Yuri Rost — legendary journalist, writer, photographer, and traveler — once received an unusual greeting from a colleague at Literaturnaya Gazeta in late December 1986: “You of all people will certainly be at the Yaroslavl railway station tomorrow.” Rost didn’t need to ask why. All of Moscow was anticipating the return of Andrei Sakharov after nearly seven years in internal exile in Gorky.
Rost’s bond with Sakharov went back further, though. He first interviewed the physicist at his home near the Kurchatov Institute in 1970, just as Sakharov was rebuilding his life after the untimely death of his first wife, Klavdia.
Days after welcoming Sakharov back to Moscow and freedom on December 22, 1986, Rost visited the couple at home, taking more of what would become iconic photographs of Sakharov and Bonner.
Known for carrying forward the humanist tradition of post-war photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ed van der Elsken, and Leonard Freed, Rost became a close family friend of the Sakharovs. His portrait of Sakharov was etched on a commemorative medal marking Sakharov’s 70th anniversary in 1991. Years later, after spending many hours in conversation with the by-then-widowed Bonner, Rost published Sakharov. Kefir Needs to Be Warmed: A Love Story Told by Elena Bonner to Yuri Rost.
Rost’s decades-long career has brought him some of Russia’s highest honors, including the State Prize of the Russian Federation (2000), the Triumph Prize for lifetime achievement in literature and the arts (2001), and the Union of Journalists’ Golden Pen of Russia (2004). He has also worked in television and film, notably hosting the documentary series Ragtime, or Torn Time on the Russia-Kultura channel since 2015, exploring the history of culture and art through his own distinctive lens.
Now in his eighties, Rost remains remarkably active. He continues as a columnist for Novaya Gazeta, and in recent years has published a steady stream of new books, including Free Flights in a Hammock (2022) — a finalist for Russia’s “Prose of the Year” — Third Wheel: Conversations at the Stable (2023), and both Two Walks with Ilya Kabakov and A Passerby Walked By, Resembling a Passerby (2024).
Rost lives in Moscow.
