The Last Soviet Artist

Victoria Lomasko

Translated from the Russian by Bela Shayevich

n+1 Books

In this powerful chronicle of change and resistance—a follow-up to the highly acclaimed Other Russias—the artist and journalist Victoria Lomasko takes the measure of the post-Soviet space in the late Putin years. The Last Soviet Artist opens with a series of beautifully illustrated trips to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Georgia, and the North Caucasus, where Lomasko interviews a long list of varied subjects (artists, activists, teachers, senior citizens, schoolchildren), about gender rights, grassroots politics, and the ghosts of the Soviet past. In the book’s second section, Lomasko depicts with great immediacy the drama of the Belarusian revolution and attends the final major protests in Russia on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine—which in turn leads to the third section, written entirely in exile. How do ordinary people navigate historic changes? How do different generations make sense of their shared present? Equally attentive to its interlocutors and their landscapes, The Last Soviet Artist is an unforgettable work of graphic reportage. 

Winner of the 2022 Pen Catalan Free Voice Award and the 2023 Prix Couilles au Cul pour le Courage Artistique, Festival de BD d’Angoulême.

The Last Soviet Artist was published with support from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.