Estonia’s most Russian city tries to redefine itself as a meeting point between East and West, memory and transformation, silence and voice.
NARVA, Estonia | On a gusty spring afternoon near the Russian border, Estonian and EU flags whip above the sleek steel facade of the brand new Narva Estonian Gymnasium, the city’s first high school to teach only in Estonian. Inside, a small group of students sway in rhythm to Tuljak, an ancient village dance, under the watchful eye of a young instructor who came from Tartu “out of sheer curiosity – and never left.” The school’s folk dance club is gearing up for Estonia’s nationwide festival of song and dance, held this year on 3–6 July in Tallinn.In this overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city, their performance is about more than taking part in a cultural tradition. It’s a sign of change.
One of the dancers is 19-year-old Alli-Riin Partels, who speaks Russian at home but wouldn’t miss the festival’s dance component, Tantsupidu, for anything. “You join hands with strangers and become part of something larger,” she says, breathless between steps.
From Russian to Estonian
Not long ago, such a scene might have seemed unthinkable in Narva, a city of 58,000 on the easternmost edge of the EU where Russian has long dominated home, streets, and classrooms. A former Soviet industrial hub, Narva never fully recovered from the economic collapse that followed the USSR’s fall. For decades it stood apart, a closed island linguistically, culturally, and politically. The opening of the Estonian gymnasium in September 2023 – complete with its folk dance club – is part of a wider push toward Estonian as the language of instruction in Narva. It’s both a symbol and a statement, one of many signs that Europe’s “Russian city” is shifting. “Small but big”changes are happening, says Martin Tikk, 28, who moved here five years ago and now, among other things, teaches dance at the school. “In the looks of the city. And in its spirit.”
Tikk sees change in the details. Estonian is spoken more frequently on the streets. Public spaces have been renovated. More taxi drivers now understand Estonian. Teenagers are joining local clubs – from theater groups to the volunteer Defense League– reviving something long absent: a culture of participation. “Last midsummer, and on Victory Day [on 23 June, marking Estonia’s struggle for independence] in every house on my street flew an Estonian flag,” Tikk recalls. “Five years ago, not one did.”
He adds, “The war has forced people to take sides.”
Three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine made Narva a potential flashpoint, the Estonian government this spring announced plans to reinforce its easternmost border with an army base in the city. It is the only Estonian city not to have one. “Stationing soldiers directly on the border sends a security signal – but it’s also something we owe Narva,” Major-General Vahur Karus of the Estonian Defense Forces joint headquarters told local media in April. “The [Estonian military] has had very little visible presence here.”
Narva is also growing accustomed to visits by national and international officials, who in the past rarely showed up in the border city. A symbolic breakthrough came at the turn of June and July when hundreds of Estonians from around the world descended on the city for the 13th Global Estonian Culture Days, an event held every four years to reinforce Estonianness. Usually held in Tallinn and in Stockholm with its large Estonian community, for the first time this year the festival branched out to Narva. That the city could host such an event at all is an unmistakable signal, one national leaders hope will resonate widely: Narva should never be seen as separate from Estonia.
Not Just Top-Down
Still, Narva’s transformation isn’t driven solely from above. The new school and its vibrant folk-dance club represent one node in a growing network of “soft infrastructure” that’s been taking root over a decade. These are “subtle but powerful acts of belonging,” says Narva native Anna Farafonova, director of the six-year-old Estonian Language House, established here as an integration hub with language and cultural offerings.
“Although the war in Ukraine has created a new urgency to engage more meaningfully with Russian-speaking communities,” she says, “many of the positive developments we see now aren’t just a reaction to the war. They’re the fruit of long-term efforts by educators, grassroots groups, and individuals who believe in this city.”
At the heart of that shift are people like Martin Tikk. After studying nature tourism in Tartu, he moved to Narva “because no one just comes to Narva,” he jokes. But what he found disturbed him: few young people could speak Estonian at all, and Russian propaganda filled the vacuum. Tikk responded by launching a youth club. Then he began organizing events to connect Narva’s Russian-speaking teens with Estonian culture. When the new gymnasium opened in 2023, he became its community coordinator, with a broader mission: connecting classrooms with local theaters, choirs, folk dance troupes, and civic organizations.
