In June 2017, the Moscow City Duma unanimously approved the demolition of over 4,000 apartment blocks across the city, displacing nearly two million residents. This sweeping erasure of Russia’s iconic Khrushchevka apartments was framed by officials as essential to “modernize” the urban landscape. Yet, for many of those forced to leave, it felt less like renewal and more like real estate speculation. Residents argued there was nothing wrong with their homes that basic repairs couldn’t fix — and that the demolitions threatened not just physical buildings, but their memories, communities, and sense of belonging.
In September 2017, I travelled to Moscow with writer and academic Jonathan Charley to produce a photo essay for The Guardian on what was then being called one of the world’s largest urban regeneration projects. We stayed in an Airbnb apartment inside one of the housing blocks slated for demolition — though, unsurprisingly, the listing made no mention of that ticking clock.
Across Moscow, these low-rise, Soviet-era apartments were to be replaced by towering modern high-rises, either on the same sites or in the city’s distant outskirts. Residents were given just 90 days to vacate or face forced eviction. The decision sparked immediate protests, drawing thousands into the streets. But over time, under increasing political pressure, public opposition dwindled. In Russia, protest often operates more like underground resistance — and was becoming riskier by the day.
Five days in Moscow was never going to be enough to tell this story fully. We always planned to return: to revisit the residents we had met, meet others, travel to new cities, and expand the project into something bigger — maybe a book, an exhibition, or a film. We spent countless hours brainstorming how we could make it happen, who might fund it, and where we could publish it. But the idea remained on the shelf.
Then, on February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, and with that, any plans to return became almost impossible.
What happened to the residents we photographed remains unclear; many of our contacts and local collaborators from 2017 have disappeared from social media. Through scattered online threads, I learned the fates of two of the protestors we met: Artem Loskutov and Pussy Riot member Lucia Stein.
In 2017, Lucia and Artem staged a symbolic protest across Moscow: glueing plaster casts of Lucia’s bare breasts onto Khrushchevka buildings marked for demolition, under the slogan “I will protect your home with my breasts.” It was a playful but pointed nod to Delacroix’s iconic painting of the bare-breasted woman leading the French Revolution. Not long after, Lucia entered politics, becoming an independent deputy in the Moscow municipal government at just 21.
But whatever momentum the protests had was brutally cut short after the invasion. Both Lucia and Artem now live in exile. Lucia had spent over a year under house arrest with an electronic tag for her activism and was eventually smuggled out of Russia disguised as a Deliveroo driver in March 2022. Artem, already abroad when the war began, was warned by his mother that police had come looking for him at home — making it clear he couldn’t return.
Though we can’t go back to Russia right now, this project still feels urgent. When I last spoke to Artem, he told me the fight is not over; for now, he is in “sleep mode,” saving his energy in exile, waiting for the day he can return.
Maybe one day, we too will return. This story is simply too important to leave unfinished.
