Russia, Dissent, and Migration: Inside Berlin’s Cultural Reconfiguration

Berlin has always been a refuge for Russian-speaking writers, from the exiles of the 1917 revolution to today's authors who reject Putin's war policy. The writers who arrived on the latest wave of migration bring with them literary perspectives that renegotiate identity, resistance and belonging.

In her review of Israeli author Linor Goralik’s recent book Exodus-22, Russian poet Polina Barskova describes the latest wave of intellectual emigration from Russia: ‘We know where the fault line ran. But what about other lines? Beyond the single catastrophic mark that split Russia’s modern history into “before” and “after”, millions of other lines emerged, millions of lives were broken. Who will answer for all these lives, and who will tell their stories?’

Berlin has always been a place where many of the lines from Russia’s fractured history re-emerge. Patterns of intellectual migration permeated the city’s socio-cultural fabric long before the present war. Today, new Russian-language cultural trajectories are being traced and retraced every day to shape alternative narratives.

In the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Berlin became a destination for many Russian intellectuals, who settled there or just briefly visited the city. Among them were the writers Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nina Berberova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Viktor Shklovsky, and Vladimir Nabokov. In 2025, the city hosts writers who oppose the literary narrative spread by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government and condemn its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war.

The most recent migration waves of Russian and Russian-language writers to Berlin connect back to previous episodes of exile. But they also mark a new experience of migration, especially in relation to the authors’ anti-war stances, their sense of belonging, and questions of identity.

The fifth wave: exile, censorship, and the search for a voice

Russia’s cultural space, which is increasingly constrained by censorship and persecution of the freedom of expression, denies alternative visions of the present and the past. Putin’s government is engaged in a battle against anyone who publicly protests, speaks, or writes about the invasion – or dares to even call it a war. Anti-war movements of all kinds have been prosecuted, including for producing materials which, in the government’s view, deliberately spread ‘false information’ about the activities of Russian military forces.

A substantial number of Russian intellectuals, artists, writers, and poets have departed their country, where their publications have been stopped. In many instances, sales of their works in Russia have been suspended, often because of censorship. This exodus, referred to as the fifth wave of cultural emigration, includes prominent figures such as Viktor Shenderovich, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Maria Stepanova, Viktor Yerofeyev, and Dmitry Glukhovsky. Notably, early emigrants like Boris Akunin (the pen name of Grigori Chkhartishvili) and Dmitry Bykov had begun to leave even before the war, setting a precedent for subsequent waves of emigration.

In Berlin, many layers of migration penetrate the city’s urban fabric, where they overlap and coexist to form a palimpsest of dissent. Yet, even though emigrants are pushed out of Russia for different reasons and at different times, they are able to reunite under a common umbrella of dissent towards Russia and the war. Berlin not only sustains its historical role as a hub for Russian émigré culture but also renews it through initiatives that challenge Russia’s official state narrative.

Alternative networks: Berlin’s cultural fabric of dissent

Russian emigrants in Berlin form part of a hybrid, often fragmented cultural scene. Among them are writers such as Stepanova, known for her 2021 memoir In Memory of Memory and her novel Focus about migration and belonging; Dinara Rasuleva, a Russophone Tatar writer who experiments with languages, migration, and identity; and the poet Alexander Delphinov, co-founder of the theatre Panda Platforma, a place for ‘democratic-thinking oppositional artists who have no chance to reach the audience in their home countries’ and that takes ‘an active stand against Russian state propaganda’.

Many other lines intertwine in the city, such as that of the bookshop Babel Books, which was founded after the beginning of the war and today serves as a reference point for migrant authors who openly oppose the war. The bookshop hosts cultural events and presentations of books such as the volume Artists Against the Kremlin.

This year, Berlin also hosted the Bebelplatz Russian Book Fair, among whose aims are countering book bans and presenting ‘uncensored Russian-language texts that arose as a response to aggression, violence, disorientation, as a way to rethink the past that led to the war’. The fair included discussions of alternative visions of Russian literature and the presentation of the Dar Prize, an independent literary award founded by writer Mikhail Shishkin that supports authors who seek a Russian-language literature that is ‘responsible to humanity, and not to dictatorships’.

Another vibrant cultural hub is Künstlerhaus Bethanien, which has hosted initiatives including the exhibition No, curated by news website Meduza, and journalist Anna Narinskaya’s exhibition Boxed, which denounces violations of LGBTQ+ rights in Russia. Also noteworthy is the Russian-German journal Berlin Berega, which was founded long before the war and today supports alternative Russian and Russophone voices in exile.

These examples are far from an exhaustive list of the people and events who are helping to develop an alternative approach to reading, producing, and disseminating Russian and Russian-language literature. But taken together, they reveal the intellectual response to the war: condemnation of the hostilities, dissent towards Putin’s government, and a belief in a new fate for literature written in Russian.

Whether these alternative networks of voices will form a solid and cohesive dissenting cultural force is an open question. What can be observed today is a large-scale reaction to the present moment and the articulation of various lines of Russian history that converge, diverge, and coexist in Berlin.

Michela Romano is a PhD candidate at the University of Bologna. Her current research focuses on contemporary Russian and Russophone dissident literature, particularly that of migrant writers in Berlin.