What does Moscow youth culture look like in 2025? Report by Anastasia Anisina Culture is sensitive to the militaristic shift and the strengthening of the repressive apparatus in Russia. But, like a tree through concrete, informal associations find somewhere to grow. We tell you what is happening with youth culture in Moscow in the fourth year of hostilities in Ukraine and the strongest ideological pressure within the country. "Dope" - Oh, great! We haven't seen each other for five years.

Interview with Alima Bisenova Kazakhstan has a long and difficult relationship with Russia. During the Soviet Union, the republic became one of the bridgeheads for the formation of a nation. The creation of a new, Soviet culture of Kazakhs took place against the backdrop of hunger, repression and environmental colonialism. How do these processes perceive these processes now? And what becomes - or can it become a new Kazakh identity?

The book of anthropologist Fabio Matthioli “Dark Finance” is based on a long -term field study in one of the construction companies of Skopier. Through the stories of workers, managers and officials, the author shows how Macedonia experienced the economic crisis after 2008. Dear projects and accumulating debts not only did not bring the promised prosperity, but also supported authoritarian authorities.

A big interview about Uzbekistan with Alisher Ilkhamov Since the collapse of the USSR, Uzbekistan has repeatedly become a place of tragic events, mass repressions and ethnic conflicts. Behind the Soviet government came the dictatorship of Islam Karimov, in which any civilian initiatives were suppressed in the bud. All this happened against the backdrop of an ongoing ecological water catastrophe, which ended with almost the complete drying of a large aral. How can we evaluate these events now?

Garbology, protests, scavengers and new theories We see the garbage everywhere: it accumulates in a bucket under our sink and containers in the yards, gathers on landfills, travels along the rivers and goes into new islands on the surface of the oceans. No matter how hard they are trying to hide it, he again and again arises in sight - on the streets, in media, artwork - and, as the latest studies of microplasty show , has already settled in the human body.

Fragments of the history of the country in the modern landscape through the eyes of the photographer Maxim Sheer The South Caucasus is a region with a long history of conflicts, resettlement, seizures of territories and religious transformations related to the nearest large empires. The photographer Maxim Cher has been working on the Empire project for several years, for which it records visible traces of imperialism in the landscape of Europe.

Widows of European borders As migrants imperceptibly die on the border of the EU and Belarus. Transfer of reporting Unbias The News Since 2021, a quiet humanitarian disaster has been unfolding on the borders of the EU and Belarus: dozens of people trying to get to Poland and Lithuania die in impassable forests, where border guards are forced to bother them. The exact number of victims is unknown, only volunteers keep accounting. They help to look for the bodies of the dead.

The Korean war is often perceived as the prototype of the Vietnamese: the classic conflict of the Cold War between the USSR and the USA, which occurs on the periphery of the zones of the influence of empires. But this story begins earlier, in 1945, at the time of the transition of the strategic port city of Inchon from the Japanese to the US Army.

We discuss Cool magazines, AIDS-info and about it. In the early 1990s, Russia spoke loudly about sex, it turned into a symbol of freedom and emancipation. Television, newspapers and magazines took up sexual enlightenment and explained to adolescents and adults what was silent about in Soviet times. Journalist Lola Romanova tells how the Russian media of the 1990s began a conversation about sex and sexuality and how it ended.

Says Ruslan Suleimanov For decades, the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran built in the Middle East a whole network of loyal regimes and armed groups - from Iraq to Syria, from Lebanon to Yemen. Together, this makes up the so -called “resistance axis”. Over the past two years, she has been subjected to unprecedented challenges and, for example, did not show herself in the recent 12-day Iranian-Israeli war. Does this mean that the Iranian project turned out to be a failure?

And how a rapidly developing economy and globalization are adjacent to repression and censorship In 2023, Vietnam, who in the 20th century was one of the poorest countries in South Asia, read the fate of the new “Asian Tiger” . Market reforms were able to raise the country's GDP and put it on a par with Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Interview with Anthropologist Valeria Vasilyeva from the Center for Social Research of the North The issue of mastering the Russian Arctic and the Northern Sea Route is increasingly raising, which, in the context of a global climate change, can become a new transport artery from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. But what is the northern villages and ports in fact? And how does the life of indigenous nomads develop in these places?

About why loud music from Tick-Tok is much more than just a noise, says a music critic Alexander Glazkov The entire 2020s, Baile-Fank is located in the center of the global musical culture. The main star of the Anitta genre has 35 million listeners in Spotify monthly. The bass hits of the Brazilian Fonca, generated by experimental options for Fank, have become standard accompaniment of various short videos.

From Turgenev to Dugin Both Russian and foreign propaganda willingly use myths to explain the processes within Russia. On the one hand, myths arise about a special path opposed to the rotting West. On the other hand, narratives about the deep people and their eternal slave nature. Although these ideas are actively developing in modern media space, they appeared several centuries ago. Journalist Lola Romanova tells how these myths arose and why they do not lose relevance.

We understand two popular animated series about the crisis of human Fantastic images of the future and alternative worlds always reflect the fears and hopes of the times in which they are born. The gap between the real and fictional makes science fiction with a genre that allows you to critically comprehend reality from the distance. The speculation about the possible “later” and “differently” is an excellent exercise for the imagination of not only domestic, but also political.