Russian Independent Media Archive
58 Outlets. 3.5 Million Documents.
The Russian Independent Media Archive (RIMA) is preserving the last two decades of independent Russian journalism, guarding this irreplaceable historical record against erasure as media outlets not aligned with the regime of President Vladimir Putin are shuttered and their reporters and editors are cast into exile. The archive will make the journalism of this pivotal period accessible to the reporters, historians, political scientists and other researchers who will make sense of Russia’s past and whose work counters propaganda-driven manipulation of the historical narrative.
Journalists say their work is the ‘first draft of history.’ My fear was – and remains – that in Russia, this draft is being deleted.
Masha Gessen
What You Need to Know
Launched in 2023 with the content from more than a dozen outlets, the digital archive will eventually include more than 70 independent national, regional, investigative, and cultural news outlets publishing since President Putin took office in 2000.
More than 1,500 journalists have been forced to leave Russia, and others remain imprisoned. The result is a new kind of iron curtain, shielding what happens inside from view for the rest of the world.
RIMA is a project of PEN America, inspired by former PEN America Trustee and author Masha Gessen and made possible with the support of Edwin Barbey Charitable Trust, advised by PEN America Trustee Peter Barbey.
Our Partners
The Gagarin Center at Bard College
The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine
Mass Media Defence Center
Visit the Archive
Blogs
RIMA #1: The archive is launched!
Right now, you can search for content by date, genre, and publication source. We are particularly pleased that we were able to collect materials from the Russian Newsweek website, one of the key social and political media of the 2000s.
RIMA #2: We have uploaded Meduza, Grani.ru and Novy Focus
We cannot save Mikhail Afanasiev, like other political prisoners, but at least we try to keep their work preserved. We now have the Novy Focus archive, including the article that cost its author his freedom.
RIMA #3: Everything We Know About Prigozhin, Archives of “Sova” and RosKomSvoboda, Datasets for Researchers
Over the past month, we have added the archives of RosKomSvoboda and the information and analytical center “Sova” to our collection, bringing the total number of publications in our archive to 19.
Our Experts
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Anna Nemzer
Anna Nemzer is a journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker studying the historical memory of wars in the post-Soviet space. She is a presenter on Dozhd (TV-Rain), the Russian independent TV channel, now working in exile; a scholar at Bard College (United States); and a co-founder of the Russian Independent Media Archive (RIMA) dedicated to the Read more…
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Ilia Veniavkin
Ilia Veniavkin is a historian, civic engineer, and a journalist. For 15 years he has been studying Stalinist culture and subjectivity. He wrote an ebook, Master’s Inkwell. A Soviet Writer Inside the Great Purge and co-founded Prozhito.org, a collaborative online archive of Soviet diaries and ego-documents. He is a co-founder of the Russian Independent Media Archive; a scholar Read more…
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Serob Khachatryan
Serob Khachatryan is a manager, political activist, and sneaker collector. Former head of growth of Russian wine startup Invisible and marketing director of Q&A service at Yandex. He was a participant to all Navalny campaigns as a volunteer; a scholar at Bard College (United States); a co-founder of the Russian Independent Media Archive (RIMA) dedicated to the Read more…
