The Unquenchable Lamp

Boris Nikolayevich Shiryaev (1889–1959) was born in Moscow into a nobleman’s family. During the First World War he went to the front as a cavalry officer. In 1918 he returned to Moscow and attempted to get into the Volunteer Army, but was detained and sentenced to death. A few hours before the execution, he escaped. In 1920 — another arrest, Butyrka prison. The death sentence was commuted to ten years in the Solovki concentration camp. Then again—exile and arrests. Throughout his life, as much as possible, Shiryaev engaged in journalism and wrote poetry and prose. During the Great Patriotic War he left the country together with retreating German forces and spent the remaining years in Italy. “The Never-Extinguishing Lamp” is memoirs—an яркий testimony of the Solovki ordeal, of the Bolshevik terror, of the suffering of thousands of Russian martyrs and confessors.