In Isolation. Dispatches from Occupied Donbas
2021, Translation-in-Progress Grant Recipient
In Isolation. Dispatches from Occupied Donbas
«В Ізоляції. Дописи про Донбас »
Author: Stanislav Aseyev
Translator: Lidia Wolanskyj
About the project: In this exceptional collection of dispatches from occupied Donbas, writer and journalist Stanislav Aseyev details the internal and external changes observed in the cities of Makiïvka and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Aseyev scrutinizes his immediate environment and questions himself in an attempt to understand the reasons behind the success of Russian propaganda among the working-class residents of the industrial region of Donbas.
Aseyev's documentary prose takes place during the 2015-2017 years of Russia's military aggression in eastern Ukraine. The author's testimony ends with his arrest for publishing his dispatches and his subsequent imprisonment and torture in a modern-day concentration camp on the outskirts of Donetsk run by lawless mercenaries and local militants with the tacit approval and support of Moscow. For the first time, an inside account is presented here of the toll on real human lives and civic freedoms that the citizens of Europe’s largest country continue to suffer in Russia's hybrid war on its territory.
Stanislav Aseyev received the 2021 Shevchenko National Prize for Journalism for this book — Ukraine's highest recognition in culture and the arts.
The book is expected to be published by the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University in 2022.