The author of widely acclaimed novels, Shishkin is admired as a refined stylist whose fiction engages Russian and European literary traditions and forges an equally expansive vision for the future of literature. Born January 18, 1961 in Moscow, Shishkin worked as a school teacher and journalist. His writing debut in 1993, the short story Calligraphy Lesson, was named Best Debut of the Year by the literary journal Znamya.

Dina Rubina is one of the most widely-read Russian authors alive today. She was born in 1953, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where she later studied music at the Tashkent Conservatory. At sixteen her first short story appeared in the journal Iunost’, which continued to publish her work until the end of the Soviet Union. Life in the colourful environment of Tashkent was not always easy: Rubina had to turn to writing for stage and screen and finally moved to Moscow in the mid-1980s.

5 - 11 January
The English National Ballet performs Rudolf Nureyev's original award-winning production of the passionate ballet set to Prokofiev's powerful score.

29 October - 7 November, Apollo Piccadilly
The 4th Russian Film starts this Friday, 29 October, featuring the best in new Russian film, documentaries and animation and opens with The Ugly Duckling, master animator Garry Bardin's sparky and affecting stop-motion animation with Orwellian overtones. All films are shown in Russian with English subtitles.

Monday 7 June, 7pm
Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre Courtauld Institute, Somerset House
Chaired by Elaine Feinstein
The Bolshevik Revolution produced a mass exodus of Russia’s aristocracy and educated bourgeoisie. In the years following 1917 many of Russia’s most talented writers, artists, composers, scientists, professionals,

We are as disappointed as you are that the ash cloud stopped our Russian authors from making it to the UK for our SLOVO festival. However, the festival has not been cancelled, merely postponed. We are working hard to bring the events to London at a later date, so keep a close eye on our website! In the meantime, Academia Rossica is delighted to support The East End Film Festival (22 April – Friday 30) in their focus on new Russian cinema.

The Debut Prize was instituted in 2000 by State Duma Deputy Andrei Skoch, creator of the humanitarian foundation Pokolenie (Generation). Skoch originally conceived of Pokolenie as a medical charity to help provincial Russian clinics, sick children and pensioners. The Debut, Pokolenie’s only cultural project to date, has become a prize of national renown. The Debut has a strict age limit: entrants may not be over the age of 25. Members of the Russian literary establishment were skeptical at first. They doubted that writers so young would have something to say to readers. Young writers might try their hand at poetry, they argued, but they didn’t have enough life experience to write a story or a novel. However, the Debut has shown that a person’s life experience at any age is complete in and of itself. What a person knows about the world at 20 has been forgotten by the time he is 30. What he could have written at 20 he will no longer write at 30. He will write something else. Strangely enough, most writers live without their first book: it remains in their minds, in drafts. The Debut inspires young Russian writers to complete that first book. The Debut prompts them to commit to literature their unique experience, what might be described as the shock of their first encounter with grown-up life. Not just their new existential status, but daily events. Suddenly a person is faced with bank applications, having to pay rent and buy insurance; no one will fill out the forms for him, no one will answer for him. And he suddenly feels horribly alone in the world. This sort of loneliness, like any other, has a huge creative potential. The Debut brings in the first literary harvest of the writing generation — and it does so every year. 2010 marks the first year of Debut’s international program. Funded by Pokolenie, the program aims to present the works of Debut finalists and winners to the foreign reader. Collections of these works will be translated and their authors will be sent to international book fairs and festivals. This year’s collection appears in English and Chinese. Future collections will be brought out in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and so on. Since the number of Debut finalists and winners is only increasing, as is their level and mastery, publication of their works in English will continue.

Leicester Square Theatre
9 & 16 March
£12/£10
‘A Sense of Delicacy’, one of Chekhov’s best comic stories, comes to the London stage, performed by the Romanian actor Mihai Arsene. Actor Mihai Arsene was born in Pitesti, Romania. He studied Performing Arts at the University of Craiova, where he graduated in 2001. Just before graduation, he was awarded The Best Actor Award for the role Mr. Bogoiu in "The Holiday Game" by Mihail Sebastian, which was part of the Student Actor Festival in Iasi, Romania.

