Literary Showcase Participants

Richard Lourie

Richard Lourie was an active player in the anti-Soviet underground. He translated Andrei Sakharov's memoirs as they were smuggled out of Russia and later wrote the first biography of him -- Sakharov: A Biography. He was with Lech Walesa in the shipyards in Gdansk and later distributed the documentary film Workers '80 shot by Solidarity, every copy of which was later confiscated except the one that had gone to Pope John Paul II in the diplomatic pouch. He is also a novelist -- The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin and A Hatred For Tulips. He is currently a columnist for The Moscow Times and returned from a two week visit to Russia in mid-May.