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In The Last Man in Russia, award-winning journalist Oliver Bullough uses the tale of a lone priest to give life to this national crisis. Father Dmitry Dudko, a dissident Orthodox Christian, was thrown into a Stalinist labor camp for writing poetry. Undaunted, on his release in the mid-1950s he began to preach to congregations across Russia with little concern for his own safety. At a time when the Soviet government denied its subjects the prospect of advancement, and turned friend against friend and brother against brother, Dudko urged his followers to cling to hope. He maintained a circle of sacred trust at the heart of one of history’s most deceitful systems. But as Bullough reveals, this courageous group of believers was eventually shattered by a terrible act of betrayal—one that exposes the full extent of the Communist tragedy. Still, Dudko’s dream endures. Although most Russians have forgotten the man himself, the embers of hope that survived the darkness are once more beginning to burn.
Leading readers from a churchyard in Moscow to the snow-blanketed ghost towns of rural Russia, and from the forgotten graves of Stalin’s victims to a rock festival in an old gulag camp, The Last Man in Russia is at once a travelogue, a sociological study, a biography, and a cri de coeur for a dying nation—one that, Bullough shows, might yet be saved.
Publishers Weekly
"Pursuing Father Dmitry’s story takes Bullough on a crisscross journey of modern day Russia, affording glimpses into the lives of Russians, which is rich with vodka but little else, least of all hope.... While most of what Bullough finds in the past and the present shows why one Russian priest told him, “I look at the future with pessimism,” the book does end with a glimmer of hope, which is a fitting tribute to Father Dmitry and to Bullough’s ability to find and illuminate a story worth telling."
Library Journal
“A compelling read, Bullough’s book is a must for anyone interested in the sociological, psychological, or personal effects of faith and political change on a nation struggling to find its identity and sustain hope.”
Russian Life Magazine
“Dudko's story is indeed a fascinating one and worthy of the space and time that Bullough gives it. And the manner of his telling - as much a modern travelogue far off beaten Russian paths as a biography - is both unusual and engaging. For in understanding Dudko, we better understand all that Russians have been through
the book ends on a high note, with the nascent hope that filled 2011's winter demonstrations.”
Booklist
"An inquisitive traveler, Bullough conveys a vividly descriptive impression of contemporary Russia."
Andrew Meier, author of The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin’s Secret Service
“Few in the West dare take note of ‘the Russian cross’: the birth and death rates that head in opposite directions and forecast a grim future for the world’s largest country. But Oliver Bullough travels Russia with eyes wide open. The Last Man in Russia is an archeological dig in search of a moral compass. Tracing the life of a single priest—from believer to dissident to apologist for the state and even Stalin—he lays bare the troubles haunting the ‘new Russia.’”
Overview
In The Last Man in Russia, award-winning journalist Oliver Bullough uses the tale of a...