Ilya Azar. Book Launch of We Rocked the Boat in Riga

We invite you to the launch of Ilya Azar's book We Rocked the Boat, which will take place in Riga on October 25.

For twenty years, journalist Ilya Azar regularly wrote about people whose outrage at the existing order and the policies of the authorities spilled into the streets and sometimes forced officials to make concessions.

This book brings together the author's reports from protests on Triumfalnaya and Pushkinskaya Squares in Moscow, on the Maidan in Kyiv, on Independence Square in Minsk, and in many other cities and countries. But the reader does not simply learn how one rally or another unfolded: each story in the book is accompanied by Azar's memories and reflections as he tries to understand why civil society was never able to stop Russia's transformation into an authoritarian country that went to war with its neighbor.

Ilya Azar is a Russian journalist and former special correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, Meduza, and Lenta.ru. In 2014, the Kremlin shut down the last of these because of Azar's reports from the Maidan in Kyiv. The author not only covered protest actions, but after being elected as a municipal deputy in Moscow, he himself organized pickets and rallies in Moscow in 2019-2020, for which he spent 25 days under arrest. In 2025, Azar was added by the Ministry of Justice to the register of "foreign agents" and was sentenced in absentia to four years in a penal colony for organizing the activities of an "undesirable organization." He lives in exile and continues to cover protests abroad.

We look forward to seeing you on October 25 at Power-Up Space, located at Riga, Riga Merķeļa iela 21.

The event starts at 6: 30 PM.