Today, he’s part of a generation reimagining Narva’s identity – not by rejecting its Russian heritage, but by emphasizing dialogue, diversity, and civic participation. Across the city, similar efforts are quietly reshaping the landscape, with initiatives tapping into structures that didn’t exist only a few years ago: An independent theater now operates in a former Soviet arms factory. A space within the gigantic Kreenholm textile factory, now closed, houses an artist residency. The local Defense League has rising youth participation. A thought-provoking director of the Narva Museum is helping rewrite historical narratives. Together, they are redrawing the boundaries of what it means to be Estonian in Narva.
Fault Lines
From the banks of the Narva River, you can see Russia across the water. The Russian tricolor flaps above the Ivangorod fortress, just 135 kilometers from St. Petersburg. One side: the Hermann Castle flying the EU flag. On the other: Vladimir Putin’s backyard.
Simmering mistrust between Estonia’s Russian and Estonian speakers plays out here, in Estonia’s third-largest city. In 1944, the Soviet army drove out the Nazis. But that “liberation” marked a darker turn: Narva’s Estonian population was displaced – many perished in Siberian camps – and Soviet workers from across the USSR replaced them. Its Estonian past was largely erased.
When Estonia regained independence in 1991, the divide deepened. For many in Narva, independence meant not liberation, but loss. Soviet citizens became foreigners overnight. Tallinn granted automatic citizenship only to those who had lived in Estonia before 1940 and their descendants. Everyone else had to pass Estonian-language and civics exams, often out of reach for the elderly and working class.
Today, native Russian speakers make up just over a quarter of Estonia’s 1.4 million population. Some 77,000 hold Russian citizenship, while around 60,000 residents hold so-called “gray passports”: neither Estonian nor Russian. Technically stateless, they can’t vote in national elections, and border crossings have become harder. They live in legal limbo: citizens of nowhere, speakers of a language viewed with suspicion. The one benefit that remains: visa-free travel to Russia.
A major rupture in post-Soviet Estonia came in 2007, when the “Bronze Soldier” Soviet war memorial was relocated away from central Tallinn. For Russian speakers, it symbolized victory; for Estonians, occupation. The move prompted a speech from Putin, rioting by his supporters in Estonia, and a wave of Kremlin-backed cyberattacks – among the first of their kind in the world.
In response, Estonia ramped up outreach: funds for a Russian-language public radio, modest cultural grants in border towns. But Narva – distant from Tallinn, psychologically closer to Ivangorod – remained a place apart.
Until 2022, roughly 3,000 people daily crossed the “Friendship Bridge” into Russia for shopping, family visits, or business. Cigarettes are cheaper across the river. Loved ones live on both sides. Russian TV and internet streamed freely into homes. Kremlin-backed channels cast Putin as a bulwark against Western decline. Local schools taught mostly in Russian; few young people were fluent in Estonian. While Narvans enjoyed EU-financed roads and healthcare – and few wanted to relocate to Russia – many still got their news, and their worldviews, from Moscow.
Setting a New Stage
Civic entrepreneur Allan Kaldoja grew up just outside Narva, part of a tiny minority of Estonian speakers. From boyhood he was fascinated by the city’s unique character, shaped by its historical and geopolitical location, and its fragility as a “border of civilization,” as he puts it.
In the chaotic 1990s, Narva’s Soviet-era industries collapsed, crime soared, and the city seemed cut off from the rest of Estonia. That began to change when businesses started recognizing Narva’s strategic potential as a gateway for Russian companies into the EU, and for European firms into Russia, particularly after 2004 when Estonia entered the EU.
But the transformation was uneven. The ruins of old factories still loomed like monuments to lost purpose, while local governance remained steeped in nepotism and corruption. An entrenched Soviet mindset lingered in schools, businesses, and institutions. “Narva’s society is rigid,” Kaldoja told this author two years ago. “It’s not in contact with reality.” What the city lacked, he believed, was a civic heartbeat – a place for dialogue, creativity, and exchange.
From inside Vaba Lava, the independent theater he founded in 2018 just meters from the river that separates Estonia from Russia, Kaldoja gestures eastward: “Two castles, one river. And quite an aggressive neighbor. If the place is left empty, the other side will come here. We are tiny Estonia next to Russia.”
