Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruins of Empire - Shortlisted for the Pushkin House Prize 2025

by Howard Amos

'A different level of insight to anything I've read for a long time about Russia.' - Sophy Roberts, author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia

'Exquisitely observed.. Full of empathy, Amos refuses easy stereotypes.' - Tom Parfitt, author of High Caucasus

'Truly kaleidoscopic and unique in its reach, this is a superbly written and unusual book' - Caroline Eden, author of Cold Kitchen

Returning to an overlooked region on the edge of Russia, Howard Amos sets out on a quest to understand the country he once called home.

On Russia's European borderlands, people live their lives among the ruins of successive empires. Pskov, an old Slavic land of forgotten stories and faded waysides, has weathered the tides of history. Once a thriving nexus of trade and cultural exchange, today it is one of the poorest and most rapidly depopulating places of this vast nation. To understand the darkness that has captured Russia, Howard Amos journeys through a landscape of small towns, re-wilding fields and dilapidated churches.

This is a lyrical portrait of Russia where it meets NATO and the EU – a place of frontiers and boundaries that reveals unfamiliar and uncomfortable truths. In a country where history has been erased, manipulated and marginalised, the voices Howard Amos spotlights are a powerful antidote against forgetting.

From the last inhabitants of a dying village to the long-term residents of a psychiatric hospital and a museum curator fighting local opposition to chronicle Pskov's forgotten Jewish heritage, Howard Amos uncovers compelling stories that are shaped by violence, tragedy and loss. He also encounters some of the powerful men who have loomed over Pskov leaving a troubling legacy in their wake, from far-right politicians to Putin's personal priest.

Genres: Russia, Politics, Nonfiction, History

320 pages, Hardcover

First published February 27, 2025

Reviews

[Dmitry · Rating 2 out of 5]

(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)

Всё кончится вот-вот — там делов на три дня:
По плану всё идёт, скоро встретит родня
Героя в орденах, будет пир на весь двор:
Там тир, а не война — всё кончится вот-вот

Довольно неожиданно видеть в 2025 году такую книгу. Впрочем, такие книги, в которых рассказываются жизни простых людей, издавались на протяжении очень долгого времени, т.к. предлагают другой взгляд на страну, а не тот, что люди часто видят в новостях. Сегодня, когда Россия и россияне часто ассоциируются с действием Путина и российской армии, такие книги предлагают альтернативную точку зрения на Россию и русских. Впрочем, совсем уйти от новостной реальности тоже невозможно из-за чего то тут, то там в книге появляется эхо российско-украинской войны. Но не стоит от этой книги ждать каких-то пояснений российско-украинского конфликта, ибо книга всё же об обычных гражданах России, а не о Путине или политической российской элите.

Я не являюсь поклонником ни таких книг, ни самого жанра описания жизни и быта обычных людей, поэтому лично мне было довольно скучно читать эту книгу. Ну, да, люди, живущие в России очень разные, настолько разные, что сначала они кажутся разумными и адекватными, а потом оказываются ярыми сторонниками Путина. Да, такой вот парадокс.

The last time I saw Nina and Nikolai was after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and I was nervous to find out what they thought of the war. They are both people for whom I have a great deal of affection, and who have been unfailingly kind to me over many years. I desperately hoped they might harbour some doubts. But I also knew they were Putin admirers, and that one of their few daily links with the outside world was state-owned television. Sure enough, they both turned out to be cheerleaders for the Russian cause.
‘We watch it every day. At 8 o’clock,’ said Nina, referring to the war coverage as if it was a tennis match. When Nikolai learnt how to use the internet several years ago, it seemed possible he might come across something that would contradict what the television beams into their home. But it never happened.

