‘Hostage diplomacy,’ public opinion, and Soviet feminism Five books about Russia Meduza’s editors enjoyed this year
The news out of Russia in 2025 has been overwhelmingly bleak. As Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nears its fifth year, the Kremlin has ramped up internet censorship, while courts have prosecuted a record number of people on treason and espionage charges. For readers trying to make sense of these developments, however, one small bright spot has been the range of new books published this year on Russia’s politics, people, and history. Below are five volumes we read, enjoyed, and reported on over the past 12 months.
‘Please Live: The Chechen Wars, My Mother and Me’ by Lana Estemirova
Growing up in Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s, Lana Estemirova knew that her mother, renowned human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, had a very important job. She often went to work with Natalia at the Memorial human rights group’s Grozny office, and overheard her conversations about the abuses sweeping the republic amid the Chechen Wars. Then, when Lana was 15 years old, her mother was kidnapped outside their apartment block and brutally murdered. In her new memoir, “Please Live: The Chechen Wars, My Mother and Me,” Lana tells the story of her childhood, and how her mother’s unwavering dedication to her work not only shaped their relationship but ultimately led to her death. In July, Meduza spoke to Lana Estemirova about commemorating her mother’s life and work, how Ramzan Kadyrov’s iron grip on power in Chechnya continues to destroy lives, and how she’s come to terms with the risks that come with fighting for the truth.
‘Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy’ by Julia Ioffe
In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly 20 years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow, only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up — doctors, engineers, scientists — seemed to have been replaced by women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to becoming a bastion of conservative Christian values? Ioffe sets out to answer this question and more in Motherland, a blend of memoir, historical analysis, and her own field reporting. She joined The Naked Pravda to discuss the book in October.
‘Everyday Politics in Russia: From Resentment to Resistance’ by Jeremy Morris
Jeremy Morris, a professor of global studies at Aarhus University in Denmark, is one of the only foreign social researchers to have carried out fieldwork in Russia since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine. In Everyday Politics in Russia, he draws on his decades of interactions with Russians from a diverse cross-section of society to explore ordinary people’s complex views about the war, the Putin regime, and the country’s political reality. In May, Morris joined The Naked Pravda to discuss the insights he’s drawn from his work and the challenges of assessing public opinion in today’s Russia.
‘Swap: A Secret History of the New Cold War’ by Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson
In August 2024, Western countries carried out the biggest prisoner swap with Russia in the country’s modern history. In exchange for a ragtag group of hackers and spies, and one high-profile FSB assassin, Vladimir Putin released 16 people from prison. Among those who went free were Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, former U.S. Marine Paula Whelan, Russian opposition politicians Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza, and veteran human rights activist Oleg Orlov. Leading up to the exchange, the details were kept strictly under wraps. But Wall Street Journal reporters Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson had the inside scoop all along. Their book Swap: A Secret History of the New Cold War, came out in August 2025. They spoke to Meduza in October about how the world entered a new age of “hostage diplomacy.”
‘My Russia: What I Saw Inside the Kremlin’ by Jill Dougherty
During her three-decade career as a correspondent for CNN, Jill Dougherty worked in over 50 countries. Her longest post was as CNN’s bureau chief in Moscow, where she covered the latter half of the Yeltsin presidency and the rise of Vladimir Putin. However, Dougherty’s interest in Russia began much earlier: in high school, when an emigre teacher changed the course of her life. That experience led her to study Russian in undergrad, including during multiple semesters at Leningrad State University, where she followed the then-ongoing Vietnam War and watched the moon landings. She recounts all of these experiences and more in My Russia: What I Saw Inside the Kremlin. Dougherty joined The Naked Pravda in April to discuss her book and her years of experience with Russia and the Soviet Union.