About the project

Vakhtang Kipiani’s collection of interviews with dissidents is a series of conversations with those who crippled the foundation of the prison titled “The Soviet Union”; the conversations with the dissidents who didn’t see their ranks as heroic, yet still were the real heroes, and bravely walked into the furnace that burned the bravest ones. Those who defied the system were very diverse, – in age, and in beliefs, in gender, and in nationality.

Balys Gajauskas, who spent 37 years behind the bars and then, when Lithuania became independent, took on the leadership of the Security Service; Kalju Mätik, who was indicted for anti-Soviet activity in the ranks of the underground Democratic Movement of Estonia back in his day; Mustafa Dzhemilev, who fought for Crimean Tatars’ rights; Levko Lukianenko, the founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union… More than twenty dissidents, the conversations with whom reveal many questions pertinent even today. We need to hear the truth, and remember that freedom is not a vaccine that withdraws from a body over time.

The publication preparation has been supported by the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. The stance of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation may not align with the author’s.