Případ Kukockij – Ulická Ljudmila (2019)

Talented and ambitious doctor Pavel Alexejevič Kukockij is trying to advocate for the reintroduction of the right to abortion, which Soviet women lost due to Stalin's decree in 1936, for ethical reasons. However, this fight for the inner freedom of individuals and the possibility of personal choice will disrupt his promising career. It will also shake his previously idyllic family life when a neighbor's orphan, whose mother died during an illegal abortion, barges in. Kukockij's case is typical of the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s, when private life was caught in the grip of an inhumane era. Ljudmila Ulická unfolds it against the backdrop of a brief post-war euphoria, Stalinist campaigns against genetics and cosmopolitanism, Stalin's death, and the subsequent temporary thaw. The reader is guided through Moscow and Leningrad of that time, as well as the ruins of ancient civilization on the Black Sea coast, while questioning the strength of family tradition, the capacity of human memory, and the boundaries between health and illness or life and death. The author received the prestigious Russian Booker award for her novel in 2001.