worked for seven years on geological expeditions in north Russia and Central Asia. He has been published as a poet, essayist and journalist. His prize-winning novels have been translated into multiple languages and deal with the impact of Stalinism on contemporary Russian life. Among his most recent books are The Year of the Comet (New Vessel Press, 2017), Oblivion (New Vessel Press, 2016) and Menschen im August (S. Fischer Verlag, 2015).
One of Russia’s most significant contemporary writers, Sergei Lebedev, describes the work of Gulag researcher Yuri Dmitriev in a place that both men know well: the far North. Eurozine presents Lebedev’s essay for the first time in English, translated by Antonina W. Bouis.
Russia’s democratic movement needs to develop a cultural and political strategy based on the following premise, writes Sergey Lebedev: that a systemic failure to deal properly with Soviet-era crimes has engendered the present-day authoritarian Russian state. This is the only way to end the damaging series of half remedies that has so far sustained the illusion of justice being restored.
