Guest Marzio G. Mian.Mian has conducted investigations and reports in 58 countries around the world, and in 2023 he received the award for the best international report in Bern. He founded the non-profit journalism organization The Arctic Times Project, which aims to report on the ground the consequences of climate change. He collaborates with “Internazionale,” “L’Espresso,” and other foreign magazines. With Neri Pozza, he has written timely books with utmost precision. Among them are “Guerra bianca,” “Maledetta Sarajevo,” and “Artico. La battaglia per il Grande Nord.”

At our bookstore, he will talk about his latest work, published in September by Feltrinelli: “Volga Blues. A Journey into the Heart of Russia.”

You who frequent Agorà know how much we enjoy reports, slow travels made to understand, delve into, and listen. Mian has done just that, and he has done it in that land which for us Westerners has always been perceived as distant, mysterious, fascinating, but also controversial. A land that since February 24, 2022, after Putin decided to invade Ukraine, has plunged into an even darker darkness than that of the Soviet era.

Mian, accompanied by his photographer friend Alessandro Cosmelli, both without a journalistic visa, traveled 6,000 km along the Volga, from its source in the Valdaj region to the delta of Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. It is no coincidence that the journey unfolds along this totemic river of the Russian people. A river that in 2017 was officially consecrated in grand fashion by the Patriarch of Moscow Kirill, alongside Vladimir Putin. But Mian’s project was not so much about analyzing the psyche of the Russian President, who is now daily in the news, but rather about better understanding the people (the peoples) of inner Russia, and comprehending what it means to be Russian in the time of Putin’s neo-imperial offensive. A month immersed in deep Russia, into the belly and soul of the Russians. Inside the heart of a great country that has made history, and that once again is fundamental for the fate of humanity.