{"id":375,"date":"2025-10-27T12:34:35","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T16:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/?p=375"},"modified":"2025-11-07T15:43:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T20:43:21","slug":"the-coffee-he-never-drank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/migration-reporting2025\/the-coffee-he-never-drank\/","title":{"rendered":"The Coffee He Never Drank"},"content":{"rendered":"

The plane lifted through a pale, cloudless sky above Moscow, one of the last few to leave as sanctions grounded almost everything else. Inside the cabin, Ivan Kondratenko sat tightly, his backpack under the seat, watching the snowbanks along the runway quickly blur into motion. \u201cWhen our plane was getting off there was like this huge sigh,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI had honestly, psychologically, a feeling of great relief.\u201d Below, the city that had shaped his politics and his fears receded into the frozen dark.<\/span><\/p>\n

At 42, he packed only what fit into that backpack, believing he would be gone for a couple weeks at most. It was late evening on March 3rd, 2022, nine days after he had woken in a fever and discovered that Russia had invaded Ukraine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three years later, Kondratenko sips a cappuccino in a small caf\u00e9 in Gesundbrunnen, the Berlin neighborhood where he studies German. His curly hair has begun to gray. Berlin has become a kind of home, though never his own. Around him, thousands of Russian dissidents and journalists have built parallel lives in exile. They are the aftershock of a system that criminalized dissent and exported its silence abroad: the unintended diaspora of a country that could no longer bear its conscience. For Ivan and many others, persecution has travelled with them, even when they left Russia, and their lives, behind.<\/span><\/p>\n

A native of Oryol, a Russian oblast close to the Ukrainian border, Ivan Kondratenko had devoted most of his life up to 2022 to political activism. After moving to Moscow in 2012 following his studies, he began working for the Moscow office of Amnesty International in 2014, eventually becoming its Acting Director until 2018. \u201cIt had a tiny office of five employees,\u201d he explained. \u201cI was very young.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The morning of February 24th felt unreal. Kondratenko had just come back to Moscow from a work trip to Berlin, where he had also received a Pfizer dose of the Covid vaccine. Sweating profusely from the fever, he woke up confused, and started scrolling the news on his phone. The blue light from the screen flickered faintly on his face, as he struggled to understand what he was reading. \u201cIt all felt like a fever nightmare,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn’t know if I could trust myself.\u201d Before dawn, President Putin had announced the beginning of the infamous \u201cspecial military operation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

During those nine days leading up to March 3rd, Kondratenko travelled back to Oryol to visit his parents. He put some anti-war leaflets up on streetpoles there. But, most importantly, he bought coffee. A lot of it. To this day, the coffee is still sitting in his Moscow apartment. He relied on a German experience from World War Two, when the country was struck by a shortage. \u201cI thought maybe I wouldn’t be able to leave Russia,\u201d he explained. He hoped he wouldn\u2019t have to.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the police started detaining those who were attending the protests, Kondratenko started rationalising the situation. \u201cYou could either run away, or get caught,\u201d he said. \u201cPanic was growing that the border would be closed down.\u201d On March 2nd, he bought a one-way ticket to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The following day, amidst fear as flights were held to the ground, he boarded the plane and looked back at the lights of Moscow flattened against the snow, not knowing it would be his last time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bishkek, for a few weeks, felt like a reprieve. He shared a small hotel room with former colleagues, working remotely and trying to stay connected to the world they\u2019d left.<\/span><\/p>\n

