Gasan Gusejnov — Doctor of Philology, co-founder of the Free University, author of several books and over a hundred articles on classical philology and cultural history, contemporary politics and literature. One of the co-authors of the Mythological Dictionary and the encyclopedia Myths of the Peoples of the World.

Textological Workshop

Have you ever wondered why, when asked "Why did you invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022?" a Russian official responds with stories about the invitation of the Varangians in 862? How do Russian political elites construct their historical imagination? What role do conspiracy theories and popular myths play in this?

Aleksei Kamenskikh — PhD in Philosophy, board member of the Perm regional branch of the "Memorial" society, until spring 2022 associate professor at the Higher School of Economics.
Until 2014, he focused on the study of philosophical and religious movements of late antiquity (monograph The Principle of Sophia in the Culture of Late Antiquity, Perm University, 2012) and the philosophy of history (co-organizer of the “Eschatos” seminar series at Odessa National University, 2010–2012).
Since 2014, while continuing to explore the philosophy of history (co-organizer of the international seminar “The Human Dimension of Time,” HSE Perm, 2014) and the history of science (co-organizer of the seminar “The 1917 Breakthrough and the Humanities in Russia,” HSE Perm, 2015; a collective monograph was published by Aletheia in 2017), he has been active in projects of the Perm “Memorial” (since 2016 on its board), researching historical policy and memory culture. He initiated and co-organized international student schools aimed at preventing the instrumentalization of memory for mass military mobilization (Territory of Memory and Freedom — Vilnius, Kaunas, Antalkiai, 2017; Remembering Past Conflicts, Thinking About the Future — Writing History Together — Tskaltubo, 2018).
Since April 2022, he has participated in research projects at the Center for East European Studies at the University of Bremen, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, and Ruhr University Bochum.

Cinema is dying of its own quantitative mediocrity, wrote Gilles Deleuze in his 1983 work Cinema. Robert Bresson echoed this sentiment, drawing a line between cinema as true art and “cinema” as mere mechanical production.
This death motif recurs among theorists and filmmakers, including cult directors like Lars von Trier and David Lynch.
But can we really pronounce cinema dead when Barbie grosses over a billion dollars and a serious film like Oppenheimer is not far behind — in the age of Paul and Wes Anderson, the Coen brothers, Alexander Sokurov, and countless underground gems, each a discovery?

To explore what's truly happening with 21st-century cinema, we invited Jan Levtšenko — author and editor of books on film, intellectual history, and conceptual history, as well as numerous articles on cinema, visuality, and mass culture.

This will be a fundamental conversation about what we even mean by "cinema" today. We'll talk about how the cultural industry and consumption practices have changed — tracing the evolving relationship between creator and viewer.

Together with Jan, we'll ask what the future holds for movie theaters, from arthouses to multiplexes, and for red-carpet film festivals.

Finally, we’ll consider whether it's even valid to speak of the “end of cinema” in its former meaning.

Jan Levtšenko — PhD in semiotics and cultural studies (Tartu University), defended a dissertation on the history and theory of formalism in Russian-language humanities. In 2012, he published a book based on this work in the “Cultural Studies” series by HSE Moscow. He was a professor at HSE from 2009 to 2021, teaching courses on cultural theory and visual arts. Before, during, and after that, he has worked as a film and literary critic, public intellectual, author of hundreds of articles, and editor of scholarly anthologies. Since 2021, he has led the “CineTexts” series at New Literary Observer. Since 2022, he lives again in Estonia and works as a journalist for Postimees. He is a columnist for Radio Liberty and Novaya Gazeta Europe, and a professor at the Free University in Riga.

The birth of modern science occurred in the 15th century, during a time when the Christian world was torn apart by division. But how important was a scholar’s confessional identity when it came to their scientific ideas?
Some confessions believed that a “false understanding of God” meant others were denied access to the truth — making their scientific theories as flawed as their heresies.
Yet the history of the scientific revolution shows that confessional boundaries often broke down in the face of new discoveries and emerging cosmological theories.
To what extent did religious differences hinder — or have no bearing on — the formation of the “Republic of Letters”?
This is what we will attempt to explore in our conversation.

Daria Drozdova — PhD in Philosophy.