Однако проблема тут в том, что путинский режим построил совершенную машину пропаганды, которая работает эффективно не только внутри самой России, но и за её пределами. Если многие европейцы и американцы всё чаще и чаще соглашаются с путинскими нарративами, то, что можно ожидать от российских пенсионеров, которые никакого другого источника СМИ не имеют кроме как телевидения? А как же газеты и журналы? При Путине газеты и журналы так же были уничтожены, за исключением «Новой Газеты», но эту газету было не так легко купить за пределами крупных городов. Ну и в довершении всего этого в России всегда существовала слабая оппозиция, которая не умела и не умеет разговаривать с простым народом. К сожалению, единственный человек, который находил правильные слова для простых людей, живущих не только в Москве и Санкт-Петербурге, был Алексей Навальный. Вся остальная российская оппозиция ведёт себя слишком элитарно и не понимает или даже не хочет понимать простой народ следствием чего является отсутствие поддержки оппозиции со стороны простого народа. Но вернёмся к книге.

Вторая история из этой книги так же показывает очень…неоднозначного человека. Это история человека, который занимается поисками немецких захоронений на территории России, т.е. поиском тел немецких солдат Второй Мировой войны. Может показаться, что именно такой человек должен знать истинную цену любой войны, но нет…

Naively, I assumed the nature of his work meant he would be deeply suspicious of tub-thumping patriotism, but, as the evening wore on, it became clear that his nationalism ran very deep. Apropos of nothing, he brought up his aversion to LGBT activism. ‘I don’t understand it. I don’t need it. They say “I owe it”. But I don’t owe anyone anything,’ he said in a lengthy digression on how he believed Russians were patronized by Westerners. Despite working for a foreign organization, and interacting regularly with foreigners, he was fiercely resentful of the West and what he saw as the imposition of Western values and ideas on Russia and Russians.
If necessary, Sergei told me, Russia would be ready to repeat the fire and blood of World War II. Despite his first-hand experience of the horrors of war, when fighting began in Ukraine in 2014, he went to his local recruiting office to remind them he was available for mobilization. ‘I haven’t lost any of my skills. I can drive anything, from a bicycle to a tank. I can shoot anything from a catapult to a mortar,’ he said. ‘If someone else wants to invade, have at it! We’ll be waiting.’
My meeting with Sergei took place six months before the full-scale invsion of Ukraine, but we stayed in touch. It came as no surprise when he turned out to be an enthusiastic supporter of the Russian cause. In one email, he said it was hard to imagine how the Volksbund could continue its work when Russian soldiers were fighting against German-made tanks in Ukraine. He concluded with the line: ‘I am a Russian officer and my position is simple. We beat them in the past, we are beating them now and will beat them in the future.’

В этом смысле книга представляет интерес, да. Однако мне не очень интересно читать о таких людях, просто потому, что не они определяют политику страны, а элиты. К тому же трудно винить простой народ, что его смогли одурачить, когда образованные и хорошо понимающие что к чему люди, повторяют за Путиным всё то, что сегодня он говорит об Украине. Я говорю, к примеру, о таком человеке как Андрей Кончаловский или Владимир Позднер или Евгений Миронов или Гарик Сукачёв и многие другие представители российской элиты, т.е. люди которые прекрасно понимают, что происходит сегодня между Россией и Украиной. Так вот, эти люди имеют альтернативные источники получения информации, в отличие от россиян, живущих в глубинках и не имеющих никаких других СМИ кроме телевизора. Я хочу напомнить, что именно при Путине все телевизионные каналы стали абсолютно лояльными нынешнему режиму и ни на одном из них не допускается даже малейшая критика нынешнего российского руководства. Кто в этом виноват? Кто довёл страну до этого? Два пенсионера, которые полжизни прожили в деревне или Андрей Кончаловский и Владимир Порзднер (а возможно даже и Игорь Липсиц), которые все эти годы молчали об авторитарных практиках Путина? Впрочем, даже сегодня эти два деятеля молчат, давая тем самым пример, что всё нормально, так и должно быть.