A trained lawyer turned theater visionary, Kaldoja had already shown what was possible. He had transformed a crumbling factory in Tallinn into one of Estonia’s most dynamic cultural spaces, also called Vaba Laba. But his heart remained in Narva. His dream: to turn the largely abandoned 11,000-square-meter Baltijets arms factory into a civic campus of stages, studios, and festivals – a symbol of the “open, inclusive Narva” he envisioned.
But Narva wasn’t Tallinn. Investors balked. “They all said, ‘Nice idea. Sleep on it.’” So he bought the building himself. “I know Narva. It’s out of focus now, but one day, it will come into focus.” That day arrived sooner than expected. “Mr. Putin helped us a bit by attacking Ukraine,” he says wryly.
When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Narva suddenly became the focus of international concern. Politicians and journalists descended. “Suddenly, everyone was saying: ‘Oh yes, we have Narva. We have to do something about Narva,’” Kaldoja recalls.The question – Is Narva next? – hung in the air. For Kaldoja, the threat was personal. He remembered watching Soviet tanks roll into Narva as a boy during the USSR’s collapse. Now the fear had returned.
Crimea was a wakeup call. Estonia’s capital responded with unprecedented investment: 10 million euros pledged for two Estonian-language schools in Narva. National authorities launched a Russian-language public TV channel (ETV+), and committed to building integration hubs in the city.
That’s how, with 3 million euros in government support but no backing from the Narva city budget, Kaldoja opened Vaba Lava Narva. Today, the black-box theater houses a cafe, broadcasting studios, and the Language House. And he’s not shy about staging provocative works, likeMein Kempf.His shows, he says, are meant to spark conversation about ideology, diversity, and freedom. “Some local officials see it as a threat to identity,” he says, “but we’re doing it for the people – so young people don’t have to move away just to think freely.”
Shifting Ground
Then came the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, prompting the Estonian government to accelerate its derussification efforts. Amid concerns that they could be exploited and destabilize domestic peace, Soviet-era monuments which Estonia viewed as glorifying Soviet “occupiers” and threats to the country’s social peace were removed from public spaces. A phased transition to an Estonian-only education system was launched: by 2030, all schools must teach entirely in Estonian. In March, the Riigikogu (parliament) passed a constitutional amendment revoking local voting rights of non-EU nationals, effectively barring Russian and Belarusian citizens from participating in municipal elections.
For the Estonian government, these were overdue corrections. An incentive for Russian speakers to “clear their minds,” as Tuuli Duneton, undersecretary for defense policy at the Estonian Ministry of Defense, puts it. After the country regained its independence, she notes, those who wanted to leave Narva could have. “They made their choice to stay here. And in return, we would like them to be active members of our society.”
But to many Narva residents, especially older generations, the changes felt abrupt and punitive. Once again, Narva found itself on unstable ground. Beliefs fractured. Families split. Classrooms, kitchens, playgrounds – all became spaces of tension. “Maybe Estonian society reacted harshly,” admits Irene Kaosaar, head of the Narva Estonian Gymnasium. “In the first year, many Estonians said, ‘Russians are occupiers. Putinists.’ Some people felt like second-class citizens.”
Kaosaar sees language as a gateway, a means, not the goal. “Changing mentality is harder than changing a language,” she says. “The point is to create an Estonian school. With Estonian values, Estonian culture, Estonian communication.”
No one understands the challenge of uniting Russian and Estonian speakers better than Aljona Kordontsuk. When last year she became principal of Narva’s Old Town Basic School, a bilingual “immersion” elementary school, local media called it a “breath of fresh air.” Young and outspoken, she defied expectations. “Before me, it was the classical headmistress – older, invisible, untouchable,” she says. “Now I answer emails. I talk to people. I’m among them.”
She knows firsthand the power of language. Kordontsuk didn’t start learning Estonian until university. She also understands how deeply the Soviet-era thinking still runs in Narva. Her own father, once a respected boxing coach in Soviet Estonia, expected Estonian citizenship after 1991. When that didn’t come, he gave up. “He felt abandoned,” she says. “That broke something in him.” He never learned Estonian. He still holds a gray passport. Watches Russian TV. Believes Ukraine provoked the war. “I don’t discuss it with him. Our values are different.”
