RUSSIANIST

Today marks 15 years since Anna Politkovskaya’s murder, meaning the statute of limitations expires. Her killer is still at large. She wrote about human rights violation in Russia, specifically, in Chechnya, during the Chechen Wars.

Elena Kostyuchenko reported for Novaya from the front lines in Kiev, Odessa, and Mikolaiv over the last month. Her complete, uncensored work is available in translation on n+1.

Embroidered icons made by Ukranian women imprisoned in the Soviet gulags, by Olga (surname unknown), 1946, and Hanna Protskiv-Liven, 1949.

As Dr. Oksana Kis, scholar of Ukranian women in history, describes, “There was...a need for religious rituals, although this was strictly prohibited in the gulag. The women managed to make thin ropes from rye bread and little crosses from toothbrushes and embroider little icons on some scraps of cloth, to which they prayed as if it were a genuine church image. They conducted group prayers on Sundays and improvised liturgies on major feasts. The women themselves performed the liturgical roles of the priest and the deacon, which is absolutely ruled out for women in customary life. In those conditions, their need for the Divine Service was stronger than principles of the church canon.”

The women would make the embroideries for and present them to their friends, for whom the embroidered entreaties beg for freedom and mercy.

Natasha Rostova’s first ball -  Illustration for Leo Tolstoy’s novel ‘War and Peace.’ (1893)

Lev and Sofia Tolstoy. 1895.