Stanislav Aseyev is a Donetsk-born Ukrainian writer and journalist. In addition to two books recounting his experience under Russian occupation in eastern Ukraine, he is the author of a collection of poetry, a play, and a novel. Under the pen name Stanislav Vasin, he published short reports in the Ukrainian press on the outbreak of Russian-sponsored military hostilities in Donbas. Arrested and unlawfully imprisoned by separatist militia forces for "extremism" and "spying," Aseyev was held captive and subjected to intermittent torture. In 2021, he was awarded the prestigious Taras Shevchenko National Prize for In Isolation.
A rare and unsettling insider's account of conditions in the
'Donetsk People's Republic.'...Aseyev examines unrelentingly,
piercingly, and scathingly why Ukrainians in the east of the
country supported, and continue to support, the separatists and
mercenaries and their Kremlin sponsors-in effect, how Putin's
misinformation campaign successfully revived the Soviet mindset in
the Donbas. -- Julian Evans * Times Literary Supplement *
[A] fascinating account of life in the [Donetsk People's
Republic]...Aseyev's book is a kind of Lonely Planet guide to a
republic that doesn't officially exist, except in the minds of its
fervent believers...The DPR is a Soviet Disneyland. There are icons
of Stalin and Lenin, Komsomol youth leagues and shops selling cheap
Russian sausage in Back-in-the-USSR-style packaging. It is a
glorious march forward to a largely imaginary past, although there
is nothing make-believe about the violence in the DPR. -- Colin
Freeman * The Telegraph *
Few people can better articulate the experience of life under
Russian occupation than Stanislav Aseyev, [who] gives a
first-person account of the shelling, propaganda, and internal
power struggles of Donetsk in the early days of the war that began
there in 2014. The brutality and arbitrariness of rule in
Russian-occupied Donbas that Aseyev depicts hint at what would
await Ukraine in the event of a Russian-imposed regime,
underscoring why the stakes of the war today could not possibly be
higher. -- Lilian Posner * Foreign Policy *
Provides a focal point for understanding the highly intense and
entangled background of the current Russo-Ukrainian war. --
Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed * East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies
*
Aseyev's writing captures the surreal moment when eastern Ukraine
went from a familiar country to an eerie, apocalyptic landscape.
Towns went from places of comfort populated by friends and family
to hostile territories patrolled by former friends turned
vigilantes. To read his essays is to be transported to a savage,
backwards world that some of us would rather forget. -- Simon
Ostrovsky
Stanislav Aseyev, imprisoned for almost three years for his candid
reports included in this book, tells the story of the Donbas people
and how they sought to make sense of an absurd war on their land.
In Isolation is an extraordinary account of the Donbas as
seen from within, and the people trapped there. It reveals in
minute detail the inner workings of the hybrid war that Russia
unleashed against Ukraine in 2014. -- Hiroaki Kuromiya, author of
Freedom and Terror in the Donbas: A Ukrainian-Russian
Borderland, 1870s-1990s
What strikes one in this collection is the cool, precise recording
of the details of this Soviet Dismaland, like an anthropologist
studying hell. This is a remarkable portrait of how propaganda
deforms life, from one of the world's greatest battlegrounds of
information warfare. We hear much on the dangers of current
disinformation-in the 'Donetsk People's Republic,' these dangers
take on a demonic dimension. -- Peter Pomerantsev, author of
This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against
Reality
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