Pushkin House Podcast

What is a banya? What do Russians do when they go to the steam-room, and what are those conical hats they’re wearing? Madeleine Cuckson speaks to Banya No. 1 founder Andrei Fomin to answer all the questions you might have had about the traditions and future of the Russian bathhouse.

This episode was presented and recorded for Pushkin House by Madeleine Cuckson. The series producer was Rafy Hay. Our thanks to Andrei Fomin and everyone at Banya No. 1.

Young Pushkin volunteer Ada Wordsworth spoke remotely to three participants in the Fridays for Future strikes, who are on the frontline of climate activism in Russia: Arshak Makichyan in Moscow, Dasha Khamaza in St Petersburg, and Daria Anufrieva in Irkutsk. They describe the challenges and successes they've had in pressuring their local and national governments to respond to the gathering storm of climate change, and swimming against a current of apathy and scepticism from the rest of society.

Presented and edited by Ada Wordsworth, and produced by Jorrit Donner-Wittkopf. Series produced for Pushkin House by Rafy Hay.

Frankie Shalom speaks to Emily Couch, who lived in Russia as an ethnically Chinese British student, and Vijay Menon, who travelled on the Trans-Siberian Railway and wrote the book A Brown Man in Russia about his experiences. They discuss the trials and joys of travelling in Russia, and talk about their experiences of Russians’ reactions to their presence.

This episode was presented and recorded for Pushkin House by Frankie Shalom. The editor and series producer was Rafy Hay. Our thanks to Emily Couch and Vijay Menon. Listen here on the Pushkin House website, on Apple podcasts, or via Acast.

Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk discuss the best translations of Russian literature

By popular demand, Pushkin House presents a recording of our event from 15th January 2020. Acclaimed translators Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk discuss the best English versions of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol and others, with guest appearances from Antony Wood and Nicolas Pasternak Slater.

This podcast episode was edited and produced for Pushkin House by Rafy Hay.

“The most essential horrors revealed by Gogol are not of Russia, but of the soul...”

Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol (1809-1852) is one of the most important figures of Russian literature, initiating a prose tradition that influenced everyone who came after him. In this lecture from the Pushkin House salon at its old home in Ladbroke Grove, preeminent writer and critic Victor Erlich elucidates with characteristic wit and incision the elements of Gogol’s metaphors and plots which draw on the grotesque. In these surreal and bizarre images, Gogol reveals truths about our world and our selves which are always strikingly compelling.

This talk and discussion was recorded at some point between 1963 and 1968 — we know this to be the case as Erlich is mentioned as chair of the Yale department of Slavic languages and literature, a post he held between those dates — and likely near the end of that period, as his book Gogol (1969) is mentioned as upcoming. Erlich speaks about all of Gogol’s main works, including the Ukrainian Tales, the Petersburg Tales — Nevsky Prospect, The Nose and The Overcoat; Taras Bulba, Diary of a Madman, and his final controversial masterpiece, Dead Souls.

This episode was catalogued and digitised by Anastasia Koro and Andrey Levitskiy, and was edited and produced for Pushkin House by Rafy Hay.