Oleg Atbashian is an American writer and graphic artist. He was born in June, 1960, in Cherkassy, Ukraine, which was then part of the totalitarian Soviet Union. His writings present a view of America and the world through the prism of his Soviet experience. He is the author of Shakedown Socialism and the creator of a satirical website, ThePeoplesCube.com, which Rush Limbaugh described on his show as “a Stalinist version of The Onion.” His essays and satires have been translated into many languages and his graphics reproduced in various publications around the world.
Raised in a communist dictatorship, he grew up believing in Marxism and in the communist future. From 1983 to 1986 he worked as a propaganda artist, creating visual agitprop for the local Party committee in a Siberian town. Observing the hypocrisy and corruption of the socialist system, however, he gradually reexamined his Marxist upbringing. Having returned to Ukraine in 1986, he joined the opposition movement, lending his apartment to dissident gatherings and collecting signatures in defense of Soviet dissidents.
His first Russian-language short stories were published in Moscow in 1990. Around the same time his translations of contemporary Russian, Ukrainian, and American poetry were published in the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine. He also wrote articles in Russian and Ukrainian for several newspapers. He now writes exclusively in English.
Atbashian emigrated to the United States in 1994 and settled in New York City, hoping to forget about politics and raise his three children in a country governed by reason and the rule of law. Working across the street from the World Trade Center, he witnessed the 9/11 attacks from a block away. That shocking experience was soon followed by his disenchantment with the American cultural establishment that almost uniformly blamed America for the attacks and used painfully familiar Marxist concepts of “anti-colonialism” and “class struggle.” That prompted him to start speaking against the leftist ideology that permeated the American political scene.
Atbashian describes his political views as classical liberalism, with the emphasis on individual freedoms, free market capitalism, and international peace based on free trade.
In 2011 he moved from New York to Florida, where he now resides in the Tampa Bay area.
Since left-wing activists have removed Oleg’s page from Wikipedia, its content has been moved to other alternative projects by volunteer anonymous public editors, to whom I extend my gratitude: