The Last Knight of the Russian Empire

Ivan Solonevich was a Russian thinker, statesman, writer, essayist and, at the same time, a great sportsman, a vice champion of the Russian Empire, one of the creators of the Sambo wrestling. To say it figuratively, he was a Diogenes, a James Bond and an Ostap Bender put together.

Solonevich started his career as a journalist doing political reporting for the leading metropolitan newspaper Novoye Vremya. He became a witness to the catastrophe that started in Russia in February 1917.

With his impertinent escape from a Stalinist concentration camp, Solonevich was the first to tell the whole world about the Gulag. He told the truth, vividly, simply and with a photographic precision. The author became an obvious and a very dangerous enemy of the Soviet government.

Solonevich was too brilliant to fit into existing framework. He was persecuted not only in the USSR but also in pre-war Germany and even in Argentina. In the end of his life, our protagonist found himself in a far away Uruguay.

Solonevichís legacy is enormous; almost everything that he wrote is still topical. His books contain many practical recipes for Russia to find its way out of a spiritual, political and life crisis.