What do we mean when we say Russia? Russia of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky? Russia of Lenin and Stalin, or Russia of Gorbachev? There are a lot of Russias. Today we have at least two. the Russia of Putin and the Russia of Navalny. What kind of future will we have after Putin?

Born in Moscow in 1947, Victor Erofeiev is a well-known writer, television, and radio personality. His father was Stalin's personal interpreter for French. He became known worldwide for his novel Russian Beauty, published in 1989 and translated into 27 languages. In 1979 he was expelled from the USSR Writers' Union for his participation in the literary anthology Metropol, which included texts that were banned by Soviet censors. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he republished this almanac. Erofeiev’s writing, particularly his novel Encyclopedia of the Russian Soul (1999), has been controversial among Russian nationalists. Erofeev's contributions to literature have earned him numerous accolades, including the Légion d'Honneur and the Ordre d’Art et Letters in France and the Kommandor Cross in Poland. Besides writing, Erofeiev has taught and lectured around the world in English, French, Russian, and Polish. He contributes regularly to German newspapers, including FAZ, Die Zeit, and Die Welt. In March 2022, Erofeiev left Russia and is now a professor of literature at Luneburg University in Germany. In April 2023, he published a collection of essays titled Naked Russia, dedicated to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. In his most recent work, The Great Gopnik, published by Matthes & Seitz in 2023, he relates his biography to that of Vladimir Putin.

The event will take place on Thursday, April 25th, at 12:30 pm in HSSB 6020 on UCSB's campus.

This event is sponsored by the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, the Graduate Center for Literary Research, and the Department of Comparative Literature.