russia and an essential cri de coeur for journalism in opposition to the global authoritarian turn
To be a journalist is to tell the truth. “I Love Russia” is Elena Kostyuchenko’s unrelenting attempt to document her country as experienced by those whom it systematically and brutally erases: village girls recruited into sex work, queer people in the outer provinces, patients and doctors at a Ukrainian maternity ward, and reporters like herself.
Elena Kostyuchenko is a Russian independent journalist. For 17 years she was a special correspondent of Novaya Gazeta, till the newspaper was shut down under the pressure of Russian authorities in March 2022. She reported on conflict, crime, human rights and social issues. Kostyuchenko was among the first to prove the presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. She covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the second day of the war. Now she collaborates with the independent Russian exiled media Meduza. Her book «I love Russia» will be released on 17 October 2023. Her work was acknowledged with multiple awards including European Press Prize, the Gerd Bucerius Award-Free Press of Eastern Europe, and Paul Klebnikov Prize.