Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me.

Peredelkino is a legendary place, just a legend in the Russian literature because it was created as a writers' village in the 30s, and over the 20th century, most prominent Russian writers, poets, translators and musicians have lived here, so many names. Actually a lot of famous writers from across came to visit, including Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg who stayed here for a short while, as well as Anna Akhmatova. Of course, Peredelkino is most famous for Boris Pasternak, who wrote his famous novel ‘Doctor Zhivago’ here. It's a unique place in the world, because there are over 80 houses where writers used to live, and in the center of this village, there's an old residence, and we are trying to revive this residence.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me.

Peredelkino is a legendary place, just a legend in the Russian literature because it was created as a writers' village in the 30s, and over the 20th century, most prominent Russian writers, poets, translators and musicians have lived here, so many names. Actually a lot of famous writers from across came to visit, including Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg who stayed here for a short while, as well as Anna Akhmatova. Of course, Peredelkino is most famous for Boris Pasternak, who wrote his famous novel ‘Doctor Zhivago’ here. It's a unique place in the world, because there are over 80 houses where writers used to live, and in the center of this village, there's an old residence, and we are trying to revive this residence.

Our main goal is to recreate the historical residence and open it not only for writers and poets, but also for artists from all over Russia and all over the world - well, we hoped before. We provide residence space for artists to come here for short or long stays, for 21 days, and we give them an opportunity to work, to communicate, to meet each other, to talk about what interests them, bothers them about today or in their work, to share opinions. This is a space for connection, because there are quite a few artists residencies in Russia, but there are no literature residencies. This is actually one of the biggest ones in Russia right now. Over the last year, we had over 180 residents, and they all came from different parts of the world and different parts of Russia. What they said after they left the residency is that they were given this amazing opportunity to connect to other writers, which was very difficult for them before, so they formed new communities and became friends. I guess this is the most important thing in our job. This is our role – to connect these free thinkers and free spirits.

In the 1930s, Stalin thought it would be a good idea to collect them all together, so they could live in this village together, because it would be also very, very convenient to keep a close eye on them. Peredelkino became a golden cage. If you came here, if you got this amazing dacha, this amazing house with the big piece of land, you had to play by the rules. Still, many of the writers who came here and who lived here have paid a very big price, because the repressions started shortly after Peredelkino was founded. Many of the writers were taken away and never seen again. The others had to sign letters, calling their neighbors enemies of the state, so this whole writer society was divided. Still, even in these tragic times, people, the writers, still gathered together to read aloud some new material, to share their ideas. Some of the greatest texts, some of the greatest ideas were written in the 20th century here in Peredelkino. It was also like a safe space far away from the troubles of the world, even though every house was listened to and every room was bugged, and people were taken away constantly. But still, there was a certain amount of freedom here. That is the paradox of Peredelkino. The saddest thing is – I thought that these times would never ever be back, and now we're seeing these public letters with names of enemies of the state published again. These stories from the past become relevant again. I guess it's just time to revisit them and try to understand what happened, what to do now, how can we find a new path, so this history could never repeat itself.

It's quite a magical story, actually. I mean, it makes you think that nothing is coincidental, and sometimes you just have a fate, because I was just passing by Peredelkino, it was just a mistake, I just turned on the wrong exit on the road. Then suddenly, I found myself driving through a road and I thought for the first time in my life that wow, this is my home and I should stay here. I don't know what is this place, I've never been here, I've never seen anything around here, but I want to stay here forever. It was just like this strange idea that just locked in my head. I started to try to find out more about Peredelkino and I wished that I could live here. And only later I discovered what it is. It's impossible to find a house in Peredelkino because even still, it's a very popular and closed society. If you're not a writer, if you're not in the literature union, you can’t get a house here, even for rent. But an amazing thing happened, I spoke to the director of the Peredelkino village and suddenly she said you can have this house, one of the houses for one month. When I saw this house, I couldn't speak. I lost the ability to speak – it was so beautiful, in decay, and it was so strange and amazing. This house was inside a huge park, which was very dark, very, very dirty actually, and very strange buildings nearby, but I just took it. Then I found out that I was living inside the old Peredelkino residence, which was turned into a hostel for workers and for taxi drivers, which was in quite a horrible state. Since then I've tried to connect all the little pieces about Peredelkino, which are actually lost, because there are no archives, and try to talk to the neighbors, try to convince the community that something could be changed. Then suddenly something happened, and we formed a nonprofit organisation and found the funding, private funding, that changed the state. We cleaned the park and we cleaned the buildings and made some restorations and tried to keep everything we can and not to destroy the space more, tried to revive the spirit of it. The spirit of Peredelkino is absolutely amazing. When you come here, there's nothing like it. It's very energetic, and it's dark in many ways, because of the history Peredelkino has been going through, but it's so well filled with creative energy, I would say. So once you come here, you fall in love for your life, and that's what happened.

