Past & Perception

Thirty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's empire has vanished, but its legacy still shapes the lives of hundreds of millions.

In Farewell to Russia, journalist Joe Barnes travels across all fifteen former Soviet republics, exploring how these nations have forged new identities while grappling with the burdens of history. Travelling thousands of miles, he gathers a chorus of voices: nomads in mountain yurts, TikTok-fuelled activists, small-town taxi drivers and many who still look uneasily over their shoulder for the secret police. With insight, empathy and a healthy dose of mordant wit, he asks what has happened – and why– to the people and their hopes and dreams since the great promise of independence.

He will be joined in conversation by Lucy Ash, acclaimed presenter of radio and TV documentaries on foreign affairs, and author of The Baton and the Cross. Mixing history with reportage, Lucy Ash reveals how, in today’s Russia, religion is being stripped of its spiritual content and used as a weapon to control the population. Based in Moscow for the BBC in the early 1990s, she has reported regularly from Russia and Ukraine in the intervening decades.

This evening will offer a fresh portrait of the post-Soviet world beyond the headlines, for all those fascinated by the way stories from the past inform the present.

Joe Luc Barnes has spent a decade living in former Soviet countries since 2014. He has a Master's degree in Russian and East European Studies from Oxford University and now reports from the region as a journalist. His work has been published in outlets including the Financial Times, Sunday Times, I Paper, Nikkei, The Diplomat and the Times of Central Asia, where he is also an editor. He is the author of Farewell to Russia – A Journey Through The Former USSR (Elliott & Thompson, 2026), which describes the visits he has made since February 2022 to all 15 former USSR republics.

Lucy Ash is an acclaimed presenter of radio and TV documentaries on foreign affairs. Based in Moscow for the BBC in the early 1990s, she has reported regularly from Russia and Ukraine in the intervening decades. She has a lifelong interest in the region’s history and is fascinated by the way stories from the past inform the present. Her journalism is published in The Guardian, The i-Paper, The New World, Prospect, The Moscow Times and Berlin’s Internationale Politik Quarterly. The Baton and The Cross (Icon Books 2024 revised pb edition Nov 2025), a finalist for both the Orwell and British Academy Book Prizes, is her first book.