Georgia: Authorities deny entry to writer and PEN member Alexander Arkhangelsky

19 April 2023 – On 18 April 2023, border guards at the airport in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, denied entry to Alexander Arkhangelsky, Russian writer, journalist and member of PEN Moscow. No explanations were reportedly given. Arkhangelsky was meant to take part in a planned screening of his documentary Hunger, on the famine that ravaged the Russian Federation in the 1920s. Scores of Russian journalists have been denied entry to Georgia in recent months, even though Russian citizens do not need visas to travel to the country.  

PEN International joins PEN Moscow in condemning the Georgian authorities’ decision to deny entry to Alexander Arkhangelsky. On 19 April, PEN Moscow issued a statement, as follows:

‘Alexander Arkhangelsky, our colleague, writer, and the first President of PEN Moscow, was detained at the border with Georgia upon arrival of a flight from Yerevan and deported back to Armenia. Alexander is co-author of the documentary Hunger and came to Tbilisi for a scheduled screening of the film. This is not the first case of unlawful, in our opinion, detention of journalists, writers and public figures on the Georgian border. The Board of PEN Moscow expresses our indignation at this and other similar cases. Such an attitude towards journalists and human rights activists who defend democracy and humanistic values in a time of distrust, multiplying cruelty and darkness is unacceptable.

In November 2022, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation revoked the theatrical distribution certificate originally granted to Hunger in September 2022. According to Alexander Arkhangelsky, the Ministry claimed that the film contained ‘information whose distribution is banned by Russian law.’ At least five million people are estimated to have died during the famine of the early 1920s. The documentary was subsequently released on YouTube.

PEN International joins partner organisations in urging the Georgian authorities to allow independent journalists from the Russian Federation to enter the country and work safely and freely.

For more information about PEN International’s work on the Russian Federation, please see Impunity Reigns – Writers resist, PEN International’s 2022 Case List, which documents 115 cases of persecuted writers worldwide, including in the Russian Federation.

For further details contact Aurélia Dondo, Head of Europe and Central Asia Region at PEN International: Aurelia.dondo@pen-international.org