Apart from the guidelines wrt "intellectual curiosity" pointed to you elsewhere, perhaps you can grant her admission for discussion as:

She is the founder of Colta, the only independent crowd-funded source of information in Russia. The high-traffic online publication has been called a Russian Huffington Post in format and style, and has also been compared to The New York Review of Books for the scope and depth of its long essays.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mad-russia-hurt-me-into-...

The website is also mentioned in the OP article.

> the only independent crowd-funded source of information in Russia

How about Russian branch of Wikipedia?

I agree, it seems unlikely to be the only independent source. But the point is that on narrow technical/business criteria, she qualifies for HN, in addition to the guidelines supporting those of us with wider interests.

Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

when I went to school in Russia the great writers were those whos portraits we had on the wall in literature class. I'm sure she was not among them ))) I've tried reading her book "in memory of memories" got stuck, but not in an unpleasant way, maybe will give it a try later;

> the great writers were those whos portraits we had on the wall in literature class

It's completely up to the authorities to define great writers?

this was meant ironically of course. What I wanted to say is: all those stars and badges are bullshit, just read what you like. I've hated books that were on various "best of all time" lists, and enjoyed unknown stuff from the internet with typos and broken grammar. And vice versa.

Sorry, I didn't know you were being ironic.

I'll add to your point that 'stars and badges' (from a source I trust) on something I don't like can be a signal that there is something more there, outside my understanding, and that's often the most fruitful thing to read.

As relevant as Eddie Murphy Coming to America perhaps.

> My second question is how is this hacker news relevant?

And the third question is, how is she on the front page? Are there that many readers of Hacker News who are interested in contemporary Russian poetry?

Russian hackers? :)

I guess they ran out of usual set of subjects about evil Russia and had decided that little diversity masqueraded as an art related would not hurt.