Pushkin House

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Pushkin House

An independent cultural centre with a programme of events, exhibitions and community initiatives.

Pushkin House is a Registered Charity owned and run by the Pushkin House Trust. We support and promote the diversity of Russian culture in London and beyond. Pushkin House was established to serve as a home for Russian culture in all its forms. Providing a forum for Anglo-Russian cultural exchange, education and information about Russian art, film, literature, music and history, we offer a unique

resource for individuals and institutions alike. In pursuit of these aims, Pushkin House has developed a lively and varied cultural programme of lectures, workshops, talks, exhibitions, films, musical concerts and readings. As of 2021, the House also has its own bookshop dedicated to Russian culture. Besides its own events, Pushkin House welcomes and encourages collaboration with other organisations and groups dedicated to Russian culture.

04/06/2026

Coming up in July | Unpeel: Sharing Fruit as Home-Making, with Ananya Jain 🍏
7 July 2026, 7–9 pm.

When was the last time you shared fruit with someone?

Across cultures, peeling, cutting, and sharing fruit is a sign of time taken, a way of saying ‘I care’: a simple yet intimate gesture that facilitates connection. It’s almost as if by peeling the layers, one is offering and revealing a part of themselves.

This workshop invites participants to gather together and reflect on everyday fruit rituals: how picking, eating and sharing fruit allows for the home to be carried, reconstructed, and preserved.

The evening will begin with a guided reflection to activate memories of food and home through a range of interactive creative prompts. This reflective session will give way to food play, and we will build our own edible fruit sculptures. Towards the end, we will gather around to eat and talk about our creations. You are welcome to bring along any specific fruit you’d like, but plenty will be on offer to choose from.

This workshop is part of ‘Under Construction’, a monthly series curated by artist and PhD researcher Alisa Oleva .

04/06/2026

We’re delighted to share our June Book of the Month: “Alphabet Soup: The Translingual Sayings of Emma and Eva as Recorded by Their Father” by Eugene Ostashevsky (Tamizdat Project & Rab-Rab Press, April 2026).

“Alphabet Soup” collects the sayings of Ostashevsky’s two daughters from toddlers to teenagers, as their family moves from New York to Berlin. The girls communicate in a witty and colourful language of their own, effortlessly mixing words of different origins.

The book will resonate with anyone who has learned another language, lived a family life in multiple languages, or simply been entertained by the things children say.

“Alphabet Soup” is thought-provoking on a literary and linguistic level. It raises questions about the construction of languages, self-expression and cognitive development, weaving in intertextual references from ancient philosophy to Futurist poetry.

It is a very funny, personal book – a record of the everyday, of desserts, dinosaurs and untidy bedrooms. At its centre is a sense of playfulness, illuminated by the girls’ “pyrotechnic” punning which reaches another level when moving across languages.

It is a very funny, personal book – a record of the everyday, of desserts, dinosaurs and untidy bedrooms. At its centre is a sense of playfulness, illuminated by the girls’ “pyrotechnic” punning, which reaches another level when moving across languages.

Get 15% off the book till the end of June via the link in our bio.

02/06/2026

Join us for an evening with Eugene Ostashevsky, a writer, poet and translator known for his ingenious play with language, who engages themes of migration, identity, and personal and collective histories through his translingual writing.

In conversation with Yasha Klots and Robert Chandler, Ostashevsky will present his latest book – 'Alphabet Soup' (Tamizdat Project & Rab-Rab Press, 2026), which collects the sayings of his two multilingual daughters as their Turkish-German-Russian-American family moves from New York to Berlin – alongside readings from his earlier poetry collection 'The Feeling Sonnets' (Carcanet Press, 2022), which explores the effects of living in a non-native language on emotions, parenting, and identity.

Ostashevsky asks: Does who we are determine the way we speak, or is it the other way around? What stories and histories do different languages carry? What creativity and poetry can be found in the unstructured space between languages – and what emerges when languages collide?

01/06/2026

June events at Pushkin House 🌿

This month’s highlights include Zinovy Zinik in conversation with Andrei Zorin on 'The Mushroom Picker, a discussion with Charlie Walker and Joe Luc Barnes, a writing workshop with Elaine ML Tam, and an evening with Eugene Ostashevsky.

Check out the link in our bio to explore the full calendar and book your tickets.

See you there soon!

29/05/2026

Coming up in June | Libris with Liberov. Russians in England
30 June 2026, 6:30–8 pm

❗Please note that this event will be held in Russian.

