The Pushkin Club invites you to a discussion with Svetlana Shnitman-McMillin about her new book, The Burden of Chivalry, about the life and writing of one of the greatest post-war Russian writers, Georgi Vladimov.
Svetlana’s book is unusual as it is written in three genres. The first is a narrative of Georgi Vladimov's vivid and intense biography. The second – a study of the literary works of one of the most important writers of Russian literature of the second half of the 20th century. The third is a personal testimony, an account of the author's friendship with Vladimov. The combination of these genres draws a portrait of a writer whose books will forever remain masterpieces of Russian literature, and of a man whose rare civic courage is deeply admired.
The conversation will be held in English.
Georgi Vladimov was not a prolific writer, but the publication of each of his books became a huge event for Russian literature and around the world. After reading his masterpiece Faithful Ruslan, a story about a guard dog in the gulag, the poet Alexander Tvardovsky said to the author: "This little dog of yours will run all round the world"; the book was subsequently translated into 89 languages. Vladimov's last novel The General and His Army, a new look at the war, won two Booker Prizes in Russia.
Vladimov was one of the leaders of the dissident movement in Russia, the head of the Moscow branch of Amnesty International, and was a personal friend of the academician Andrey Sakharov. Forced into exile, he was briefly editor-in-chief of the journal Grani. His conflict with NTS, owner of the journal, was an enormous scandal that shook the Russian émigré community in the mid-1980s.
About the speaker
Dr Svetlana Shnitman-McMillin, Associate Professor at SSEES/UCL
Svetlana was born in Leningrad, but spent her childhood in Gorky, the Mogilev region and Murmansk. She graduated from Leningrad University and worked for three years at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. She then moved to Switzerland where she graduated from the University of Basel and completed her PhD at the University of Lausanne. She worked at the University of Lausanne and the University of Zurich. After moving to the UK in 1993, Svetlana started teaching at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES, UCL) where she is currently an Associate Professor in Russian language. She is the author of monographs on Venedikt Yerofeev and Georgi Vladimov and a series of articles on Russian literature.