Our Dear Friends in Moscow or What Happened to Moscow’s Public Intellectuals in Putin’s Russia?

In their new book, Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation (PublicAffairs, 2025), investigative journalists Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov tell the gripping story of a group of young reporters, who came of age in the years leading to the rise of Vladimir Putin. The book is about the choices that that their friends and colleagues in Moscow ended up making––to resist or to compromise, to go into exile or to stay––and the cost that these decisions entailed. This is a novel-like tale of broken dreams and unfulfilled promises, but also of courage and moral integrity in the most difficult circumstances.

In conversation with Mirjana Tomic, Borogan and Soldatov will discuss their book and then take questions from the audience.

Andrei Soldatov is a Russian investigative journalist in exile. He has been covering security services and terrorism issues since 1999 and is co-founder and editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog that monitors the activities of the Russian secret services. He is co-author, with Irina Borogan, of The New Nobility (PublicAffairs, 2010), The Red Web (PublicAffairs, 2015), and The Compatriots (PublicAffairs, 2019). Soldatov has been on Russia’s wanted list since 2022 and now lives in London.

Irina Borogan is a Russian investigative journalist in exile. In the early 2000s she reported on a number of terrorist attacks in Russia, including the hostage crises in Moscow and Beslan. In 1999 Borogan covered the NATO bombing in Yugoslavia, and in 2006 she covered the Lebanon War and tensions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Borogan later chronicled the Kremlin’s campaign to take control of civil society and strengthen the government’s security powers under the pretext of fighting extremism. She is co-author, with Andrei Soldatov, of The New Nobility (PublicAffairs, 2010), The Red Web (PublicAffairs, 2015), and The Compatriots (PublicAffairs, 2019). She lives in London.

Vikram Rajan is a concert pianist who has won a number of prestigious international prizes, most recently the second prize in the Grand Prix category of the Music Online Competition in France. He has performed in Austria, the USA, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and France.