PositiveThe Cleveland Review of Books\"There is a defiant populism in Kostyuchenko’s reportage, which is focused largely on social and political unrest in Russia’s province ... The personal essays in I Love Russia mark the essential facts of Elena’s being: her nineties childhood, her career, her lesbianism, her travels, her complicated family. In the hands of someone with less to risk, this project—in which, crudely put, a journalist makes her coverage about herself—could have failed. But it’s not an exaggeration to say that the story of Elena’s own life is the story of the Russia that was decisively lost in February 2022 ... The motivation of Kostyuchenko’s work is that someday, to cite the motto of the entire Russian political opposition, “Russia Will Be Free.” It’s a hopeful statement—a rallying cry uniting the left, the Navalnyist center, and a few lone Russian paramilitary groups defected to Ukraine’s International Legion. But for every coterie that sees through the present regime’s talk, there’s another whose grievances about the abysmal policy failures of a cruel and degenerate state will never orient toward action.\
