On June 26, at the age of 73, Sergei Ivanov, the former defense minister, head of the presidential administration and deputy prime minister who competed with Dmitry Medvedev to succeed Vladimir Putin in 2008, died. Writer Dmitry Bykov takes a principled and compassionate look at Sergei Ivanov’s path from the KGB Higher School to the VTB United League, the organization that announced his death.

To the portrait of the Russian informer in general and the poet Nikolai Stefanovich in particular Drawing: Pyotr Sarukhanov / Novaya Gazeta (18+) THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) WAS PRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED AND (OR) SENT BY A FOREIGN AGENT DMITRY LVOVICH BYKOV OR CONCERNES THE ACTIVITIES OF A FOREIGN AGENT DMITRY LVOVICH BYKOV.

Antiheroes of recent years in Russian culture are masters of inspired denunciations. The denunciation to some extent equates Nikita Mikhalkov and Zakhar Prilepin with the blogger on the payroll of the presidential administration Ilya Remeslo and the serial informer Abaturov-Korobkova.

Russian media have long been divided into censored and anti-war media, whose audiences rarely overlap. Among the first to survive is Afisha, a once cult publication that was a trendsetter in the 2000s. Over the course of 15 years, Afisha has gone through several changes of owners and editors-in-chief, gotten rid of its signature snobbery and switched to the language of zoomers.

Gore Verbinski's first film in eight years, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, dedicated to humanity's struggle with artificial intelligence, has been released in America. Writer Dmitry Bykov, a longtime admirer of the work of the director who gave us “Pirates of the Caribbean” and the American “Ring,” believes that Verbinski made a very relevant movie, the audience of which should quickly unite, like his heroes, in order to defeat the future.

Two years after the death of Alexei Navalny in the Polar Wolf colony, the Russian opposition still has no consensus leader. Writer Dmitry Bykov, in his column dedicated to the anniversary of the death of Russian opposition leader No. 1, explains why Alexei Navalny was Vladimir Putin’s only chance for a civilized exit and why any ruler of Russia who follows Putin—whoever he is—is obviously doomed.

Natalya Gromova is a thoughtful archivist, publisher and commentator on the diaries of Malakhieva-Mirovich and the biography of Olga Berggolts “There Was and Is Not Death.” Since April 2022, Natalya Gromova has been living and working in Israel, publishing outside of Russia, and this is her conscious personal choice. Her book “Eugene Schwartz.

In October 2025, the Parisian publishing house Grasset published Andrei Kozovoy’s book “Les Exilés. Pasternak et les miens" (“Exiles. Pasternak and my family”). This is the biography of his mother, philologist and memoirist Irina Emelyanova, and his father, poet and dissident Vadim Kozovoy. But in addition to the family chronicle, these are also extremely interesting reflections on how the force field of Boris Pasternak transformed the destinies of everyone who fell into this field.

An interview with Alexei Arestovich, a futurologist and former adviser to the office of the President of Ukraine, was published on Ksenia Sobchak’s YouTube channel. Republic columnist Dmitry Bykov*, who always spoke warmly about the hero of the show, explains why changing shoes in the air is better than crawling on your knees.

October 8 would have been the 100th birthday of Andrei Sinyavsky, a philologist, writer who published literary works under the pseudonym Abram Terts, dissident and political prisoner, long-time editor of the Syntax magazine, which he published in Paris with his wife Maria Vasilievna Rozanova. Sinyavsky is in every sense a unique figure for Russian literature.

Today, Peter Efimovich Todorovsky would have turned 100 years old. Most of all, the audience knows and love him for the late paintings-the “Military Field Roman”, which was nominated for Oscar, and “Interded”, which became a symbol of perestroika cinema. Dmitry Bykov in the anniversary text pays attention primarily to the early films of Todorovsky - from the debut “Never” to the “City Romance”, telling about the man and director, who never pretended and always remained himself.

The book of Professor Pennsylvania University Benjamin Nathans “For the success of our hopeless business” in 2025 received the Pulitzer Prize, as well as many professional awards around the world. This 800-page intellectual bestseller talks about the history of the dissident movement in the USSR.

In mid-July, two filmmakers-Yuri Kara and Yuri Moroz, representatives of the same directorial generation who entered the profession in the late 1980s-early 1990s passed away. Valery Todorovsky, Vladimir Khotinenko, Alexey Balabanov, Alexander Khvan and many others belong to him. For the writer Dmitry Bykov, these deaths became the reason for thinking about why the post -Soviet “new wave”, and the new country, did not work out and could not work out by definition. 1.

Why read bad literature about a bad life? Why was the most infantile genre of world literature the most sensitive? What does fantasy have in common with socialist realism and why do the heroes of Tolkien resemble Soviet party organizations? What are Rebecca Kuang, Ty John Skalzi, Yuan Kim and Rebecca Written about? And who is it at all? Meet: Dmitry Bykov Meets Modern Fantasy. I never loved fantasy, but I must admit that it was this genre that pleasantly surprised me this year.

At the end of May, in the entire reading world, except Russia, Steven King’s new romance “Never Flinkh” was released. Dmitry Bykov* read it as quickly as he could (carefully: spoilers), and reflects on the face, after which the composition of the horror stops to insure from real horrors and begins to attract them. And also with a bonus offers its version of the Russian translation of the name of the novel.