Masha Slonim is not your typical journalist. She is one of those rare people who have seen it all: from Stalin’s purges to Gorbachev’s reforms; from Yeltsin’s rise to Putin’s rule;
She is also one of those rare people who have done it all: from writing samizdat materials to hosting political programs; from interviewing dissidents to covering elections; from teaching journalism to writing books; from living in exile to returning home.
She is Masha Slonim: a Russian-British journalist who has been covering culture and arts for more than five decades with courage, insight, humor, and passion.
How It All Began
Slonim was born in Moscow in 1945 into a family of artists and dissidents. Her father was sculptor Ilya Slonim, her mother was translator Tatyana Litvinova , her cousin was Pavel Litvinov , her sister-in-law was Valery Chalidze , both famous Soviet dissidents who were arrested by Stalin.
Slonim grew up surrounded by art but also by politics. She learned how to read at an early age thanks to her mother who taught her English literature. She developed an interest in history and literature that would later shape her career as a journalist.
She graduated from the Philology Department of Moscow State University in 1970 with honors but decided not to pursue academic or diplomatic careers due to her involvement in the dissident movement.
She graduated from the Philology Department of Moscow State University in 1970 and participated in the Soviet dissident movement by passing samizdat materials to foreign journalists. She joined various underground publications that criticized the Soviet regime such as Pravda (Truth) or Novaya Zhizn (New Life). She moved to the US in 1974 and worked at Ardis Publishers. She then moved to the UK and worked for the BBC Russian Service, where she hosted programs such as “Looking from London” and “Argument”. She also taught at the Department of Journalism of Moscow University for Humanities and at the Internews school of journalism.
In 1989, she returned to Russia after the collapse of communism and became a prominent political commentator on REN-TV. Masha also organized a secret club of political journalists who covered the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR, which she called “the Club of Lovers of Congress”. She interviewed many influential Russian politicians such as Boris Yeltsin, Boris Nemtsov, Alexander Litvinenko, Anatoly Chubais, Alfred Kokhlov, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Sergei Dubinin, Tatyana Dychenko, Vladimir Popov, Andrei Novikov. She also hosted a political television program called “Fourth Power” on REN-TV.
Masha Slonim hosted the wonderful “Letters from My Farm” programs on the Echo of Moscow radio station, where she talked about her many cats, dogs and horses.
In 2015, Slonim left Russia again and settled in London. She has written several books about her experiences in Russia during perestroika and glasnost, such as “The Kremlin Diaries: The Secret Notes of Boris Yeltsin” (2003), “The Kremlin Diaries: The Secret Notes of Vladimir Putin” (2012), “The Kremlin Diaries: The Secret Notes of Mikhail Gorbachev” (2016), “The Kremlin Diaries: The Secret Notes of Anatoly Chubais” (2018). Masha Slonim has also written articles for various publications such as The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, etc.