What she can’t change at home, she’s determined to shift at school, by speaking openly. But change is hard. When, in August 2022, the removal of Narva’s last Soviet-era war tank from the banks of the Narva River to the Tallinn war museum sparked emotional outrage, she took a stand. Prominently displayed on a granite pedestal just outside the city, the T-34 commemorated the Red Army’s crossing of the river in 1944, when Soviet forces recaptured the city from Nazi Germany. Tallinn saw it as a symbol of Soviet occupation that could be used to spread Kremlin propaganda. But Narva residents held it in deep emotional regard, seeing the monument as part of their identity, a place where families would lay flowers and sing military songs.
“But for me, it was a symbol of aggression,” says Kordontsuk. “When I heard they were removing it, I thought, finally!” The backlash was swift. “Friends from Narva asked if I wasn’t afraid to walk down the street. They said, ‘You’re not like us.’ ” She lost friends.
She’s also fighting Russian propaganda. When parents complained about Ukrainian refugee children, she defended them – and invited the parents for a talk. “The kids – 12, 13 years old – aren’t aggressive,” she says. “It’s what they hear at home. I told one father that there’s no reason to bully Ukrainian kids. He didn’t understand. His son turned red like a tomato.”
In many ways, the war has complicated relationships in Narva. Between Estonian and Russian speakers, but also within Russian-speaking communities themselves. “Among Russian speakers? That’s where it gets tricky. Some support Estonia, a smaller group supports Putin. But many Estonians aren’t united either,” Kordontsuk says. “It’s complicated. It’s possible for Russians to love Estonia and watch Russian television.”
Still, she sees hope. “Teenagers get it,” she says. “Some even challenge their parents. They travel. They see the world. They see Estonia is on the right path.” Her own goal? “To be a sincere role model. Someone who loves Narva, loves Estonia, whose mother tongue isn’t Estonian but speaks it fluently and shares that.”
A New Generation Speaks
Some young people join theaters or dance clubs. Others, like 17-year-old Milan Skubi, get involved in different ways. Since Russia’s all-out attack on Ukraine, he’s thrown himself into activism, running for Narva’s youth parliament to confront what he calls “the silence, the apathy, the hush.” “People don’t speak their minds,” he says. “They’re scared of upsetting parents, colleagues, neighbors.” At home, Milan walks that same tightrope. His grandmother fondly recalls her days working in Narva’s Soviet-era Kreenholm factory and insists Ukraine provoked the war. His father is steeped in Russian propaganda. Milan says little at the dinner table. “It’s easier,” he shrugs. “He gets aggressive.”
Shortly after the invasion, Milan joined a pro-Ukraine rally in Narva, waving a Ukrainian flag in public.
“People spat at us. Threw things. Cursed,” he recalls. Now, he’s campaigning for youth council, and his grandmother says she’ll vote for him.
He believes in Europe. But he doesn’t believe that barring non-citizen Russian speakers like his grandmother from voting locally will help.
Singing a New Narrative
After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it was Narva that the government chose as the headquarters of its new Integration Foundation, and home to one of only two nationwide Language Houses. It would be a chance for Russian speakers to “learn Estonian, for free, in their own city,” recalls Narva Estonian Gymnasium head Kaosaar, then head of the foundation.
Estonian teacher Pille Maffuccibrought something different. Rather than start with grammar, she began with culture. “People had tried the language-first method, and it obviously never worked.” Her colleagues had run successful projects to stir local identity: a film academy, theater groups, history classes. “Local people don’t know anything about Estonian culture,” Maffucci says. “Their teachers are local Russians who got their degrees in Russia. What they teach about Estonia is from the 19th century.”
Students should study history not because they have to, but because it’s interesting, she says. “Enjoy something Estonian, and you’ll start associating the language with that pleasure.” Her answer? Singing. The Tandem Choir, bilingual but with a majority of Russian speakers, was born. As the choir grew, so did its ambitions. They set their sights on this month’s Laulupidu, Estonia’s national song festival with its dance counterpart Tantsupidu, held every five years on the country’s grandest open-air stage. Maffucci had no illusions. “The song festival was not a big dream but a big goal,” she says. “On the other hand, I understand what kind of message it gives to the rest of Estonia: that a Russian choir wants to participate and is happy to participate. Those two aspects are very important.”
