Zhivago's Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia

A collective portrait of people who, after Stalin’s death, determined the cultural landscape and shaped public perceptions in Russia: from Aleksandr Tvardovsky and Yevgeny Yevtushenko to Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from Ilya Ehrenburg to Dmitry Likhachyov.

The author is Vladislav Zubok, an alumnus of Moscow State University and a professor of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has written acclaimed books, “Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union” and “The Failed Empire,” and his recent work, “A World of Cold War,” published in 2025, was named among the finalists for the George Orwell Prize.

“Children of Zhivago” tells the story of a community of people who, in the post-Stalin decades, set the tone for culture, worldview, and public debate. This is not only the famous “Sixtiers”—Tvardovsky, Yevtushenko, Vladimir Vysotsky—but also their earlier guiding figures and teachers (from Ehrenburg to Likhachyov), the dissidents Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, as well as scholars, journalists, filmmakers, theatre directors, and actors, state and party officials—everyone who saw themselves as a continuation of the tradition of the Russian intelligentsia. The book is about a powerful cultural milieu that disappeared together with the Soviet Union, yet continues to influence us and to find resonance.

A unifying symbol of this narrative is the fate of Yuri Zhivago from Boris Pasternak’s novel, a great, fully developed epitaph for the demise of pre-revolutionary Russian intelligentsia.

Author of the book Vladislav Zubok is an alumnus of Moscow State University, a professor of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the author of well-known works “Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union” and “The Failed Empire.” His 2025 book “A World of Cold War” was named a finalist for the George Orwell Prize.