Hotel USSR: Memoirs of a Soviet ‘Non-Artist’

Product Description

As a child, he was promised abundance and freedom in a communist paradise. In that bright future, he dreams of being an artist. But as he grows up, he discovers that his dream is based on a fraud and that his country is really a dictatorship governed by bullies, liars, and thieves. He and the girl he loves find themselves trapped in a labyrinth of a dysfunctional utopia they call “Hotel USSR,” where every aspect of life is regulated by improbable rules that override human nature. To live their dream, they decide to break the law. This takes him on a series of tragicomical adventures that feel like acts in the theater of the absurd: a worker in Siberian oil fields, an army conscript, an inmate at a forensic psychiatry facility, a visual propaganda artist, a Soviet dissident, and an immigrant to America. And everywhere he goes he draws pictures…Richly illustrated with the author’s original artwork, this book is based on his own life story.

From the Author

It’s a story of а young man coming of age in a totalitarian state. He wants to be an artist but he isn’t authorized to buy paints. He wants to see the world but the authorities brand him as politically unreliable. He wants to get married but the system separates him from his bride. He listens to 
Hotel California and wishes he had their problems: he himself is stuck in a real-life trap that he “can never leave,” and he calls it Hotel USSR. To check out, he must break every rule in the book.

This young man is me and this is my real life story. People have often asked me what growing up in the USSR felt like. This book is my answer. It’s illustrated with my own drawings and paintings, which I did in my twenties before I quit drawing. The reason for quitting is in there as well.In addition to it being humorous and entertaining, I hope this story can be an eye-opener for younger people who may naively believe in the false promise of socialism. Rather than debating Marxism directly, I demonstrate how it fails in practice and what absurdities ensue when the entire state lives in denial of its failures, forcing people not to trust their own eyes.

Please also check out my other book, Shakedown Socialism.

About the Author

Oleg Atbashian is an American writer and graphic artist. He was born in Cherkassy, Ukraine, which was then part of the USSR. His writings present a view of America and the world through the prism of his Soviet experience. He is the author of Hotel USSR and Shakedown Socialism, and the creator of a satirical website, ThePeoplesCube.com.