Well, at first, it was just me for the first year, I think, but then some people came along. We have quite a small team, but these are people who care about literature very much, and who have been working with libraries and bookshops, private bookshops, independent publishing houses, for all their lives. We only have like a handful of people, but each and every one of them thinks of Peredelkino as a home, as a unique opportunity and an obligation and an honour to work here, because with all this history we can learn and give to the new authors and to the young artists. It's a real privilege to work here.

No, as I said, it's like a handful of people.

Well, no. It is just a handful of people who had previous experience working in places connected to literature. Our residence director is Julia Vronskaya, who's been working on the Tolstoy Yasnaya Polyana site. We have Boris Kupriyanov, who is one of the independent publishers and owner of a literature bookshop, very well known in Russia, independent bookshop, Falanster. These are people who have been working with literature all their lives. Not a lot, the team is quite small.

It's about six people.

The thing is, when you see a space that made so many great names, and so many great people lived here, and so many wonderful texts were written here, when you see it in this kind of state that I saw it, it was like, heartbreaking, because it was almost destroyed. When you think of what this heritage could really mean and could bring to the people that come here again, the importance of telling the story of Peredelkino, of each and every one of the writers who lived here, the stories that they wrote, it was strange that it hasn't happened before. I guess I was lucky that I had the chance to work with this type of amazing legacy. This is just one of the most important literature spots in Russia.

I guess the most difficult part is right now. I mean, it wasn't difficult to persuade people that this is a space worth revisiting, worth reviving, and it wasn't difficult to persuade the investor that this was an amazing place. It wasn't difficult to bring new people in and bring the crowd in because it's such a lovely place that everybody just loves spending time here, people come to work, to write, to communicate. It wasn't difficult to start the residencies, because there are so many writers and poets and translators and artists who need this space to write, because literature is in a very bad shape right now in Russia, because the individual or independent publishing houses are closing down every day. Translators don't get paid or writers don't get paid. They need the space, they need this opportunity to keep on writing. But it is difficult right now, my heart is broken and my faith is shattered because of the monstrosity, the scale of evil that feels almost supernatural. We can't stop thinking, I can't stop thinking about the horrors that the Ukrainian nation is going through. Right now, here in Russia it is getting darker and darker, and it feels like it's not the darkest hour yet. The biggest challenge is how to keep our residency going, what questions should we ask ourselves right now and what should we talk about right now. We decided that we are going to keep on working, because it's very important to keep on adding the light, because it feels like the world is dividing, it is very black and white around us, like it's a dark place and we are something that's connected to light. And knowledge and culture is obviously connecting us to light. The difficult thing and difficult decisions that we're making right now is what precise questions should we ask ourselves right now? What should we really focus on? It's quite difficult.

Well, we had a program, a public program ready for the summer, and we had to change it completely, of course, because we were thinking about big topics, philosophical questions. Now it seems it's very important to revisit the stories of the past, revisit the history of Peredelkino, revisit the works that were written here, and to share these lessons of history and the cultural voices from the past, and try to make a path to repentance.

What we can see obviously from the past, from the written words, from the documents, from the novels, from the poems, is that culture is a great healer and a mediator and a tutor. That's why it's very important to revisit all these lessons, historical lessons and the thoughts that were shared by writers who went through kind of the same thing, but in a mirrored way, but still, they had to face trauma, historical trauma, personal trauma. And try to reflect on that and try to understand how it's possible to build new paths towards the future here in Peredelkino, in Russia, in our culture, try to keep it actually, try to save the truth or decency. As for international connections, I understand that today it's a very emotional response that the culture has been canceled. I understand that, I mean, my emotional response is almost the same because I wake up every day, I think every day about what's happening in Ukraine and the level of horror, I can’t even understand what the people are going through, it's horrible. But I also understand that it's so important to keep these cultural connections, even though it's convenient to paint a big picture of something massively evil, but the thing is that our nation is divided also right now. A lot of people are struggling to get information and true voices. So culture as a healer, as a connector, as a mediator, as a tutor, it should be there for these people too. It's important to maintain these horizontal connections. They become more important than ever because the vertical connections are obviously failing.

