Dash Arts presents an evening of literature and conversation, to celebrate the publication of Oliver Bullough’s much-anticipated new non-fiction work, The Last Man in Russia

They'll also be bringing Oliver together with one of the leading historians of the Soviet Union, Orlando Figes.

From Oliver Bullough, the acclaimed author of the Orwell Prize-shortlisted Let Our Fame Be Great, comes a new study - part travelogue, part political analysis - of a nation in crisis. In the 1960s, while the Soviet Union was building 'heaven on earth', the Russian nation began to drink itself to death. For a while, government income from vodka surpassed their income from oil. Fifty years later, with the Soviet state dismantled, this is still a country where Muscovites might drink a bottle of vodka before breakfast and demographers look with astonishment as the population of the world's largest country continues to fall, far beyond the rate of decline in the West. In The Last Man in Russia, award-winning writer Bullough uses the life of Father Dmitry, an extraordinary Orthodox priest, to find out why. Through diaries and sermons Bullough reconstructs the world he experienced: famine, occupation, war, the frozen wastes of the Gulag, the collapse of communism and the giddy excesses that followed it. While the story of Russia's self-destruction is shrouded in secrecy and denial, Dmitry's words give an insight into life in a totalitarian state, unmediated and raw, exposing the spiritual sickness at the heart of the country's long communist experiment.

Oliver Bullough will read extracts from the book, and be joined in a panel conversation with celebrated writer and historian Orlando Figes, whose works on Russia include Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, and the prize-winning A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924.

The talk will be chaired by Dash Arts’ co- Director Tim Supple, and will discuss themes arising from both authors’ work: the act of reconstructing history from personal testimony and memory; alcoholism in contemporary culture; the impact of totalitarian government on private life; and the political landscape of Russia today. Also featuring live music and book signing, this will be an evening of rare quality.