The phenomenon of the Soviet Jew is not quite perceptible. Jews were called “the main mystery of the USSR”. How could they remain Jews without generally keeping to their religion, language, and traditions, and often willing to adopt new traditions? Anna Narinskaya, a prominent culture expert and journalist, who grew up in a “non-Jewish Jewish family”, talks to the witnesses of the epoch, her friends and relatives, anthropologists and researchers of popular culture. And as a result of her search she finds herself in a very, very strange place. -- The Harriman Institute at Columbia University.
Anna Narinskaya is a journalist, curator, documentary filmmaker and playwright. She has contributed to Russia’s most influential media since the late nineties, notably as a special correspondent for Kommersant, covering cultural and social issues, and as a literary editor. After Russia annexed Crimea and state censorship intensified, Narinskaya moved to fully independent media, such as Novaya Gazeta and TV Rain, and began curating exhibitions. Her best known projects include 200 Hits a Minute. Typewriter and Consciousness of the 20th Century (Moscow, 2015), Last address. Commemorating Repressions in Today’s Russia (Moscow 2018, Berlin 2019). Find a Jew. Soviet Jews as a Social and Cultural Phenomenon (Moscow, 2020), and Museum of Joseph Brodsky (St Petersburg, 2020). Anna Narinskaya is the author of another documentary, Find a Jew. In Search of Hidden Identity in the USSR (2022). In the summer of 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Narinskaya left the country and has been living in Berlin. In December 2022, her play The Last Word about women political prisoners in today’s Russia premiered on the stage of the Gorki Theatre in Berlin.