29^th Leukerbad International Literary Festival

Authors

Irina Scherbakowa

Russia

The Russian Germanist, historian, translator, and cultural scientist Irina Sherbakova was born in Moscow in 1949. She is a founding member of the human rights organization Presentation of Memorial, which was awarded the Nobel Prize. In the late 1970s, she began collecting tape recorded interviews with victims of Stalinism. In 1991, Irina Sherbakova began conducting research in the archives of the KGB. From 1996 to 2006, she taught at the Center for Oral History and Visual Anthropology at the Afasnasyev University in Moscow.
As a result of systematic harassment and intimidation by the Russian state, Sherbakova has lived in exile in Germany since 2022. With other exiles, she founded the Zukunft Memorial in order to continue her work exposing the workings of Stalinism and political terror in the Soviet Union. Irina Scherbakova has received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
In Die Hände meines Vaters (My Father’s Hands), she recounts her family history, which was marked by the wars and atrocities of the 20^th century, which, contrary to all expectations, they were able to escape.

Die Hände meines Vaters. Eine russische Familiengeschichte. Aus dem Russischen von Susanne Scholl. Droemer 2017
Der Russland-Reflex. Einsichten in eine Beziehungskrise. Together with Karl Schlögel. Edition Körber-Stiftung 2015. Expanded and updated 2022.
Zerrissene Erinnerung: der Umgang mit Stalinismus und Zweitem Weltkrieg im heutigen Russland. Wallstein 2010

Back...