Meduza’s publishing house has released Grigory Sverdlin’s book Warming Center. It tells how helping people in Russia often turns into a confrontation with the state

Forwarded From Meduza — Books

Meduza’s publishing house has released Grigory Sverdlin’s book “Warming Center.” It tells how helping people in Russia often turns into a confrontation with the state

For more than ten years, Grigory Sverdlin headed Nochlezhka, the oldest charity for helping homeless people. The organization not only helped (and still helps) people who lost their homes solve everyday and legal problems, but also launched many notable projects, from music festivals to cooperation with a Michelin Guide restaurant. In 2022, Sverdlin was forced to step down as director and leave Russia.

In exile, he launched the project “Idite lesom” (@iditelesom\help), which helps Russians avoid taking part in the war: evade mobilization and desert.

Now Grigory Sverdlin, one of Russia’s best-known philanthropists, is on the federal wanted list in a case over military “fakes” and has been sentenced in absentia to six years in a penal colony.

In “Warming Center,” through the story of Nochlezhka and Idite lesom, Sverdlin recounts how Russia’s charitable sector grew and developed in the 21st century despite state repression and indifference.

Here is what the author himself says about the book:

I wanted to talk about several things at once: about how a social project works from the inside. About how the state tried to devour everything that my colleagues and I were doing. About my mistakes, failures, and the pain they brought.

About our inner workings. About those strange people who come to work in charity. About where the money comes from and what it is spent on.

About the damned questions of this trade. How do you choose whom to help? Can charity be cruel? What is the price of compromise? Is there something more important than anything else, meaning you can make any deals with the authorities and with your own conscience?

After February 2022, all Russian charity seemed to take a punch to the gut, and its very existence and usefulness also seemed to be in question.

And for me, the experience of leading a social project helped create a civic resistance project, the anti-war “Idite lesom.” Part of the book is about how such a project worked and works under conditions of war, exile, and pressure from the Russian security services.

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Grigory Sverdlin’s book “Warming Center. How I Did Charity Work in Russia and Became an Enemy of the State” can be purchased at this link. We released it together with the StraightForward Foundation.