Episode · Conversations with Tyler · 2026-08-05
Books mentioned on Julia Ioffe on Russian Women, Missing Men, and the Roots of Autocracy
Julia Ioffe left the USSR as a child and came back as an adult journalist to find that the confident, credentialed women she remembered from her Soviet childhood had largely been supplanted by those chasing marriage and domesticity instead.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Zuleikha
Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina is a sweeping historical novel that examines the dramatic and often harrowing transformation of rural life in the Soviet Union during the early twentieth century.
Recommended“The first I would recommend is Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina. It’s a novel about a Tatar woman in the 1920s and ’30s when her village is collectivized and people are forced into collective farms.”
Where to get it
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Машенька / Подвиг (Glory / Mary)
Mary is an early immigration-themed novel by Vladimir Nabokov that explores displacement, memory, and nostalgia.
Recommended“Then, the third that I would recommend is Mary by Vladimir Nabokov. It’s a book I’ve been discussing a lot with my friends from Russia, so many of whom are in exile and who miss home and want to go home.”
Where to get it
