An artist traces her choices under Putin’s Russia – from resistance to retreat to exile – one mural at a time

By Stephen Norris, Professor of History; Director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, Miami University

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.…

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