Los Angeles Review of Books

The Conspiracy of Pushkin Street: The Costs of Humor in the USSR

“IF THEY COME for me, I won’t give you up. I won’t tell them what happened in this room.” Vasily Babansky let out a sigh and locked eyes with the four young men around him. It was February 1940 and 18-year-old Vasily had become increasingly sure that the NKVD was closing in on him…

I wrote this feature-length article for the Los Angeles Review of Books, revealing the untold story of a group of young students whose lives were torn apart for sharing political jokes in Stalin’s time.

Using their criminal files – still buried in the Russian state archives – I reconstruct their fate, including their decades-long struggle to clear their names after the dictator’s death.