Resistance, Renewal, Survival: Paths of Post-Soviet Independence

On 26 February, Pushkin House hosts an in-person and online book talk with journalist Joe Luc Barnes, joined by scholar Thomas de Waal, on Barnes’s forthcoming book Farewell to Russia: A Journey Through the Former USSR.

The book is a political travelogue across all fifteen former Soviet states — from Azerbaijan’s glass skyscrapers and Estonia’s tech hubs to Kazakhstan’s former gulags and wartime Kyiv. Drawing on dozens of voices, Barnes explores how societies have navigated the past 35 years of independence.

The discussion will look at the lingering legacies of empire, competing narratives of the Soviet past, and how Cold War and Russocentric frameworks still shape outside perceptions — as well as what the future may hold for the region often labelled “post-Soviet”.

For more information and tickets click on ‘buy ticket’.