On a chilly Saturday morning in March, a bus from Narva rumbles toward Kohtla-Jarve, a gritty industrial town scarred by oil shale ash heaps and grim Soviet-style architecture. Inside the grand House of Culture, more than 30 choirs from Estonia’s eastern region have gathered to audition. The Tandem Choir is warming up under the baton of a young conductor.
Olga Bortsova, wearing her blue Tandem hoodie with its name in both Russian and Estonian, remembers her encounter with Laulupidu two years ago. Maffuccihad brought the choir to Laulupidu’s youth edition in Tallinn. “I had tears in my eyes,” she recalls. “I told my son, next time we’ll go together. I didn’t know it could make me feel this way – like I’m Russian, but I’m part of Estonia, too.”
Narva’s Young Defenders
On a cold Saturday night, a young man with a buzz cut walks into a modest house near the river. It’s the Narva outpost of Kaitseliit, Estonia’s volunteer defense league. In the kitchen, 20-year-old Juri Kaleti greets the couple who, years ago, changed his life.
When Juri was a restless 11-year-old, his neighbors, Igor and Natalia Aal, recent transplants from Ivangorod just across the river in Russia, invited him to join the Young Eagles, Kaitseliit’s youth wing. In Estonia, a country of just over a million, national defense relies heavily on volunteers. Kaitseliit was founded in 1918, banned under Soviet rule, and resurrected in 1991 to ensure occupation would never return.
But in Narva – a city that flirted with secession in the early ’90s – the organization has often carried political baggage. “When we came to live in Narva, Russia was a big influence for young people,” recalls Natalia Aal, who was born in Narva to a family with Finno-Ungric roots but moved away as a child and was raised in different parts of the USSR. Her husband, Igor, is Russian-born but of Estonian descent. At first, locals were suspicious. “Somebody even called us Hitler Youth,” Natalia Aal says. “Others said Igor was ‘attracting Estonians’ to Narva.”
They began their Young Eagle group with their son and Juri. “At first, I wasn’t interested in the Estonian state,” Juri admits. “I didn’t feel any patriotism. But after the first camp, I got more curious. It’s like a snowball.” Today, the Aals’ unit has 150 young members. They learn to navigate forests, read maps, survive in the wild. For Juri, Kaitseliit gave him what school and home couldn’t: the Estonian language. “It’s been a huge part of my life – the defining eight or nine years.”
It wasn’t a smooth road. “Kids at school called me a traitor. Said it was for fascists. They called Ukrainians pigs.” But he kept going. The forest gave him space to learn, to breathe. Last summer he completed military service. His goal now is to join the military academy. One thing stands in his way: he holds dual citizenship and has been trying to renounce his Russian passport for over two years, he says.
Vladislav Eglet, Kaitseliit’s youth instructor in Narva, promotes civic and national awareness among young people as a defense-education teacher in local schools. For him, the challenge is larger than paperwork. “We look at how Soviet textbooks shaped history,” he says. “When you’ve been told one version for 20 years, and someone suddenly tells you it was all a lie – that’s hard to accept.”
A City on the Edge, Stepping Forward
Since early 2024, cars have no longer been allowed to cross the Friendship Bridge linking Narva and Ivangorod. Pedestrians may still walk across, but going through customs takes time. Has the bridge between Russian and Estonian speakers solidified? Many say yes. For others, the feeling of being suspended between two worlds has deepened.
But one thing most observers agree on: Narva is no longer the isolated “island” it once was. “Positive progress is slow but noticeable,” Vaba Lava theater founder Allan Kaldoja said in Tallinn, where he, too, sang at Laulupidu. The city has become aesthetically nicer. One can get by in Estonian almost everywhere. A couple of new factories have opened. There is a military base, and a hotel is being built. Today, Narva is on the radar of policymakers, military analysts, and artists. But these developments would mean little without change from within – without the efforts of local educators and cultural workers to connect Narva’s Russian-speaking residents to an Estonian and European mental space.
A few months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kaldoja launched Vabaduse, the International Freedom Theater Festival, at his venue. Why the name? Because, he says, Narva is where the free world ends— and where the door to it begins.
From 15 to 19 August, and for the fourth time, theater-makers from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Belarus, and other countries where artistic freedom is under threat will gather on the European Union’s northeastern edge to stage works that are often censored or banned. Part cultural resistance to Putin, part regional solidarity, the festival is also a bold statement of Narva’s place in Europe.
