Mikhail Zygar

Mikhail Zygar is a Russian-born journalist, filmmaker, and author. From his early career as a war correspondent, to his years as founding editor-in-chief of Russia’s first independent news channel, to his work as a historian, Zygar has paid scrupulous attention to how historical and political narratives are built: who constructs them, whose interests they serve, and the danger of fiction acquiring the status of fact.

In 2025, Zygar published The Dark Side of the Earth: Russia’s Short-lived Victory Over Totalitarianism (Scribner), the UK edition of which was named a History Book of the Year by The Times of London. Built from hundreds of interviews and archival documents, it offers a “deeply personal reconstruction” of the Soviet Union as it unraveled, and of the threads that remain today.

As Zygar says of the book:

“The Dark Side of the Earth is a book about the choices millions of people across the former Soviet empire made in difficult historical circumstances—about the fact that no dictatorship lasts forever, that the future always offers us a chance to change something, and therefore can be faced not only with fear but also with hope. It is about how tyrannies crumble precisely when the longing for freedom takes hold of millions.”

Zygar’s other books include All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin (PublicAffairs, 2016), The Empire Must Die: Russia’s Revolutionary Collapse, 1900–1917 (PublicAffairs, 2017), and War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine (Scribner, 2023), an investigation into the national myths that culminated in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Of War and Punishment, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov wrote:

“Zygar has invented a new genre. If Tolstoy’s story is a wide river, Proust’s is a slow river, Zygar’s is a chase. Alas, under President Putin’s rule, no one would dare to publish this terrific book in Russia. So it’s easy to tell if the regime has changed—if Zygar is openly on sale in Moscow shops, then yes.”
—Dmitry Muratov

In 2014, the Committee to Protect Journalists honored Zygar with its International Press Freedom Award for his work as editor-in-chief of TV Rain (2010-2015), the Russian news channel that offered an alternative to Kremlin-controlled federal television by focusing on independent news and giving a platform to opposition voices. He is also a founder of the digital education studio Future History and a columnist for Der Spiegel, where he writes frequently on Russian politics and the war in Ukraine.

House of SpeakEasy audiences may remember Zygar from our Gala this past April, where he performed an original piece on the theme “Metamorphosis: On the Wings of a Tale.” We are thrilled to welcome him back to our stage.