Oliver Bullough - The Last Man in Russia

In Moscow, thanks to Amie Ferris-Rotman, Antoine Lambroschini, Tom Parfitt and Simon Ostrovsky for having me to stay. Thanks also to Tanya and Kirill Podrabinek for their generosity. In Perm, thanks to Alexander Ogaryshev, and to Masha, Kolya and Slava. In Abez, thanks to Alexander and Natasha Merzlikin and their family. In Inta, thanks to Yevgeniya Kulygina and to Nikolai Andreyevich. In Unecha, thanks to Tamara Fyodorovna and her family. In Bryansk, thanks to Yuri Solovyov for his insights.

In Cambridge, thanks to the extraordinary Marina Voikhanskaya. An evening with her inspired two very different books.

Massive thanks to Xenia Dennen, Michael Bourdeaux and Larisa Seago, all formerly or currently working at the Keston Institute. Their patience and help allowed me to obtain documents I could never otherwise have found.

Staff members at the State Public Historical Library of Russia and the Russian State Library (the Lenin Library) in Moscow were helpful far beyond the call of duty and cheerfully subverted their own photocopying rules when faced with a bit of pleading. The people at Memorial in Moscow were magnificent and shared their huge archive with me. I also appreciated the services of the British Library and the London Library.

Every person mentioned in the text is identified by his or her own name, apart from my friend Misha in the Introduction, whose name I have changed.

To create a clear narrative, I have taken some liberties with the order in which conversations happened. Days, weeks or months after an interview, other conversations often provoked new questions. That means that many of the interviews presented as single events are actually composites of several different encounters.

Naturally, journeys of discovery do not proceed in a simple linear fashion (or they don’t for me anyway), so some conversations have been moved backwards or forwards to suit the narrative. The content of all conversations is of course presented faithfully. These are the interviewees whose insights were most important to me. I am grateful to all of them.

Max Adler, Solikamsk; Vasily Afonchenko, Bryansk; Ludmilla Alexeyeva, Moscow; Nikolai Andreyevich, Inta; David Badaryan, Inta; Yulia Boretskaya, Inta; Semyon Boretsky, Inta; Alexander Daniel, Moscow; Mikhail Dudko, London and Moscow; Vladimir Dudko, Berezina; Irina Flige, London; Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Moscow; Maria Gureva, Bryansk; Alexander Kalikh, Perm; Lidiya Khodunova, Berezina; Alexei Kolegov, Syktyvkar; Alexei Kovalyov, Unecha; Sergei Kovalyov, Perm; Yevgeniya Kulygina, Inta; Zhores Medvedev, London; Alexander Merzlikin, Abez; Natasha Merzlikina, Abez; Michael Meylec, Perm; Father Mikhail, Inta; Alexander Ogaryshev, Perm; Alexander Ogorodnikov, Moscow; Dmitry Oreshkin, Perm; Vladimir Petrovsky, Moscow; Alexander Podrabinek, Moscow; Kirill Podrabinek, Moscow; Tanya Podrabinek, Abez and Moscow; Elmira Polubesova, Perm; Lev Regelson, Moscow; Vladimir Sedov, Moscow; Alexander Semyonov, Moscow; Zoya Semyonova Sr, Moscow; Zoya Semyonova Jr, Moscow; Viktor Shmurov, Perm; Vasily Shpinkov, Kazashchina; Alexander Skaliukh, Perm; Yuri Solovyov, Bryansk; Sergei Spodin, Perm; Oleg Sukhanov, Sergiev Posad; Alexander Tefft, London; Father Vadim, Staraya Guta; Anna Vasilyevna, Berezino; Nina Vasilyevna, Berezino; Marina Voikhanskaya, Cambridge; Maria Volkova, Berezina; Gleb Yakunin, Moscow; Olga Zagorskaya, Inta.

