Valery Pavlukevich, who recently passed away, was a regular contributor to oDR. In his last appearance on these pages, he tells Michael Lawrence about the samizdat scene in his home city of Kuibyshev, now Samara.
The Samara region has one of the highest numbers of media outlets in Russia, but local journalists find it hard to write the truth.
The branding of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Samara as an extremist organisation has turned them into religious dissidents. на русском языке
On 14 September, voters in Samara Region were able to vote for their governor, for the first time in many years – an electoral show choreographed by United Russia. На русском языке
Some 5000 people have fled to Samara, from the fighting in Ukraine, but many say they have been victims of Kremlin propaganda.
Punitive psychiatry is being revived in the Samara region. Doctors are hospitalising healthy people in psychiatric hospitals, in order to take over their flats.на русском языке
In Samara, LGBT people are seen as paedophiles. They face aggressive homophobia, harassment, and public incomprehension.
People protesting against the Russian annexation of Crimea in the Russian city of Samara have been subjected to harassment and death threats from ultra-nationalist thugs – a sign of things to come? на русском языке
The Volga Car Factory in Togliatti is the biggest in Russia. The management recently announced 7,500 redundancies, all before the end of the year. How are the city and its inhabitants coping? на русском языке
The car-manufacturing city of Togliatti will this Sunday go to the polls for a second time to elect its new mayor. The choice is between an unofficial candidate from the ruling party and a cosmopolitan fomer regional minister for ecology. Valery Pavlukevich, a journalist from nearby Samara, travel
