1/4 The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation, by Oliver Bullough. Hardcover – April 30, 2013
Image: Father Dmitri Dudko. Photo by Lomart 2017 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lomart_2017&action=edit&redlink=1) . Permissions: see below. Священник Дмитрий Дудко на прогулке The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation, by Oliver Bullough (https://www.amazon.com/Oliver-Bullough/e/B003YLKH2S/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1) . Hardcover – April 30, 2013 https://www.amazon.com/Last-Man-Russia-Struggle-Nation/dp/0465074987/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=Oliver+Bullough+Last+man+in+russia&qid=1584312415&s=audible&sr=8-1-fkmr0 Russia is dying from within. Oligarchs and oil barons may still dominate international news coverage, but their prosperity masks a deep-rooted demographic tragedy. Faced with staggering population decline and near-certain economic collapse driven by toxic levels of alcohol abuse, Russia is also battling a deeper sickness: a spiritual one, born out of the country’s long totalitarian experiment. In The Last Man in Russia, the 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. .. .. .. | Русский: Портрет протоиерея Дмитрия Дудко на прогулке, Москва, 2001 г. | Date | 2 May 2001, 14:34:04 / Source | Own work | Author | Lomart 2017 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lomart_2017&action=edit&redlink=1) / Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Creative_Commons) Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en) license. | You are free: • to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work • to remix – to adapt the work Under the following conditions: • attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. • share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license (https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses) as the original.