Whom I Love Is Not Here

This book is a portrait of a generation. “...broken and partially killed, devoid of comfort, internally alien to power and completely dependent on this power, cut off under the threat of punishment from its past – and yet it has preserved the height of spirit and humor and what is vaguely called 'intelligentsia', or more specifically, the ability to think about the common good and to empathize with both neighbors and strangers without any benefit to oneself.”

Sergey Yursky recalls invaluable moments spent with Georgy Tovstonogov and Faina Ranevskaya, Mikhail and Sofia Shvaytzers, Alexander Volodin and Simon Markish, who appear before us not as monuments, but as people who loved, hated, argued and erred, rejoiced and mourned – in a word, lived.