After his release in 1973, Borodin’s works were smuggled out of the Soviet Union. The publication of an English translation of The Story of a Strange Time led to his arrest in 1982 on charges of 'anti-Soviet propaganda'. He was sentenced to 10 years of hard labour in Perm-36 Maximum Security Camp (ITK-6), as well as five years' internal exile.[3] Released after four years, in the perestroika era, Borodin was allowed to visit the West with his wife.
Borodin was the subject and first-person narrator of the 2001 film Leonid Borodin: Looking through the Years.[4][5]
A winner of many literary prizes, including the 2002 Solzhenitsyn Prize, Borodin was editor-in-chief of Moskva, a popular literary magazine.[6] In 2005 he was appointed to the first convocation of the Public Chamber of Russia.
Works in English translation
Partings, The Harvill Press, 1988.
The Year of Miracle and Grief, Quartet Books, 1988.