Yana Skorobogatov, "Fate in My Hands: The Death Penalty in the Soviet Union" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Yana Skorobogatov about her book, Fate in My Hands: The Death Penalty in the Soviet Union

(University of Chicago Press, 2026). From 1954 to 1991 in the Soviet

Union, nearly 40,000 citizens were executed after the death penalty was

reinstated as a punishment for homicide. Fate in My Hands

introduces readers to the many citizens in this period—women and men of

all ages and backgrounds—who found themselves on death row and tried to

escape it in the only way available to them: asking for forgiveness.

Examining the letters and objects the dead left behind, Skorobogatov

recovers their voices and allows them to speak anew. The book is a

striking portrait of life in the Soviet Union and the citizens who

dreamed of new possibilities even as they faced their tragic end. Using a

corpus of never-before-accessed criminal court records, Fate in My Hands