Towards the Other Flame. After Sixteen Months in the U.S.S.R.
de Panait Istrati

In Istrati’s representation, the Prometheus of the Caucasus emerges as a cautionary figure whose ‘other flame’ illuminates the perils of revolutionary absolutism. His story thus becomes a metaphor for the Soviet Union’s descent into disillusionment: a flame that once seemed to herald human progress but ultimately revealed itself to be a source of suffering for labouring beneath the yoke of the authoritarianism it brought.
Ileana Alexandra Orlich