Не все главы, так или иначе, касаются сегодняшнего военного конфликта между РФ и Украиной, и дальнейшие главы рассказывают о более мирных вещах – жизни в детдоме, музее А.С. Пушкина "Михайловское" (Pushkin Hills) и пр. Однако лично я остановился на середине книги, т.к. понял суть книги и что это просто не мой тип литературы.


It is quite unexpected to see such a book in 2025. However, such books, which tell the lives of ordinary people, have been published for a very long time, as they offer a different view of the country than what people often see in the news. Today, when Russia and Russians are often associated with the actions of Putin and the Russian army, such books offer an alternative perspective on Russia and Russians. However, it is also impossible to escape from the news reality, because of which echoes of the Russian-Ukrainian war appear here and there in the book. But, one should not expect any explanations of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict from this book because the book is about ordinary Russian citizens, not about Putin or the Russian political elite.

I am not a fan of such books, nor of the genre of describing the life and everyday life of ordinary people, so personally I was quite bored reading this book. Well, yes, people living in Russia are very different, so different that at first they seem reasonable and adequate, but then they turn out to be ardent supporters of Putin. Yes, it's such a paradox.

The last time I saw Nina and Nikolai was after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and I was nervous to find out what they thought of the war. They are both people for whom I have a great deal of affection, and who have been unfailingly kind to me over many years. I desperately hoped they might harbour some doubts. But I also knew they were Putin admirers, and that one of their few daily links with the outside world was state-owned television. Sure enough, they both turned out to be cheerleaders for the Russian cause.
‘We watch it every day. At 8 o’clock,’ said Nina, referring to the war coverage as if it was a tennis match. When Nikolai learnt how to use the internet several years ago, it seemed possible he might come across something that would contradict what the television beams into their home. But it never happened.

The problem here, however, is that Putin's regime has built a perfect propaganda machine that works effectively not only inside Russia itself, but also outside of it. If many Europeans and Americans increasingly agree with Putin's narratives, what can we expect from Russian pensioners, who have no other source of media except television? What about newspapers and magazines? Under Putin, newspapers and magazines have been similarly decimated, except for Novaya Gazeta, but that paper was not so easy to buy outside of major cities. And to top it all off, Russia has always had a weak opposition, which did not and does not know how to talk to ordinary people. Unfortunately, the only person who found the right words for ordinary people living not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg was Alexei Navalny. All the rest of the Russian opposition behaves too elitist and does not understand or even does not want to understand the common people, the consequence of which is the lack of support for the opposition from the common people. But let's get back to the book.

The second story in this book similarly shows a very... ambivalent man. This is the story of a man who is involved in the search for German graves in Russia, i.e., the search for the bodies of German soldiers of World War II. It might seem that this is the kind of person who should know the true cost of any war, but no....

Naively, I assumed the nature of his work meant he would be deeply suspicious of tub-thumping patriotism, but, as the evening wore on, it became clear that his nationalism ran very deep. Apropos of nothing, he brought up his aversion to LGBT activism. ‘I don’t understand it. I don’t need it. They say “I owe it”. But I don’t owe anyone anything,’ he said in a lengthy digression on how he believed Russians were patronized by Westerners. Despite working for a foreign organization, and interacting regularly with foreigners, he was fiercely resentful of the West and what he saw as the imposition of Western values and ideas on Russia and Russians.
If necessary, Sergei told me, Russia would be ready to repeat the fire and blood of World War II. Despite his first-hand experience of the horrors of war, when fighting began in Ukraine in 2014, he went to his local recruiting office to remind them he was available for mobilization. ‘I haven’t lost any of my skills. I can drive anything, from a bicycle to a tank. I can shoot anything from a catapult to a mortar,’ he said. ‘If someone else wants to invade, have at it! We’ll be waiting.’
My meeting with Sergei took place six months before the full-scale invsion of Ukraine, but we stayed in touch. It came as no surprise when he turned out to be an enthusiastic supporter of the Russian cause. In one email, he said it was hard to imagine how the Volksbund could continue its work when Russian soldiers were fighting against German-made tanks in Ukraine. He concluded with the line: ‘I am a Russian officer and my position is simple. We beat them in the past, we are beating them now and will beat them in the future.’

