The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation

✍ Scribed by Bullough, Oliver

• Book ID: 108611678
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 192 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780465074976

✦ Synopsis

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 , 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...