Long defined by the border it sits on, Narva is now trying to redefine itself: as a meeting point between East and West, memory and transformation, silence and voice. “To bring international events not only to Tallinn, but here,” says Kaldoja, “so that local people can feel part of them.” Because “real integration happens by doing something together, not by just saying, ‘now you have to speak Estonian.’ ”
That kind of integration happened in the first week of July, when Narva’s Tandem Choir participated in Laulupidu, the great national song festival and the country’s most cherished cultural ritual. For the first time, a choir of Russian-speaking adults took part. Its members are among a growing number of Narva residents embracing change.
For them, a breakthrough came on 6 July, in the festival’s closing hour. An emotional hush fell as conductor Heli Jurgenson lifted her arms that evening. Then the voices rose, and “Mu isamaa on minu arm” (My Fatherland Is My Love) filled the air like a tide. Gustav Ernesaks’ 1944 composition, once banned by the Soviets, had been a rallying cry in the “Singing Revolution,” when hundreds of thousands of Estonians sang together, rendering Soviet tanks powerless. As singers and listeners swayed, holding hands, waving the blue and black of the Estonian flag, Svetlana Ivanova and Olga Bortsova of the Narva Tandem Choir felt themselves dissolve into the moment.
For many Russian speakers from Narva, Laulupidu had long felt distant. But that night, both women were overcome with emotion.
Ivanova thought of how the war in Ukraine had affected Narva – for better and for worse. It had sharpened tensions and rifts. Online, she’d been harassed with comments like “Russian go home,” leaving her feeling like “I am not at home, although I’ve lived here all my life, learned the language, and integrated.” Some of the government’s responses to Russia’s invasion felt rushed, punitive. She teaches kindergarten, and to her the new Estonian-only language mandates in schools felt like a slap in the face. Theoretically, as part of the gradual switch to all-Estonian teaching, she is no longer allowed to speak Russian with the children. “When a child speaks to me in Russian, am I supposed not to answer?”
And yet, without Russian aggression, the Tandem Choir might never have been created. Ivanova might never have been invited to Laulupidu, Estonia’s most prestigious national event. And now here she was, a Russian-speaking Narva resident whose mother supports Putin, whose house faces Russia across the river. For her, and for Estonia, it was a breakthrough.
“I felt like myself,” she said.
For Bortsova the evening was a “dream come true”: “Tens of thousands of people singing their souls and hearts out. At the Song Festival, each of us has a small note in the music, in the song of our land and our people.”
“This has been a long journey, but an important one,” Tandem Choir initiator Pille Maffucci said on 6 July. “After five years, we can say we’re integrated. We’ve been to Laulupidu.” Before joining the choir, she said, most members “didn’t know anything about this culture.” But she knows it can’t stop there. “We have to continue. We have to ask them to join. Even just to come to the public area where you don’t have to sing. Just come. Bring your children. Bring your relatives.”
Still, the ambivalence shared by many Russian speakers means that serious challenges remain to be tackled.
Ivanova’s mother believes Ukraine is to blame for the war. Ivanova herself walks a careful line. “I am a Russian in Estonia,” she says. “But I live in Estonia, I speak Estonian, and I respect the culture.” When she visits Russia, she feels both the pull and the push. “I find myself longing to return home. To Estonia.”
And yet a painful, latent question lingers, one that some in Narva try to brush off. “If there is war,” Ivanova says, “I will need to take sides, and I don’t know which side I’ll take.”
Metaphorically, she evokes her internal dilemma. “If a Russian soldier comes here, would I be able to take a machine gun to kill him?” Her voice trembles. “I couldn’t defend Estonia because I would have to kill a Russian – and that, I can’t do.” But siding with Russians would mean killing Estonians, the people she lives with, and that she couldn’t do either. Finally, she says, “I will most likely run away.”
That is one future scenario. This month, the local choir’s performance at Laulupidu marked a huge step. Events like it, and the other changes under way in Narva, are helping make Ivanova and many others feel more at home in Estonia.
Isabelle de Pommereau is a freelance journalist writing for international news outlets such as The Christian Science Monitor, Alternatives Economiques, and New Eastern Europe. Based in Frankfurt, Germany, she often writes on issues around the transformation of ex-Soviet countries.
Photos by the author.
