Join the Wende Museum in partnership with the Skirball Cultural Center for an evening with acclaimed journalist Julia Ioffe, discussing her National Book Award–finalist Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy, in conversation with Franklin Leonard.

In this sweeping narrative, Ioffe tells the story of modern Russia through the lives of its women, from revolutionaries and soldiers to mothers, dissidents, and artists.

Drawing on personal history and decades of reporting, Ioffe traces how Soviet ideals of equality gave way to a new patriarchy under Putin, revealing what the transformation means for women and for Russia’s future. Part memoir, part history, Motherland is both intimate and political, exploring how the promise of liberation became a story of endurance and loss.

Free and open to the public. Book sales and signing to follow.

Julia Ioffe is a Russian-born American journalist. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, the New York Times, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New Republic, Politico, and The Atlantic. Ioffe has appeared on television programs on MSNBC, CBS, PBS, and other news channels as a Russia expert. She is a founding partner and Washington correspondent at Puck

Franklin Leonard is an entrepreneur, cultural commentator, and occasional film and television producer. He is the founder and CEO of the Black List, a company dedicated to identifying and supporting remarkable screenwriting and fiction through its annual survey of Hollywood’s most liked screenplays and its online marketplace for screenplays, television pilots, theatrical plays, and novels. To date, more than 500 scripts from the Black List’s annual survey have been produced as feature films, resulting in more than $30B in global box office and 300 Academy Award nominations and 50 wins, including four Best Pictures and nearly half of the screenwriting Oscars awarded since 2007. Leonard has worked in feature film development at Universal Pictures and the production companies of Will Smith, Sydney Pollack & Anthony Minghella, and Leonardo DiCaprio. He’s been a juror at the Sundance, Toronto, and Mumbai film festivals and one of Hollywood Reporter’s ’35 Under 35′, Black Enterprise magazine’s “40 Emerging Leaders for Our Future”, and Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business.” A recipient of the 2019 Writers Guild of America, East (WGAe) Evelyn Burkey award for elevating the honor and dignity of screenwriters and the 2024 Gotham Film Organization’s Anniversary Tribute, Leonard is also contributing editor at Vanity Fair and served as an advisor for the 2022 Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Exhibition “In America.” He is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and the Executives branch of the Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). His TED talk – How I Accidentally Changed the Way Movies Get Made – has been viewed more than 1.8 million times.