Volodymyr Shablia is a Ukrainian writer and researcher whose work focuses on the lived experience of people inside the Soviet totalitarian system. His multi-volume biographical novel Stone is based on real lives, archival materials, and personal testimonies. Through individual human stories, Shablia explores how repression, fear, and ideological pressure shaped everyday existence in the USSR from the 1920s to the 1940s. Rather than heroic myths or political abstractions, his writing concentrates on ordinary people — their moral choices, compromises, resilience, and the quiet struggle to remain human under inhuman conditions. Stone is both a literary narrative and a historical testimony, examining how totalitarianism enters daily life gradually, long before it becomes visible through prisons and camps. Official page: facebook.com/Volodymyr.Shablia
The third book of the novel "The Stone" is devoted to the unfulfilled hopes of people who lived in the USSR in the 1930s and 1940s: their faith in God turned into the destruction of churches, collectivization into the Holodomor, and the hope for a better future into the loss of relatives. They wanted justice, but received unjustified court verdicts, defended the Motherland, but became prisoners or victims of the occupation. The main character and members of his family stoically endure violence and arbitrariness. Both good and evil meet on their way. However, life is complicated by the attitude of the state towards citizens as expendable material, the ineffectiveness of the management system, and the horrors of the Gulag and World War II.
Книгу третю роману «Камінь» присвячено несправдженим сподіванням людей, котрі жили в СРСР 1930-1940-х років: віра в Бога обернулася для них руйнуванням церков, колективізація – Голодомором, надія на краще майбутнє – втратою рідних. Вони хотіли справедливості, а отримали необґрунтовані вироки судів, захищали Батьківщину, але стали полоненими або жертвами окупації. Головний герой і члени його сім’ї стоїчно переносять насильство й свавілля. На їх шляху зустрічаються як добро, так і зло. Втім життя ускладнюється відношенням держави до громадян як до розхідного матеріалу, неефективністю управлінської системи та жахами ГУЛАГу і Другої світової війни.