Tovarisch! I am not dead!

Garri Urban died in 2004, he should have died several times before. His life was extraordinary- captured by both the Nazis and the Soviets, he went through unspeakable torture, lost his first love to the Gulag, worked for Nikita Kruschev and died in suburban Britain, a doctor, one son Newsnight's diplomatic editor, the other a respected film maker. If anything can sum up the transition of the 20th Century, its awful middle and its benign end in the West, then it is the life of this man. Like so many for Garri Urban the moment of truth was the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Empire and the ending of the second world war on the continent of Europe- not as many people think an event which happened in 1945 but one that happened in 1991 with the fall of the monstrous communist tyranny (one that may be... [read full story]