Dina Rubina was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1953, studied music in the Tashkent Conservatory, moved to Moscow in the mid-1980s, and then to Israel in 1990. She returned to Russia for three years at the turn of the 21st century as Israel's cultural liaison, and now resides in a suburb of Jerusalem. Rubina is one of the most widely read Russian writers of today. Her recent novel, On the Sunny Side of the Street (Na solnechnoi storone ulitsy), won first place in Russia's Radio Booker Literary Award (2007), third place in the Big Book Literary Prize (2007), and was short-listed for the Russian Booker (2006). Her dozens of other books include the novels The Syndicate (Syndikat, 2004) and Here Comes the Messiah! (Vot idet Messiya!, 1996), and the collection On Upper Maslovka (Na Verkhnei Maslovke, 2001). Her newest novel is Leonardo's Handwriting (Pocherk Leonardo, 2008). Her work has won awards in Uzbekistan, Israel, and France, and has been translated into 12 languages. Her novel, Here Comes the Messiah!, is available in English translation by Daniel M. Jaffe, as are several of her shorter pieces.

7-8 February, 20.00; 9 February 19.00
Teathro Technis, 26 Crowndale Road
£10 (£7 conc)
Elizaveta Bam prefigures the atmosphere of Kafka’s short stories and Ionesco’s theatre of the absurd. It tells the story of a woman arrested for a murder not yet committed, mixing slapstick with pantomime and horror with humor. Written in 1929, the play was a harbinger to Stalin’s repressions that took the lives of 40 million people.

May 2008
Cannes, France
It seems that for Russian cinema, good things come in threes: the Russian film industry suitably showcased at the first ever Russian film pavilion; leading Russian production and distribution companies present their best creations at the International Marché du Film; and stunning triumphs for first-time feature film directors Sergei Dvortsevoy and Valeria Gai-Germanika!

by Vladimir Megre
Translated by John Woodsworth
The Ringing Cedars, 2008, pp. 227
"Anastasia", the first book of the Ringing Cedars Series, tells the story of entrepreneur Vladimir Megre's trade trip to the Siberian taiga in 1995, where he witnessed incredible spiritual phenomena connected with sacred 'ringing cedar' trees.

by Mikhail Ageyev
Translated by Hugh Aplin
Hesperus, 2008, pp.180
A bizarre and deeply disturbing account of a young man's descent into addiction, this story brilliantly mirrors the tumultuous events of early 20th-century Russian history. Struggling with the confusion and insecurities that adolescence brings, Vadim seeks an outlet for his frustration.

by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Translated by Ignat Avsey
One World Classics, 2008, pp. 391
Oscar Wilde claimed that Humiliated and Insulted is not "at all inferior to the other great masterpieces" and Friedrich Nietzsche is said to have wept over it. Its construction is that of an intricate detective novel, and the reader is plunged into a world of moral degradation, childhood trauma and, above all, unrequited love and irreconcilable relationships.

by Lev Tolstoy
Translated by Kyril Zinovieff and Jenny Hughes
One World Classics, 2008, pp. 876
Considered to be Leo Tolstoy's most personal novel, Anna Karenina is a resonant story which scrutinizes fundamental moral and theological questions through the impassioned and tragic story of its eponymous heroine. Anna is desperately pursuing a good, "moral" life, standing for honesty and sincerity, passion drives her to adultery and this flies in the face of the morally corrupt Russian bourgeoisie.

by Mikhail Bulgakov
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
Penguin, 2007, pp.167
A Dead Man’s Memoir is a semi-autobiographical story about a writer who fails to sell his novel, then fails to commit suicide. When the writer’s play is taken up for production in a theater, literary success beckons, but he is not prepared to reckon with the grotesquely inflated egos of the actors, directors, and theater managers.

by Sergei Lukyanenko
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
William Heinemann of The Random House Group, 2008, pp. 394
While on holiday in Scotland, visiting a macabre tourist attraction, “The Dungeons of Edinburgh,” a young Russian tourist is murdered. As the police grapple with the fact that the cause of the young man’s death was a massive loss of blood, the Watches are immediately aware that there is a renegade vampire on the loose.

by Rafael Grugman
Translated by Geoffrey Carlson
Liberty Publishing House, 2008, pp.239
The scene is the twenty-third century. At the heart of the novel is a love story between a man and a woman who are forced to hide their feelings and pass as homosexuals. Nontraditional Love describes a homosexual world in which heterosexual marriages are forbidden. World history and the classics of world literature Tolstoy, Shakespeare... have been falsified in order to support the ideology of this opposite world.

