The Last Man in Russia

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Helen Conford at Penguin for editing sensitively but forcefully. Thanks also to Lara Heimert, my editor at Basic, for her faith in me, and to my agent Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown.

This book has involved a lot of time sitting in libraries and travelling in Russia, and I am very grateful to the Society of Authors’ Authors Foundation for giving me the John Heygate award, which helped pay for me to do both.

I have shamelessly trespassed on people everywhere I have gone. I have been bought drinks, given food, told stories and driven to places I could not otherwise have reached. Through this, I have come to a far greater understanding of Russian culture than I previously possessed, and for that understanding and that hospitality I am profoundly grateful.

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.