How it started

The book presents a series of interviews with Russian emigrants, supplemented by the author's commentary, quotes from the contemporary Czechoslovak or later Czech press, and selected photographs from the respondents' archives.

The central theme of all the interviews is based on Varlam Shalamov's short story 'How It Began'. As the writer, Slavist, and one of the book's respondents, Luba Jurgenson, explains, Shalamov writes about “how dogs suddenly appeared in Kolyma, how guards suddenly appeared, how you suddenly had to work sixteen hours to meet the quota, how the Trotskyists suddenly disappeared, and so on. In reality, the Trotskyists had started to disappear before that, just as starvation didn't fall from a clear sky. In this story, Shalamov is talking about something else. He's talking about how we suddenly notice that something has happened. We suddenly start to see something we didn't see before. For many people, this is true even today, when the war in Ukraine suddenly started. But the war had been going on for eight years—and only now, after the ‘full-scale invasion’, have people noticed it.”

The participants in this project talk about their lives before and after emigration. Memories of everyday events form the core of the book which, in the context of grand history, may not answer the question of how it all began, but they do bring the past of the Soviet Union and Russia closer from an individual's perspective.

The main criterion for selecting respondents was a minimum of five years in emigration, which allows for a healthy distance where emotions do not prevail. The cultural and social activities of the interviewees are important for illustrating social developments, which is why the book includes artists, writers, theatre critics, and commentators who played—or still play—an important role in their newfound homeland even after emigrating.

The following personalities took part in the project:

Jefim Fištejn moved in 1969. He works primarily as a journalist, essayist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his long-standing editorial work at Radio Free Europe. For two years, he held the post of editor-in-chief of Lidové noviny.

Luba Jurgenson moved in 1976. She is currently a professor in the Slavic studies department at the Sorbonne, where she directs the Eur’ORBEM research centre: Cultures and Societies of Eastern, Balkan and Central Europe. She focuses primarily on the literature of testimony related to Nazi concentration camps and Soviet gulags, and the representation and memory of mass violence in Eastern and Central Europe during the 20th century. For her novel 'Au lieu du péril' (Instead of Danger, 2014), she received the Prix Valéry-Larbaud literary award in 2015.

Kirill Kobrin moved in 2000. He is a writer, historian, journalist, and editor. He worked as a lecturer at the State Pedagogical Institute in Gorky. Since 2000, he has been an employee of Radio Free Europe, though he began collaborating with them back in 1994. He is the founder of the samizdat magazine Pro-rok and the newspaper Nizhegorodskie rock'n'rollovye vedomosti. He is a regular contributor to the Riga-based magazine Rigas Laiks. He is the author and co-author of thirteen prose and essay books.

Sergey Kuznetsov moved in 2013. He is a writer, journalist, and entrepreneur. In the nineties, he was involved in shaping the new Russian journalism, where he focused on topics related to film and literature. His books have been translated into many foreign languages. He owns the agency SKCG, which focuses on organising and supporting various educational and cultural projects.

Václav Magid moved in 1990. He is an artist, art theorist, curator, and educator. He studied philosophy and aesthetics at Charles University. He conducts research at the Academy of Fine Arts (AVU) and works at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology (VUT). In his work, he combines traditional painting techniques with a conceptual approach and reflects on the relationship between art and social reality.