The Idea of Russia: The Life and Work of Dmitry Likhachev

Dmitry Likhachev (1906-1999) was one of the most prominent Russian intellectuals of the twentieth century. His life spanned virtually the entire century - a tumultuous period which saw Russia move from Tsarist rule under Nicholas II via the Russian Revolution and Civil War into seven decades of communism followed by Gorbachev's Perestroika and the rise of Putin. In 1928, shortly after completing his university education, Likhachev was arrested, charged with counter-revolutionary ideas and imprisoned in the Gulag, where he spent the next five years. Returning to a career in academia, specialising in Old Russian literature, Likhachev played a crucial role in the cultural life of twentieth-century Russia, campaigning for the protection of important cultural sites and historic monuments. He also founded museums dedicated to great Russian writers including Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Pasternak. In this, the first biography of Likhachev to appear in English, Vladislav Zubok provides a thoroughly-researched account of one of Russia's most extraordinary and influential public figures.

Vladislav Zubok is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He has previously taught at Stanford University, University of Michigan, Amherst College, Temple University and Ohio University and has served as a fellow at the National Security Archive, a non-government organization at the University of George Washington. His publications include A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev and Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia.