Running a startup had worn him down, and he was prone to periods of melancholy After a stint in New York, Mazurenko followed. Kuyda moved Luka from Moscow to San Francisco in 2015. Kuyda co-founded Luka, an artificial intelligence startup, and Mazurenko launched Stampsy, a tool for building digital magazines. Both became entrepreneurs, and served as each other’s chief adviser as they built their companies. Kuyda and Mazurenko, who by then had become close friends, came to believe that their futures lay elsewhere. The dream of a more open Russia seemed to evaporate. In the wake of the global financial crisis, Russia experienced a resurgent nationalism, and in 2012 Vladimir Putin returned to lead the country. And his parties attracted sponsors with deep pockets - Bacardi was a longtime client.īut the parties took place against an increasingly grim backdrop. Kuyda loved Mazurenko’s parties, impressed by his unerring sense of what he called “the moment.” Each of his events was designed to build to a crescendo - DJ Mark Ronson might make a surprise appearance on stage to play piano, or the Italo-Disco band Glass Candy might push past police to continue playing after curfew. Mazurenko became a founding figure in the modern Moscow nightlife scene, where he promoted an alternative to what Russians sardonically referred to as “Putin’s glamor” - exclusive parties where oligarchs ordered bottle service and were chauffeured home in Rolls-Royces. “He was so forward-thinking and charismatic,” said Poydo, who later moved to the United States to work with him. Mazurenko would keep his friends up all night discussing culture and the future of Russia. “He was a brilliant guy,” said Kuyda, who was similarly ambitious. They started magazines, music festivals, and club nights - friends they had introduced to each other formed bands and launched companies. The trio seemed to be at the center of every cultural endeavor happening in Moscow. She was writing an article about Idle Conversation, a freewheeling creative collective that Mazurenko founded with two of his best friends, Dimitri Ustinov and Sergey Poydo. Kuyda met Mazurenko in 2008, when she was 22 and the editor of Afisha, a kind of New York Magazine for a newly urbane Moscow. But he was also single, and rarely dated, instead devoting himself to the project of importing modern European style to Moscow. The many friends Mazurenko left behind describe him as magnetic and debonair, someone who made a lasting impression wherever he went.

He often dressed up to attend the parties he frequented, and in a suit he looked movie-star handsome. Blue-eyed and slender, he moved confidently through the city’s budding hipster class. Meanwhile, Mazurenko had grown from a skinny teen into a strikingly handsome young man. The country tentatively embraced the wider world, fostering a new generation of cosmopolitan urbanites. He first traveled to New Mexico, where he spent a year on an exchange program, and then to Dublin, where he studied computer science and became fascinated with the latest Western European art, fashion, music, and design.īy the time Mazurenko finished college and moved back to Moscow in 2007, Russia had become newly prosperous. Average in height, with a mop of chestnut hair, he is almost always smiling.Īs a teen he sought out adventure: he participated in political demonstrations against the ruling party and, at 16, started traveling abroad. In family photos, Mazurenko roller-skates, sails a boat, and climbs trees. They remember him as an unusually serious child when he was 8 he wrote a letter to his descendents declaring his most cherished values: wisdom and justice. “Solve it.”īorn in Belarus in 1981, Roman Mazurenko was the only child of Sergei, an engineer, and Victoria, a landscape architect. “You have one of the most interesting puzzles in the world in your hands,” it said. But ever since Mazurenko’s death, Kuyda had wanted one more chance to speak with him.Ī message blinked onto the screen. At times it had even given her nightmares. She had struggled with whether she was doing the right thing by bringing him back this way. Kuyda had spent that time gathering up his old text messages, setting aside the ones that felt too personal, and feeding the rest into a neural network built by developers at her artificial intelligence startup. It had been three months since Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda’s closest friend, had died. When the engineers had at last finished their work, Eugenia Kuyda opened a console on her laptop and began to type.

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