A review by iakinney
I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country by Elena Kostyuchenko

5.0

It was very interesting to read her complex perspective on her own country and the view from a person who went to Ukraine documenting the war and being from Russia. She comes across in these pieces as someone critical of her country but who still loves the people within it. I think this is best read in conjunction with A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya by Anna Politkovskaya, who was an inspiration for the author and allows one to get a wider scope of critical journalism in Russia from the perspective of Russians (that is available in English). I also think Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich illuminates the Soviet nostalgia present in many of the people that Kostyuchenko interviews, and its a good book in its own right.