In that sense, the book is interesting, yes. However, I am not very interested in reading about such people, simply because they are not the ones who determine the country's policy, but the elites. Besides, it's hard to blame the common people for being fooled when educated and well-versed people repeat everything Putin says about Ukraine today. I am talking, for example, about such people as Andrei Konchalovsky or Vladimir Pozner or Yevgeny Mironov or Vladimir Mashkov or Garik Sukachov and many other representatives of the Russian elite, i.e., people who understand perfectly well what is happening today between Russia and Ukraine. So, these people have alternative sources of information, unlike Russians who live in the hinterlands and have no other media but the television. I would like to remind you that it was under Putin that all television channels became loyal to the current regime, and none of them allow even the slightest criticism of the current Russian leadership. Who is to blame for this? Who brought the country to this point? Two pensioners who lived half their lives in the countryside, or Andrei Konchalovsky and Vladimir Pozner (and perhaps even Igor Lipsits), who kept silent all these years about Putin's authoritarian practices? Even today, however, these two figures remain silent, thereby giving the example that everything is normal and that this is the way it should be.

Not all the chapters, one way or another, deal with the current military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and further chapters tell about more peaceful things - life in an orphanage, A.S. Pushkin's museum “Mikhailovskoye” (Pushkin Hills), and so on. However, I stopped in the middle of the book, as I realized the essence of the book and that this is just not my type of literature.

[Selena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinerend. Leest als een trein.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mooi boek. De schrijver, die in lang in Rusland gewerkt en gewoond heeft en inmiddels zoals zovelen het land verlaten heeft, schrijft over de Pskov regio of oblast, een gebied dat grenst aan Estland, Litouwen en Belarus. Aan de hand van de lotgevallen van allerlei mensen schetst Amos een indringend beeld van de uiterst moeilijke omstandigheden waarin ook deze Russen moesten leven gedurende de tweede wereldoorlog, tijdens de periode van de Sovjet Unie en vooral ook vlak na de val van het Sovjetrijk. Wat een ellende betekende de plotselinge overgang naar een totaal 'vrije' markteconomie voor de gewone Russen in dit gebied (en in heel Rusland ).

[Gergely · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful contemporary account of the Pskov region of Russia where the author spent so much of his time in Russia. The book covered the institutions (including an orphanage he volunteered at over many years, the orthodox church and local politics), and the lives lived within, to help build a bigger picture of how people survive, occasionally thrive and often struggle in modern Russia.

The author's voice throughout is considered, sympathetic but also honest.

For anyone who wants to understand more about the lives of Russians today, I'd highly recommend this book.

[Jack Callaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the personal accounts from a small region that has had such a cultural impact in Russia. The personality of the Russian people has always fascinated me and these collection of tales further strengthens that curiosity.

I enjoyed Howard’s writing and many of the subjects discussed could have been influenced by a biased narrative but this was not the case.

Psykov is now on my travel bucket list once the tension eases.

[Rob Sedgwick]

This is a series of interviews with people from the Psykov region of Russia. This area became a border with the West following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It's suffering from massive depopulation, the collapse of traditional industries and general decline. It sounds like a Putin stronghold. Most of the people interviewed were relatively elderly; some of the material seems to date from some time ago. The author is unable to live in Russia anymore. It's a very readable account.

[Hubert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the book as it was recommended by Derek Sauer as a must read if you want to learn about the real Russia.

The book reads very smoothly. Also because each chapter is a separate story about 1 or more persons.

It definitely helps you to understand Russians better.

[Mo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very different look at life in Russia, real lives with stories that can't fail to touch the reader.

A recommended read.