Topic description and stories

Photograph of Vasilii Trushkin aged 15 on pages from his diary

Diaries reveal teenage angst in Stalin’s Russia

21 Jul 2025

Overlooked diaries written by teenage boys in pre-war Soviet Russia reveal relatable perspectives on love, lust, boredom, pressure to succeed and...

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State of Madness: Psychiatry, Literature, and Dissent After Stalin

25 Apr 2019

Towards the end of the 1960s, rumours began to spread that nonconformist citizens of the USSR were being diagnosed with mental illnesses and confined...

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Part of the fuselage of the aircraft which crashed near Smolensk in April 2010.

Massacre and metaphor: remembering Katyn

28 Sep 2012

Swathed in conspiracy and suppressed by the Soviet establishment, the historical truth about the Katyn murders remained obscure for more than half a...

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