Victoria Lomasko, a graphic artist and muralist, has spent her career documenting how authoritarianism took hold in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. What she has illustrated – as well as the personal journey she has taken – affords a chance to see how dictatorship can develop and strengthen across a decade.
In 2019, I invited Lomasko – who goes by Vika for short – to Miami University, where I teach Imperial Russian and Soviet history. The Havighurst Center for East European, Russian and Eurasian Studies was holding a semester-long series on “Truth and Power” that also included two other Russian dissidents: Leonid Volkov, then chief of staff for opposition leader Alexei Navalny; and Mikhail Zygar, who helped found the independent news station TV Rain in 2010.