by Various
Translated by Kirsten Lodge (poetry), Margo Shohl Rosen and Grigory Dashevsky (prose)
Dedalus Books, 2007, pp.343
The sensationalism and morbid pessimism that characterized French decadence in the late nineteenth century quickly attracted converts throughout Europe, including Russia. The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence: Perversity, Despair and Collapse brings together horrifying, dramatic and erotic short stories and poetry, most of which have never before been translated into English, by the most decadent Russian writers.

by Sergei Golitsyn
Translated by Nicholas Witter
Reportage Press, 2008, pp.335
The Golitsyns were one of Russia’s most powerful families until the revolution turned their world upside down and life became a battle to survive. Sergei Golitsyn was just eight-years old, his head full of stories about knights in shining armour, but the reality was a bowl of gruel for supper and panic when there was a knock at the door. Nich

by Victor Pelevin
Translated by Marina Wright
Published as part of the magazine ‘London Miscellany’ May 2007; pp.8
The first ever winner of the Russian Little Booker Prize, Victor Pelevin is one of the most prominent writers in Russian today. Since his debut, Pelevin's work continues to develop in adventurous ways. In his latest translated offering Akiko, a victim's obsession with an online porn site devolves into a losing pas de deux with a computer-generated concubine and her monkey Mao.

Russia, 2008, 93 min
Dir. Igor Voloshin
A touching story about love and betrayal, and ultimately about a friendship between Alissa and Val - two girls living in one city.

Russia, 2008, 104 min
Dir. Mikhail Kalatozishvili
A film created by the grandson of the great Mikhail Kalatozov, the only Russian director to ever win a Palme d’Or. 'Wild Field' tells the story of a young doctor called Dmitri who is sent to the Kazakh steppe.

Russia, 2007, 153 min
Dir. Nikita Mikhalkov
12 characters, 12 truths. A story of 12 jurors discussing a verdict to pass on an 18-year old Chechen boy whether he is guilty of the 1st degree murder of his step father, an officer of the Russian army.

To celebrate the national Russia Day, Rossica film club will screen some of the best cinematic declarations of love to the Russian capital.
14 June
6 pm – I Walk Through Moscow
8 pm – Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears

27 February to 4 April
£10 - £110 Royal Opera House
Swan Lake is one of the most loved of all classical ballets and one of the most popular in the Royal Ballet repertory. It has that magical combination of Tchaikovsky’s music, a compelling story of tragic romance and choreography that allows the very best dancers to show just how impressive they can be.

One of Russia’s leading historians of the 19th century, as well as being the Director of the State Archives of the Russian Federation, and he is the editor of Nicholas and Alexandra: Their Own Story – a historical biography of tsar Nicholas II’s family, murdered in July 1918. One of his principal concerns is to preserve and make available archives on the extensive gulag system and many other institutions of the former Soviet Union, and to assist the 6,000 researchers who annually visit the archives, in order to aid scholars to assess and reassess the past. He is editor of Anti-government Opposition During Khrushchev-Brezhnev Years (Yale University Press). His informal title is The Chief Keeper of Russian State Secrets.

Award-winning novelist, short story writer and journalist James Meek was born in London in 1962 and grew up in Dundee. We Are Now Beginning Our Descent is his fourth novel. His previous book, The People's Act of Love (2005), won the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, the SAC Book of the Year Award, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has been translated into more than twenty languages.

Tretyakov Gallery
This issue is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Tretyakov Gallery, Russia’s most famous art museum which contains the national collection of Russian art.

St Petersburg – 300
This special issue, with a foreword by Her Majesty The Queen, celebrates the Tercentenary of Russia’s imperial capital, known as the Venice of the North and one of the world’s most enigmatic cities – St Petersburg.

Revelations in Colour
Dionisy & KandinskyThis issue of ROSSICA is dedicated to two great Russian artists, Dionisy and Vasily Kandinsky who were divided by four centuries.

Revelations in Colour
Dionisy & KandinskyThis issue of ROSSICA is dedicated to two great Russian artists, Dionisy and Vasily Kandinsky who were divided by four centuries.