The Orwellians

Roland Elliott Brown
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Conversations from London on literature and dictatorship. Host: Roland Elliott Brown

Episodes

  1. 4D AGO

    Sean Wiswesser - Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War

    Sean Wiswesser, a retired CIA senior operations officer, discusses his book on Russian intelligence tactics from the Cold War to the 21st century.

    39 min

  2. MAY 7

    Lucy Ash - The Baton and the Cross: Russia's Church From Pagans to Putin

    Award-winning journalist and broadcaster Lucy Ash discusses her book The Baton and The Cross, which combines history and reportage to tell the story of church-state relations in Russia from ancient times to the war in Ukraine.

    1h 21m

  3. APR 25

    Marc Bennetts - The Descent: Witnessing Russia's Spiral Into Madness Under Putin

    Marc Bennetts, a correspondent for the Times and Sunday Times, was forced to leave Russia in 2022, after living in the country for 25 years. His new book The Descent is a visceral memoir of his journalistic experiences and the cruel consequences of Kremlin propaganda

    1h 1m

  4. APR 15

    Pavel Otdelnov - Estates: Fragile Utopia

    Pavel Otdelnov is a Russian artist who moved to London from Moscow in 2022. He works in various media and is best known for his projects about his hometown--the industrial city of Dzerzhinsk--and for his powerful visual metaphors for Soviet history and life in contemporary Russia. His latest exhibition, Estates: Fragile Utopia, is about postwar social housing projects in Britain, and their resonances with Soviet urban landscapes. It is on display at Lewisham Art House until April 20th, 2026

    1h 1m

  5. MAR 27

    Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan - Our Dear Friends in Moscow

    Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are investigative journalists who focus on on the Russian intelligence agencies. They are the co-founders of agentura.ru and are now senior fellows at the Centre for European Policy Analysis and visiting staff at the King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence. They moved to London in 2020 following an apparent threat to Andrei’s life. In this interview, they discuss their book, Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation, which is about how a group of their journalistic colleagues became pro-Kremlin propagandists.

    57 min

  6. MAR 12

    Kaveh Shahrooz - Massacres and War in Iran

    Lawyer and human rights activist Kaveh Shahrooz discusses the massacres by Iranian security forces that killed thousands--maybe tens of thousands--of Iranian protesters this January, as well as the US and Israeli military action against Iran that began at the end of February. Kaveh is a senior fellow at the MacDonald Laurier Institute, and a former adviser on human rights to Global Affairs Canada. He also led an effort to get the Canadian parliament to recognise the mass killing of political prisoners in Iran in 1988 as a crime against humanity.

    59 min

  7. FEB 26

    Andrei Kolesnikov - The Closing of the Russian Mind: How Putin's Ideology Took the Nation Hostage

    Andrei Kolesnikov discusses his book, The Closing of the Russian Mind: How Putin's Ideology Took the Nation Hostage. Andrei is a contributor to Foreign Affairs, Novaya Gazeta, and New Times. Previously, Andrei was a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, a think tank connected with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, until the Russian government forced it to close in 2022. The Russian government labelled him a "foreign agent" the same year.

    58 min

  8. FEB 12

    Filip Kovacevic - KGB Literati

    Filip Kovacevic is an intelligence historian, an adjunct professor in the Departments of Politics and Global Studies at the University of San Francisco, and the author of KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union. In this interview, Kovacevic discusses the emergence in the USSR of heroic espionage stories written by people with backgrounds in Soviet intelligence. Their aims included promoting Soviet views of international relations, encouraging public vigilance against foreign spies, and establishing a heroic myth that would help recruit future generations of intelligence agents.

    1h 6m

  9. JAN 29

    James Rodgers - The Return of Russia

    Journalist James Rodgers discusses his new book, "The Return of Russia: From Yeltsin to Putin, the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin", which is about Russia's re-emergence as a military power in the decades since the end of the Cold War. James has reported from Russia for the BBC and Reuters. He has covered the collapse of the USSR, the two wars in Chechnya, the beginning of Putin's presidency, and Russia's 2008 war with Georgia. He now teaches journalism at City St. George's, University of London

    50 min

  10. JAN 8

    Masha Karp - George Orwell and Russia

    Author Masha Karp discusses her book, "George Orwell and Russia." Masha is the editor of the Orwell Society Journal and a board member of the Orwell Society. In addition to writing "George Orwell and Russia" in English, she has written the first biography of George Orwell to appear in Russian, and has translated Animal Farm into Russian. From 1991 to 2009, she worked for the BBC Russian Service, first as a producer and later as features editor.

    1h 34m

  11. 11/27/2025

    Peter Sturm - Staging Dostoevsky in London

    Playwright and director Peter Sturm discusses his London-based production of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Dream of a Ridiculous Man," which is performed by actor Tom Larkin. The genre-bending story, which has aspects of gothic horror, science fiction, and religious parable, first appeared in Dostoevsky's "A Writer's Diary" in 1877, alongside some of the writer's most nationalistic essays. But can Dostoevsky's unreliable narrator's message of universal love be interpreted as "an antidote to war"? More info about the production: splitmoontheatre.org tomlarkinproductions.co.uk Roland Elliott Brown is the author of Godless Utopia: Soviet Anti-Religious Propaganda with FUEL Publishing. He has written for New Lines, The Critic, The Spectator, The Guardian, and Foreign Policy, among other publications.

    57 min
  • 11 Episodes

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About

Conversations from London on literature and dictatorship. Host: Roland Elliott Brown

Information

  • Creator
    Roland Elliott Brown
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    11
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Roland Elliott Brown
  • Show Website
    The Orwellians

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