Translated from the Russian by Bela Shayevich

In this powerful chronicle of change and resistance—a follow-up to the highly acclaimed Other Russias—the artist and journalist Victoria Lomasko takes the measure of the post-Soviet space in the late Putin years. The Last Soviet Artist opens with a series of beautifully illustrated trips to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Georgia, and the North Caucasus, where Lomasko interviews a long list of varied subjects (artists, activists, teachers, senior citizens, schoolchildren), about gender rights, grassroots politics, and the ghosts of the Soviet past. In the book’s second section, Lomasko depicts with great immediacy the drama of the Belarusian revolution and attends the final major protests in Russia on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine—which in turn leads to the third section, written entirely in exile. How do ordinary people navigate historic changes? How do different generations make sense of their shared present? Equally attentive to its interlocutors and their landscapes, The Last Soviet Artist is an unforgettable work of graphic reportage.

Winner of the 2022 Pen Catalan Free Voice Award and the 2023 Prix Couilles au Cul pour le Courage Artistique, Festival de BD d’Angoulême 

ISBN: 978-1-953813-14-5

Praise for Other Russias

“Victoria Lomasko’s gritty, street-level view of the great Russian people masterfully intertwines quiet desperation with open defiance. Her drawings have an on-the-spot immediacy that I envy. She is one of the brave ones.”
—Joe Sacco

“Powerful . . . Though Victoria Lomasko’s figures are rendered in broad, black-and-white strokes, her depictions of God-fearing old ladies, young skinheads, and striking truckers never fall into the traps of parody, contempt, or stereotype. Her focus on the daily lives of regular people offers a respite from the international fixation on Vladimir Putin—who is, after all, only one of a hundred and forty-four million Russians.”
—Sophie Pinkham, NewYorker.com

“A beautifully produced book . . . Leafing through a work that looks like a personal sketchbook produces a sense of intimacy, and makes Lomasko’s social criticism feel more like a personal commentary on Russian reality than political discourse . . . The female portraits of Other Russias offer an especially nuanced perspective on old age, prostitution, gender imbalance, and alcoholism . . . At a time when most media coverage of Russia boils down to ‘the Russian mess,’ Lomasko shares the valuable experience of resistance and resilience that has characterized life under the Putin regime for the past five years.”
—Sasha Razor, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Compassionate and compulsively readable . . . While Victoria Lomasko is a fierce and involved critic of the self-serving powers that be, Other Russias is propelled by the idea that everyone has a story worth telling, and she tells most of them straight. Interviews hit harder for being matter-of-fact and she follows homophobes as well as activists, nationalists as well as anti-fascists. There’s a wonderful immediacy to her portraits.”
—James Smythe, Guardian

“A powerful national portrait . . . Victoria Lomasko’s work paints a comprehensive picture of some of Russia’s most pressing social issues, intensified by the urgency of her drawings. Illustrated live on the scene, as opposed to reproduced from photos, these compulsively engaging black and white drawings are vital in putting a face to the faceless, reminding us that real people, real lives are at stake here.”
—Matthew Janney, Calvert Journal

“Disturbing, impressive, and fascinating . . . Lomasko has created an unusual and compelling piece of documentary art that stays with you long after you’ve finished studying the cartoons.”
—Viv Groskop, Spectator

“An album of images and impressions of ordinary, unconnected Russian citizens who have unexpectedly found themselves activists . . . Victoria Lomasko is the graphic artist equivalent of the great Svetlana Alexievich, the Nobel Prize winner whose work also records and vivifies the lives of the Invisible and the Angry.”
—Bob Blaisdell, Russian Life

“During the 2011 anti-Putin protests, demonstrators often chanted ‘we exist’ as they poured into the streets. With simple, figurative representation, Victoria Lomasko takes that cry and puts it on the page, recording the currents of history through the experiences of the average person. It is a dynamic hybrid of popular art and journalism, and, in a country turned inside out by authoritarianism, an act of remarkable defiance.”
—Michael McCanne, Art in America

Victoria Lomasko was born in Serpukhov, Russia in 1978. An artist and journalist, Lomasko is the author of Other Russias (n+1 Books, 2017) and the coauthor of Forbidden Art. Her work has been exhibited in numerous shows in Europe and in the United States. She lived in Moscow until March 2022 and now lives in exile.