Farewell to Russia Event with Joe Luc Barnes - Wednesday 3rd June 2026

Join us in the bookshop to hear Joe Luc Barnes in conversation with Howard Amos about Farewell to Russia and Russia Starts Here.

6.30pm on Wednesday 3rd June at Golden Hare Books, 68 St Stephen Street, EH3 5AQ.

Buy a copy of Farewell to Russia and receive free entry to the event, or choose our Ticket-Only option for £6 (which can be used towards a purchase of the book at the event).

We will send an email to confirm your booking - please be sure to check your junk/spam folder!

About Farewell to Russia They might have said goodbye to the USSR – but can they ever say farewell to Russia? Snow, concrete, the KGB: that’s the cliché of the Soviet Union. But its collapse in 1991 sparked a story at once messier and more compelling than any stereotype. Thirty-five years on, Moscow may brim with champagne bars and blacked-out Mercedes – but what became of the other fourteen states that emerged from the ashes? In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Joe Luc Barnes crossed the former USSR to find out, from the gleaming towers of Azerbaijan to the former gulags of Kazakhstan, tech-hungry Estonia to the minarets of Uzbekistan.

Along the way, he finds epic mountains, cobblestoned old towns and storied Silk Road cities – not to mention Georgian wine, Armenian brandy and vodka in industrial supply. Travelling thousands of miles, he gathers a chorus of voices: nomads in mountain yurts, TikTok-fuelled activists, small-town taxi drivers and many who still look uneasily over their shoulder for the secret police. With insight, empathy and a healthy dose of mordant wit, he asks what has happened – and why – to the people and their hopes and dreams since the great promise of independence.

By turns hilarious, angry and heart-stopping, this is a darkly comic, deeply human portrait of a region the West still misunderstands – and a warning of what happens when empires break but the habits of empire refuse to die.

About Joe Luc Barnes Joe Luc Barnes spent six years living in former Soviet countries from 2014, has a Master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies from Oxford University and now reports from the region as a journalist. His work has been published in outlets including the Financial Times, The I Paper, Nikkei, The Diplomat and the Times of Central Asia, where he is also an editor. He is the author of Farewell to Russia – A Journey Through The Former USSR (published by Elliott and Thompson, March 2026), which describes the visits he has made since February 2022 to all 15 former USSR republics. 

About Howard Amos Howard Amos is a Russia-focused freelance writer and journalist who has been published by outlets including The Guardian, Newsweek, Foreign Policy, The TLS, and The Associated Press. Raised in London, he spent a year in Russia’s Pskov Region before going on to work for almost a decade as a correspondent in Moscow. Russia Starts Here, his first book, was published by Bloomsbury in 2025, and has been shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize, Scotland’s National Book Awards, and the Sherborne Travel Writing Prize.