Volga Blues

Winner of the Estense PrizeA risky undercover reporting trip along Russias great mother-river, the Volga, reveals the tortuous history and frightening current fantasies of a nation.Since the invasion of Ukraine and ban on foreign reporters, Russia seems to have sunk into an even deeper shadow than in the darkest times of the Soviet Union. Only by presenting himself as an historian was Italian journalist Marzio G. Mian able to penetrate the Russian heartland, leading to his groundbreaking cover story for Harpers Magazine, Behind the New Iron Curtain.In Volga Blues, Russian history and literature inform every step of Mians revealing and perilous journey along Russias most culturally significant river, the fulcrum of its history, the mother. Along with Alessandro Cosmelli, his photographer; Vlad, their translator and fixer; and Katya, Vlads girlfriend, Mian manages to gather firsthand accounts from ordinary Russians. They discuss not only the impact of the war, Western sanctions, and their countrys isolation, but how Russian culture has changed as a result. Stalin is back in favor, Lenin has been downgraded as a Europeanized intellectual. Newly sophisticated local and seasonal cuisine is all the rage. People cite centuries-old grievances to explain their fear of Western invasion, as they claim a willingness to accept nuclear apocalypse to save Russian pride. Talking with contemporary Russian intellectuals, entrepreneurs, priests, widows, mercenaries, and pacifists, Mian discovers how little the West knows about Russia and Russians. Deeply distrustful of democracy, yearning for the ideological and spiritual purity of the Orthodox Church, betrayed by and fearful of the West, and reassured by the brutal, fragile, ancient dream of an imperial civilization, they make clear that the Cold War has not yet ended.In visceral prose, Mian takes us across the floodplains where the Russian Orthodox faith first took root, where the Soviet empire asserted itself, and where the neo-imperial project of Vladimir Putins post-Soviet autocracy is currently being consolidated. The result is a harrowing, haunting vision of todays great clash of civilizationsbetween Russia and the Westincluding a United States that at times seems uncannily similar.