Awareness that exile was no longer an interlude but a life grew slowly. Three weeks later, when colleagues suggested he join them in Berlin, the decision felt almost casual. \u201cI had a feeling I would stay there for a couple of weeks,\u201d he said again, smiling at the irony. \u201cLet\u2019s see what happens next.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He landed in Berlin at the end of March, but his stay only lasted a week. \u201cI realised it would be very difficult to legalise myself first in Germany,\u201d he explained. Like many others, he decided to leave for Georgia, where the border was still open to Russians. \u201cIt was easy to get there,\u201d he said. \u201cI had many friends there.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He would spend six months in Georgia. For a while, it seemed like the war\u2014and exile\u2014might still be temporary. \u201cIn summer 2022,\u201d he said, \u201cit felt like I could just travel to Moscow\u2014kind of dangerous but still possible.\u201d That illusion faded quickly. By autumn, arrests were mounting for social-media posts, and the mobilization decrees made return impossible. \u201cI was also in <\/span>Maidan<\/span><\/a> in 2013 and 2014\u201d, he explained. \u201cI said, \u2018I have a record.\u2019 If they start mass arrests, I would be a good candidate for that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The path that would bring him back to Berlin came, as he put it, \u201cvery random.\u201d A colleague mentioned a new German program offering <\/span>humanitarian visas<\/span><\/a> for Russian civil-society workers. He wrote to the officials running it, attaching a one-page account of his work and life. \u201cAnd then it was silence for several months,\u201d he said. One day, he received a message: <\/span>please come and bring your passport.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He was among the first to receive one of such visas. He officially relocated to Germany, where through the NGOs he was working with he helped others apply, drafting dozens of letters attesting that particular journalists or activists were \u201cin danger\u201d and should qualify for the visa.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Berlin, Kondratenko moved into the <\/span>House of Critical Voices<\/span><\/i><\/a>, a residence for exiled media workers managed by the NGO MiCT. It is a place of constant proximity, where journalists, activists, and artists orbit one another\u2019s routines.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some kept producing articles and campaigns out of habit, but many others, including Kondratenko, the distance hollowed the work itself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Danila Bedyaev, once a producer at <\/span>Echo of Moscow<\/span><\/i>, now keeps the lights running in the same building. \u201cI\u2019m the tech guy,\u201d he said, \u201cresponsible for everything you can plug into power.\u201d When he arrived with his wife and two small children, he imagined journalism would resume once the shock passed. \u201cWe thought it was temporary,\u201d he said. \u201cTwo, three months\u2014such craziness can\u2019t continue.\u201d But the war did continue, and the profession that had once defined him became a luxury. His wife, Lyudmila Shabueva, also a journalist, still tries to stay in the field, hosting a small monthly Russian-language radio show. In Germany, though, there is little space for Russian journalists in exile\u2014too many voices, too little demand. The work survives as habit, not livelihood.<\/span><\/p>\n

MiCT, supported by the German Ministry of Culture, created the infrastructure of the exile press. Coworking studios, legal counsel, emergency stipends. \u201cBecause no one wanted these people to stay on the street,\u201d explained Bedyaev. The program kept dozens afloat, though it also revealed a harder truth: aid can sustain a community, but it cannot restore its purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the past three years, Berlin\u2019s Russian-speaking exile community developed its own microclimate. One of nervous solidarity. Mental strain and professional burnout became shared conditions. \u201cPeople feel stuck,\u201d Kondratenko said. \u201cThey don\u2019t see any future\u2026 It\u2019s a very nervous community these days.\u201d Yet he also described small rituals that allow them to endure. Weekend retreats in German villages, seminars, conversations that oscillate between despair and dark humor. \u201cWe do regular meetings, self-organised with my friends,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s both to have fun and a way we manage it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Over time, activism gave way to literature, a dormant passion in Kondratenko\u2019s life. The NGOs he had worked for either collapsed or released him, and he began receiving state support while studying German and finishing a degree in creative writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

His first novel\u2014a blend of fiction and autobiography\u2014draws from his years in human rights work and the experience of exile. \u201cI’m trying to explain my generation,\u201d he said. The book, recently accepted by a small publisher, follows young Russians who believed that one more protest, one more petition, might end authoritarianism. \u201cWe said, \u2018Let\u2019s do a little bit more effort, life will change, Putin will go,\u2019 and then we found out it\u2019s so difficult.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Writing, for him, became both mirror and refuge. \u201cLiterature is something very important for me,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s how I can maintain my connection with my motherland somehow.\u201d He has started attending Russian literary circles in Berlin and dreams of writing in English too, one day, inspired by Nabokov.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Berlin, his days are organized around language classes in the morning and writing in the afternoon. But the war still shapes every silence. \u201cIt\u2019s very shocking that this horrible war [has been] going on for three and a half years,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Second World War\u2026 was going on for less than four [EN: for Russia].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He no longer speaks about return. \u201cI think actually this sort of exile provides a good distance,\u201d he said. \u201cBut of course, exile also means a little bit of loneliness\u2026 sometimes I feel alone.\u201d Distance, after all, was how he\u2019d learned to live\u2014and to look back.<\/span><\/p>\n

The coffee he bought before fleeing Russia is still in his kitchen cupboard in Moscow, sealed and forgotten. It has survived three winters, waiting in a city he no longer recognises.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The plane lifted through a pale, cloudless sky above Moscow, one of the last few to leave as sanctions grounded almost everything else. Inside the cabin, Ivan Kondratenko sat tightly, his backpack under the seat, watching the snowbanks along the runway quickly blur into motion. \u201cWhen our plane was getting off there was like this<\/p>\n

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