This Friday, we will be joined by Alexander Cherkasov, human rights activist and Chairman of the Board of the now-liquidated Human Rights Center "Memorial." Questions will be asked together with Alexander Lavut — the great-grandson of Soviet dissident Alexander Lavut, an activist and relocant.
Can we compare the USSR and modern Russia? The Soviet repressions with today's? Civil movements of half a century ago — and those of today? A man of extraordinary modesty, Alexander Pavlovich Lavut was one of the founding members of the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR since 1969, and a long-standing member of the Board of the "Memorial" Center. He was an editor of the Chronicle of Current Events and part of the "Kovalev Mission" during the First Chechen War in 1995. His friend and colleague Sergey Adamovich Kovalev was also both a founder and editor of the Chronicle, went to prison for it, and later became the chairman of Russian "Memorial." That same year, 1995, the Chairman of the Memorial Center’s Board, Oleg Orlov, was Kovalev’s constant companion in the Caucasus, later working in war zones in Georgia, Ukraine — and now himself has become a political prisoner.
We will talk about these people, whose biographies form a bridge between times — between this century and the last.

Alexander Cherkasov — former chairman of the liquidated Human Rights Center "Memorial", born June 17, 1966. Originally trained as a physicist-engineer, he worked from 1983 to 1998 at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. A graduate of the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, he also collaborated with the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Academy of Sciences.
Since 1989, he has been an activist of the "Memorial" Society. Within the historical branch of "Memorial," he worked on the history of the dissident movement in the USSR (archiving and digitizing memoirs, compiling and publishing Chronicle of Current Events online). He was a board member of International Memorial from 1998 until its liquidation in 2022.
From its founding, he participated in the work of the Human Rights Group and the Human Rights Center "Memorial", serving on the Board and, from 2012 until its closure in 2022, as its chairman.
Even after liquidation, "Memorial" was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.
Main areas of work: conflict zones in the USSR and post-Soviet space; specialization in war crimes and crimes against humanity; hostages, prisoners, and forcibly detained persons; enforced disappearances; and impunity.
Since the 2000s, he has also worked as a journalist and columnist (Polity.ru, EJ.ru, Grani.ru, Novaya Gazeta, etc.).
In 2023, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law degree by Clermont-Ferrand University (Auvergne, France).

We will talk about our situation, prospects, and hopes. We will discuss possible futures for Russia and choose among them those that combine two key factors: realism and optimism. Are there such paths for Russia? How can the country reach them? Can we help bring them closer? These and other questions we will discuss on Friday in an open conversation format.

Alexander Morozov — an honest, intelligent, and courageous journalist and political scientist. From 2018 to 2020, he was one of the organizers and a staff member at the Boris Nemtsov Academic Center for the Study of Russia at Charles University in Prague. He was editor-in-chief of Russian Journal, a regular contributor to Colta, Forbes, OpenSpace, and was published in Gazeta.ru and Vedomosti.

Let’s talk about what financial literacy really means. People who aren’t interested in finance often end up paying a high price. They easily fall into debt, can’t plan their budgets, and avoid investments that could help them preserve their savings. Even worse, they are vulnerable to numerous cognitive biases and illusions that lead to poor decisions. What are these mistakes, and how can we avoid them? In a relaxed format, you’ll have the chance to ask Boris any questions, engage in discussion, and just talk.
Yes, you can do that — come to the meeting with Boris Grozovsky.

Boris Grozovsky — journalist and editor specializing in economics, sociology, and political science. Editor of the website Strana i Mir, and author of the Telegram channel @EventsAndTexts. He has written for and edited leading Russian economic and financial publications, including Vedomosti and Forbes. He has taken part in three financial literacy programs and edited more than a dozen books in the social sciences, including teen-friendly translations of Bogusław Janiszewski's books Economics: What Grown-Ups Won’t Tell You and Politics: What Grown-Ups Won’t Tell You.

We’ll explore the philosophical meaning of Varlam Shalamov’s prose, and through his texts, we’ll delve into two profound questions: What does it mean to be human in inhumane conditions? And is the essence of a person something unchanging, preserved through all the upheavals of life?
In recent years, much has been said and written about how reality has changed, how we should behave in it, and how people transform through suffering. Varlam Tikhonovich, who spent nineteen years in the most brutal Stalinist camps, responds to philosophical questions through artistic prose, which will form the core of our conversation.
The question of the meaning of evil and suffering has occupied civilization for a long time, but Shalamov’s work offers a new opportunity to think about this problem. His writing allows philosophical anthropology to speak in a new language, moving beyond theoretical frameworks in pursuit of understanding the human being — not fearing contradictions, because these are life’s contradictions, not logical dead ends.