We are delighted to announce the next iteration of “Libris with Lberov”. This time, Roma turns to the writers, artists, musicians and cultural figures of the past who found themselves bound to England in one way or another. Some arrived in exile, some in search of freedom, some by accident of history – but all discovered in this country a strange and compelling new homeland. Many devoted their works to its remarkable capital, where feeling like an outsider may seem the most natural thing of all.

🔗 Book your tickets via the link in bio

28/05/2026

We are very excited to announce six books shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2026!

This year’s titles, selected by five distinguished jurors, offer an insight into human rights in Chechnya, paradoxes and patterns that shaped Russian society, the life of Boris Nemtsov, the ideology of late Putinism, AIDS in the USSR, and the cultural and environmental history of forests.

The 2026 shortlisted titles are:
— ‘AIDS in Soviet Russia: A Story of Deception, Despair and Hope’ by Rustam Alexander
— ‘Please Live: The Chechen Wars, My Mother and Me’ by Lana Estemirova
— ‘The Successor: Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Putin and the Decline of Modern Russia’ by Mikhail Fishman
— ‘The Closing of the Russian Mind: How Putin’s Ideology Took the Nation Hostage’ by Andrei Kolesnikov
— ‘Russian Pendulum: Paradoxes, Practices and Patterns’ by Alena Ledeneva
— ‘The Oak and the Larch: A Forest History of Russia and Its Empires’ by Sophie Pinkham

The £10,000 prize will be awarded to the winner by the jury during the Award. We will hold the ceremony this September and will share the final date during the summer months.

🖇 Head to the link in bio to browse the shortlisted collection.

27/05/2026

Coming up in June | Alphabet Soup: Life Across Languages. An Evening with Eugene Ostashevsky
25 June 2026, 6:30–8 pm

We are delighted to announce an evening with Eugene Ostashevsky, a writer, poet and translator known for his ingenious play with language, who engages themes of migration, identity, and personal and collective histories through his translingual writing. In conversation with Yasha Klots and Robert Chandler, Ostashevsky will present his latest book – “Alphabet Soup: The Translingual Sayings of Emma and Eva as Recorded by Their Father”, alongside readings from his earlier poetry collection “The Feeling Sonnets”.

Both books negotiate the layers of language and culture. They unpick etymologies, unform and reform words and sentences, morphing meanings. They lay bare the building blocks of a language – and of learning a language. Ostashevsky asks: Does who we are determine the way we speak, or is it the other way around? What stories and histories do different languages carry? What creativity and poetry can be found in the unstructured space between languages – and what emerges when languages collide?

🔗 Book your tickets via the link in bio

26/05/2026

As our event with Miranda Seymour .miranda and Catherine Merridale is happening this Thursday, we wanted to share some fascinating archival photos of Vera Gedroits, along with a few brilliant review excerpts for ‘I, Vera: The Many Lives of Vera Gedroits, a Radical Princess’, published in The Times and The Spectator.

Don’t miss out on learning the true story of the world’s first female professor of surgery, a writer, and a radical princess.

Images 1-2: Romanov Family Album, Yale University.

🔗 Book your tickets via the link in bio.

21/05/2026

We are very much looking forward to welcoming travel writer Charlie Walker to Pushkin House on 16 June for a discussion with journalist Joe Luc Barnes about Charlie’s latest book ‘On Thin Ice’.

Co-hosted with the Great Britain-Russia Society, the evening will focus on Charlie’s 600-mile expedition along a frozen Siberian river. Alongside the physical realities of surviving the taiga, the discussion will explore what he heard from ordinary citizens in Russia’s Far East just as the 2022 invasion of Ukraine began.

🖇 Book your ticket via the link in bio.

20/05/2026

❗Please note that this event has been postponed and will now take place on 19 June.

The Oak and the Larch: A Forest History of Russia and its Empires. Sophie Pinkham in Conversation with Tom Parfitt 🌳

Friday 19 June, 6:30–8 pm

Please join Sophie Pinkham for a conversation with Tom Parfitt about "The Oak and the Larch: A Forest History of Russia and its Empires". Her fascinating book brings a new perspective to the histories, cultures and identities of the region, and explores how the forests have made – and resisted – Russia’s many empires.

The endless forest as a symbol of Russia is quite accurate; there are more trees in Russia than stars in our galaxy. Yet the Northern Eurasian forests have shaped a multiplicity of civilisations that date back far earlier than the Slavs. Throughout history, it has been a tool of empire, a means of resistance, and at other times a victim of colonial violence from the North Caucasus to Ukraine.

🎟️ Tickets and further details are available via the link in our bio.

Address

Pushkin House, 5A Bloomsbury Square
London
WC1A2TA

Website

http://www.pushkinhouse.org/

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