How I Spent Victory Day on Chechen Island

In Soviet times, Chechen Island was a prosperous fishing collective farm — a “millionaire kolkhoz,” as locals recall. “There was everything here”: a ferry operated regularly, planes landed, and around 1,000 people lived on the island year-round. Today, fewer than 50 remain. The island did not survive the 1990s, and for the past 30 years it has been slowly falling apart.

Ruins of a House of Culture resembling an ancient temple with columns, a post-apocalyptic landscape, and time seemingly frozen in the late 1980s. In this state of suspension — without internet, electricity, or a connection to the mainland — people still live here. Almost all of them consider themselves patriots.

Filmmaker Vladimir Sevrinovsky spent the long May 9th weekend on the island. This film is the result.