Volodya to Walter: The Memoir of a Soviet Émigré in Two Parts

This thesis tells the life story of Walter Kin, formerly Vladimir "Volodya" Irmiyahev, in two mediums: text and film. The first part, titled Volodya, is based on interviews conducted with Mr. Kin over the course of several months and tells the story of how Walter, then Vladimir, was imprisoned in City Clinical Psychiatric Hospital #15 in Moscow at age seventeen and tortured for political reasons. Volodya is written in a first-person memoir style and draws inspiration from other memoirs written by well-known dissidents who were imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals in the Soviet Union. The second part, titled Walter, takes a different approach, focusing on Walter's current life in New York and his aspirations to become a DJ. While Volodya is rooted in Mr. Kin's past, Walter concentrates on the present, while also tying connections between his current life and past experiences, bringing some of the topics prevalent in Volodya into the present.