Vladimir Porus — Doctor of Philosophy, specialist in epistemology, philosophy, and methodology of science; professor at the School of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the Higher School of Economics; author of over 500 articles.

August is a remarkable month, marked in the history of the second half of the 20th century by several significant events.
August 1968 — the occupation of Czechoslovakia and the suppression of all attempts to build "socialism with a human face."
August 1991 — an attempted coup d’état in Moscow, and the failure of the putsch, remembered for the televised image of Gennady Yanayev’s shaking hands. Notably, this cartoonish coup ended on August 21—the very same day Soviet tanks rolled into Prague 23 years earlier.
Just a few days after the failed Moscow coup, on August 24, 1991, Ukraine declared its independence.
Is there any connection between these events? Can one help us see the other more clearly?
This is what we’ll discuss in an informal format.
Prepare your questions!

Igor Solomadin graduated from the Faculty of History at Kharkiv State University. He interned at Dartmouth College (New Hampshire, USA), studied the role of the humanities in modern education, worked with the archives of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, and participated in translating his book The Great Revolutions: Autobiography of Western Man, later published in Russian in New York and Moscow.
He was one of the teacher-developers of the “School of Dialogue of Cultures” project and co-edited (with Eugene Matusov, professor at the University of Delaware) three issues of Journal of Russian and Eastern European Psychology (2009, 2010) dedicated to the “School of Dialogue of Cultures.”
Author and editor of articles and collections on dialogue and conflict resolution, with publications in Ukraine, Russia, the U.S., the UK, and Denmark.
Currently focused on the formation of nations and the history of ideas.

In an open conversation, we will discuss the social phenomenon of BLM. The events related to the BLM movement in the United States sparked heated debates in many countries—from the U.S. itself to Russia. While in the U.S. there is a fairly stable association between conservatism and anti-BLM rhetoric, in Russia, as will be shown, the situation appears at the very least strange—many so-called “liberals” speak quite harshly about the movement and its goals. Based on his research and activist experience, Dmitry Dubrovsky will try to show why BLM has become a surprising mirror for those in Russia who consider themselves progressives and liberals. And we’ll ask Dmitry all our questions about this complex topic.

Dmitry Dubrovsky is a visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University, a researcher at the Academic Freedom Lab at Central European University in Vienna, and a staff member at the Center for Independent Social Research. He is an author, publicist, and expert in social affairs.

Every day, machines and programs achieve more astounding breakthroughs. They draw beautifully, write competently, translate, analyze, communicate—and seemingly even ... think. Does this mean humanity has won its greatest battle—against itself—and created an improved version of the human? Or do machines still systematically lack something? Emotions, a body, a moral sense, or perhaps the very understanding of what it means to be human?
Regardless, we all want to know what skills a modern person needs to develop so as not to be replaced by a machine or mistaken for one. That’s what we’ll talk about.

Diana Gasparyan — PhD (Staffordshire University, UK), Candidate of Philosophical Sciences (Moscow State University), a Fulbright Scholar, and the author of six monographs, including a book on Merab Mamardashvili published in the U.S., and the Russian reader favorite Introduction to Non-Classical Philosophy.
She has published over a hundred academic articles, delivered lectures for a wide range of media projects—podcasts, radio, TV programs, science shows, online events, and livestreams.

The main character of our upcoming meeting will be the Absurd, which claims that life has no meaning, that humans are a mistake of evolution, that there is and never was a God, and that life is full of suffering—and maybe it’s time to question whether it’s worth the effort at all.
A terrifying theme, but quite timely. Many values have crumbled, many landmarks lost, and the Absurd is gaining trust. But we must also consider the powerful arguments against the Absurd that true philosophy offers. We’ll hold a “face-to-face confrontation” at our meeting—to find out “who holds the better hand” and whether the Absurd has any right to lay claim to our lives.

Sofia Danko — Candidate of Philosophical Sciences (defended at Moscow State University in 2003), specializes in logic, ethics, and metaphysics. She is a renowned Russian-speaking expert on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the author of the book Subjectivity Without a Subject, or the Disappearing ‘I’.
She has published extensively in Russian and international academic journals and on educational platforms, taught for many years at top Russian universities (RSUH, HSE), regularly won “Best Lecturer” awards, and mentored students to victories in research competitions. She frequently gives public lectures on various online platforms and is currently preparing an exclusive study on one of the most enigmatic books in human history—Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.