Abez gulag camp/town 58–61, 66, 67, 68–71, 155, 156, 157, 159–66, 168

abortion 85, 95, 99

Achkasova, Olga 66

Afghanistan, Soviet invasion (1980) 131, 135, 177

agriculture 19, 20, 21, 22, 28, 29, 34, 48, 191

collectivization 11, 18, 23, 24, 25–6, 29, 34–5, 37, 69, 145

home grown food 31, 37

see also famine

Akhmatova, Anna 60, 70

alcoholism see drinking

Alexeyeva, Ludmilla 8, 9

Alexy I, Patriarch 44–5

Alexy II, Patriarch (KGB codename D R O Z D O V) 45, 222–3

Amalrik, Andrei 113

Andreyevich, Nikolai 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67–8, 70, 71, 147, 148, 151, 154

Andropov, Yuri, as head of KGB 7, 112, 138–9, 140, 177

Arguments and Facts 247–8

Armenia 62, 63

Arsenevo (village) 182, 187, 191

Arteyev family (of Abez) 165–6

atheism 88, 90, 96–7

Marxism as 82, 85, 86

see also religion

Austria 7

Badaryan, David 62–4

bankers/businessmen 210

St Basil 234

Baydino (village) 182, 187, 188–91

Father Dmitry in 182, 188, 189–90, 192–6

BBC 82, 88, 102, 110, 114

Berezina (village) 20, 21, 24, 28–9, 31, 32, 33, 110, 211, 213–16

Berezino (village) 14–18, 20

Berezovsky, Boris 210

birth control 99

abortion 85, 95, 99

birth rates see population crisis

Boretsky, Semyon 151–3, 159

Boretsky, Yulia (wife of Semyon Boretsky) 151, 153

Brezhnev, Leonid 7, 75, 86, 95, 99, 100, 112, 177, 206

his ‘developed socialism’ concept 75

Helsinki Agreement (1975) and 112–13

brick making 152, 153

Britain 82

see also BBC

bureaucracy 79–80, 149–51, 160

see also state control

Burgess, Anthony: A Clockwork Orange 169

cars 106–7, 153, 187, 203

see also transport

Carter, Jimmy 129, 130

Catholicism 210

see also religion

Chechnya/Chechens 1, 3, 144–5, 231

Cherkizovo (village) church, Father Dmitry at (post-recantation) 206

children 26, 28–9, 85, 168, 191–2

christening 104–5, 126

death of 16–17, 95, 99–100; from starvation 22

state removal from parents 245

see also education; population crisis; young people

China 11, 28, 237

Christian Committee for the Defence of Believers’ Rights 125–6, 218

see also Yakunin, Gleb

Chronicle of Current Events (dissident newspaper) 113, 139, 242

the church see Russian Orthodox Church

CIA 79

cigarettes see smoking

cinema/film 80–81

class struggle 26, 27

see also peasant class

coal mining 49, 51, 53, 56, 57, 58, 63–4, 154, 191

collectivization 11, 18, 23, 24, 25–6, 29, 34–5, 37, 69, 145

see also agriculture

communism 9, 24, 41–2, 75

post-communist Russia 10, 11

under Khrushchev 74–5

Young Communist League 32, 67, 74–5, 77–8, 79, 80

consumerism 76, 106–7, 207

corruption see state corruption

Cossacks 25

crime, organized 79–80

criminals, in gulag camps 54, 65

Czechoslovakia, Soviet invasion (1968) 73, 138–9, 171, 172, 177

dachas (country houses) 37

Daniel, Yuli 8, 170, 233–4

Darwin, Charles 60, 118

Day (newspaper) (continued as Tomorrow) 208, 209

death rates see population crisis

depopulation 5, 18, 24, 48–9, 58, 64, 156, 189, 203, 216, 241

dissidents/dissent 7–8, 51, 72–3, 77–8, 90, 99, 113–14, 134, 170–72, 238, 246–9

aims/objectives 78–9

Chronicle of Current Events (newspaper) 13, 139, 242

election protests (2011–12) 229–31

Helsinki Groups 112–13, 125–6, 130, 131, 135, 139

Jewish 89, 129, 130, 139

KGB action against 100, 104, 113, 116, 126, 127–8, 129, 130–33, 139–40, 172, 207, 217–25; interrogation 139; psychiatric assessment/treatment of 116–19, 127

Moscow, Bolotnaya Square protests (2011) 230, 238

official criticism of 114, 129, 232

papers/writings by 7–8, 33, 79, 80, 197; see also samizdat

Pussy Riot 232–3, 234

samizdat (underground publications) see samizdat

Western media reports on 129, 130, 171, 172; on prisoners 242, 243