Volga Blues: A Journey into the Heart of Russia

Italian journalist Mian makes his English-language debut with a tense and captivating chronicle of his illicit travels through wartime Russia, when he evaded its ban on foreign press by posing as a historian. Alongside a photographer and two Russian “fixers,” Mian follows the Volga River from its source north of Moscow to the Caspian Sea. His interactions along the way offer unique glimpses into Russian society—he meets the widow of an enlisted Romani taxi driver who was killed in Donbas, the oligarch owner of an “agro-industrial business” that’s ramped up production to compensate for sanctions, a cadre of reggae-performing pacifists, and Wagner Group mercenaries doing karaoke. The author also provides deep dives into the region’s history that show how Putin has reinterpreted Russia’s past for his own ends, including valorizing Ivan the Terrible and Stalin to bolster popular support for the invasion of Ukraine. Through Mian’s eyes, Russia emerges as a paradoxical country in which the war is both ever present and a distant reality. Yet, harrowing evidence of the conflict bursts unexpectedly into view, as when Mian encounters a group of children from occupied Donbas “being given a crash course in Russification” (“Are they among the twenty thousand children Kyiv has declared stolen?” he wonders). It’s an unsettling yet illuminating journey into an isolated and precarious society. (Jan.)