Evgenii Belodubrovskii's Thirteen Coats is a meditation on Leningrad-St. Petersburg from his birth in 1941 on the eve of the German invasion, his survival of the three-year blockade, and his post-war Leningrad literary life. Russia's twentieth century traumas--two world wars and its long civil war--endured until Stalin's death (1953). If there is a big picture, perhaps it is contained within the pages of The Black Book of Communism whereby French humanists struggled to enumerate the tens of millions murdered in the name of the twentieth century religion of Communism. Yet, numbers empty tragedy of meaning. Stalin, the great cynic, said that one death was a tragedy; ten thousand a statistic. Evgenii Belodubrovskii is among those Russian patriots who struggles to tell the history of Russia's vast twentieth-century tragedy, one story at a time.
About the Author: Evgenii Borisovich Belodubrovskij, literary critic, bibliographer and author, is host of the literary and journalistic program "Past and Thoughts". He was born on April 12, 1941, in Leningrad and survived the three-year German siege of the city. A 1990 graduate of the Maxim Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow, he served in the Soviet Army (1959-1963), worked in publishing and television and for ten years as a freelance scriptwriter for literary and artistic programs. He was creator of the TV program "Monitor," as well as wrote scripts for numerous programs of the literary, journalistic and historical program "Past and Thoughts," a program examining nineteenth and twentieth century people and events in St. Petersburg-Leningrad-St. Petersburg. He is the author of more than 300 scientific and popular publications, bio-and bibliographic entries to the dictionary, "Russian writers 1800-1917" as well as writing the plays "I was happy, happy, happy" (with SV Belov) and "It was the thirteenth year of the kid". He authored "School on Vasilevsky" (with NV Blagovo and DS Likhachev), compiled the poetry collections "Freedom and Poetry" and "Pros and Cons" and teaches literature at the academic high school associated with St. Petersburg State University. He also serves as a seminar leader at the University of Youth at Anichkovom Palace. He is a member of the coordinating council of the St. Petersburg Union of Scientists and a member of the Writers' Union of the Russian Federation.