Reflections on the Russian Soul
A Memoir
The memoir of Dmitry Likhachev, the Russian scholar of medieval literature. He recalls a Petersburg childhood, his years in the Solovki labour camp, and the siege of Leningrad, which he survived with his family. The book is a witness to the survival of culture through the Soviet century.
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Anna Reid
A scholar of medieval literature at Leningrad University, his life [from 1906 to 1999] spanned the birth and death of Russian Communism. In his twenties, he was one of the first generation of Gulag prisoners – on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea, where the Gulag was trialled. And in his eighties, during glasnost, he became a leading pro-democracy activist. His memoir brilliantly takes in the whole period.
Interview · December 2011
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