Well, we hope we can provide a safe space. I think that's the most important part of our job, create a safe space where you can come and reflect and work on your thoughts. We provide the comfort, we provide the food, I think it's going to be important in the coming months. We provide the company, everything you need. We will try to work out a program to support independent publishers. There are a lot of questions of what will happen to the publishers in Russia, there are a lot of questions about what will happen to the cultural audience, to the cultural workers, photographers, for example, or people who make movies, write scripts, because a lot of it was based on cultural exchange, of course. I think our goal is to support these people by giving them the space, the time, and the hand in every way we can, to connect them to each other, so that maybe they can form these new communities. I think that forming horizontal communities is just so important right now. As for programming, as I said, we're going to think about what's most important right now, and we're still deciding. It seems it's very important to work with nonprofit organisations, because they took quite a bad hit. It seems it's important to promote new works in literature and translation, because the media also took quite a big hit. I think we're going to focus on these community events for different types of communities, so that people could come together. I think that's the most important part that Peredelkino could play. And as for exhibitions and talks, of course we're going to have them. We still have a big exhibition opened in the historical residence building, which is called “The Conditions of Material Independence”, and it's about the history of Peredelkino, which was very controversial, and about the inner freedom and the ability to write and speak even under constant pressure. I think that's also a very important part of our work.

Well, actually, I used to be a journalist, I grew up in a family where everyone was a journalist, but even in the 90s it seemed like a very, very strange place to work in, a lot of lies back then also. I became an artist, and then I started working in these wonderful cultural institutions. I worked for the Garage Museum when it just opened, and then I was the creative director of Gorky Park, and did exactly the same thing, actually, we revived the heritage of Gorky Park, the biggest park in Moscow. It had a lot of wonderful programs, all aimed at making people participate in events, because making people talk. It was quite a difficult task, because most of the people aren't used to participating, and are used to just watching. That's what we tried to do in Gorky Park, and we revived the whole park with a lot of wonderful cultural spots. Then I used to work for New Holland Island, which also is just a place with an amazing history. I also did something there. Then I worked for the Yeltsin Center for a short while, thinking about the programs they should have there. Most of my work was connected to looking into the past and trying to understand what can we change in this space to renovate it, to revive it, and cherishing the history is one of my strongest motivations.

I'm really glad I worked on Gorky Park, because it used to be a very dark park where crime was happening every day, people were afraid to go there. There were all these old attractions that were broken, the whole park was just like a pile of garbage. I joined the team shortly after Gorky Park started changing. I'm really proud of the public program we did here because a lot of artists could come and make a lot of public art projects, a lot of talks, a lot of just interesting, popular events, but I hope they changed some people. I am proud of that one, it was for a short while, because the time started changing, but still, it was quite a wonderful time. The Moscow scene just completely changed after Gorky Park, we could see restaurants and food points opening up, a lot of independent businesses opened up because the atmosphere changed so much, and it was such a wonderful place for creative people to meet.

A very good example of gentrification and all the societies that came together, all the little communities that started working together, that's exactly what happened.

As I said before, I just keep on thinking about how supernatural this all feels and how it is so important to choose not to make the world a darker place, but to add light in every way you can. I'll be trying to do that by sharing the stories from the past and sharing everything we can, and I hope that everyone makes a choice to add to light and not to destroy something, and to keep on connecting. I think that's just so important right now, because if we don't connect, the world becomes darker and darker here and everywhere.

Well, building an institution doesn't happen overnight. It takes a lot of steps. I don't think the funding, I mean, of course it does matter, of course it matters, without funding nothing is possible. I'm really grateful that we have this nonprofit organisation. But I think that the real resource is the interest of people, people who come, who want to change something, that's the most important thing. Sometimes it doesn't even require money, it just requires ideas and your time and your willingness to share, to create something better for tomorrow. As for Peredelkino, this is a space that could grow internationally, it could have grown internationally, and I hope it will, I hope that we could host writers and poets and translators and artists and people who work with culture from all over the world. To me, it's not about money, it's just about faith in this. It's about everyday work.

Yes, we have a website, we have an Instagram page (peredelkino_dt), and we have a Facebook page. The thing is that as we speak, Meta is probably going to be prohibited in Russia forever. The page is going to stay there, I'm not sure we're going to be able to update it. But our website is still on, it's https://pro-peredelkino.org/en, and we are working on translating it to English and we'll have a lot of information about the heritage and the history of Peredelkino there very soon.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.