Yury Dombrovsky: Myth versus ‘agonizing truth’

The article discusses the problem of the non-existent biography of Yury Dombrovsky, and sets out to disprove the myth created by the newspaper Novaya Gazeta about KGB’s persecuting and eventually murdering the writer in retaliation for his novel The Faculty of Useless Things [Fakultet nenuzhnykh veshchey]. Facts manipulation, replacement of the truth with personal beliefs and conjectures, and, ultimately, letting a work of imagination invade the reality – those are just a few examples of global mythologizing, or the post-truth reality, one of today’s biggest challenges. To a certain extent, an article is written in response to the last year’s scandal covered by Novaya Gazeta, which published the article A Brawl with Phantoms [Draka s prizrakami], only to follow up with a refutation co-written by the newspaper’s own reporter O. Khlebnikov and Dombrovsky’s widow K. Turumova-Dombrovskaya. The paper is based on the aforementioned controversial article, revised and expanded for the publication.

Y. Dombrovsky, K. Turumova-Dombrovskaya, O. Khlebnikov, T. Vulfovich, A. Solzhenistyn, The Faculty of Useless Things [Fakultet nenuzhnykh veshchey], The Keeper of Antiquities [Khranitel drevnostey], Novaya Gazeta, post-truth, a myth, mythologization, biography, KGB, 1970-s, labour camp prose

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