Thousands of people in Russia’s large cities took to the streets in recent months, unhappy with President Vladimir V. Putin’s system of running the country. Under his leadership, they believe, Russia is steadily becoming a medieval country with corruption trumping all laws. These people have traveled the world, and they feel embarrassed when their peers in London, New York or Berlin ask about the Pussy Riot trial or the imprisonment of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky. Members of this new class of Russians often hide their nationality just to avoid being compared to their country’s ruling elite or asked questions that they cannot answer.

I was born in Moldova, then part of the Soviet Union, but moved to New York in the early 1990s when my parents immigrated here. For more than a decade I have been going back to Russia, noticing how the country has become more and more corrupt and lawless. I have been working on this project for the past six months. I see corruption as more than something done to people; it is something they participate in. It involves both a resignation to and a justification of a state of iniquity, insecurity and mistrust.

This project was financed by the Institute of Modern Russia, a nonprofit group based in the United States that aims, among other things, to combat Russian corruption.