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Failed Forecast: Slavnikova’s dystopia 2017
Natasha Perova, Glas
Each time Olga Slavnikova presented her Russian Booker prize-winning novel 2017 (English edition: Overlook Press, 2010, translated by Marian Schwartz) she insisted that the revolutionary events concluding her novel would definitely take place in 2017, the year of the centenary of the 1917 Russian revolution, and that we’d all live to see them with our own eyes: “Mark my words!”. I remembered that and closer to the predicted event I waited with bated breath for a new revolution or coup, or at least some violent protest movement. When nothing much happened on 7 November I was even a bit disappointed, despite my aversion to any violence. I waited until the end of the year, then until the end of the presidential elections in March this year – nothing special occurred. Were her predictions of a social upheaval just wishful thinking or a miscalculated estimation? On the other hand who knows what the mood is in the industrial Urals and when resentment may erupt into a revolt.
And yet, Slavnikova’s magnum opus is a must read and should not be missed if you want to get an in-depth picture of today’s Russia. The novel immerses you into a world you are not likely to visit: the heart of the Urals with its extraordinary natural beauty, unique mythology, stern and sturdy people, illegal gem hunting and stone-cutting. Slavnikova grew up in the Urals and like most locals spent many weekends hunting for precious stones with a heavy backpack, risking her life in the dense mountain forests and steep slopes. Her protagonists have real prototypes and the events are based on actual facts.
As rumour has it, a huge deposit of rubies exists in the Urals but no one has been able to find it yet. The main character, Krylov is a stonecutter of exceptional talent who works for an illegal jewelry business, for which gems are supplied by the so-called “hitniks” or rock hunters: illegal prospectors for precious stones. The rock hunters are constantly aware of the presence in their lives of a mystical connection with the mountain spirits who either help them or interfere with their plans. According to the local legend, the mountain treasures are guarded by the beautiful Stone Maiden. Her love for a mortal man brings out his real worth. She comes to Krylov as an ordinary woman whose beauty is visible to him alone. In a particularly harsh street riot Krylov loses her in the crowd and thus loses her for good because they agreed not to exchange home addresses and each time to set a new date and place for the next rendezvous. The Stone Maiden made Krylov experience true love, both sensual and spiritual, but finally abandoned him.
Meanwhile a team of rock hunters finds the legendary ruby deposit only to discover that excavations would mean an ecological disaster because the deposit happens to be in too close proximity to a dump of poisonous industrial waste. Krylov’s boss and mentor, geology professor Anfilogov perishes on the dump leaving his huge secret heritage of precious stones to his wife, which completely transforms her nature. The novel shows how corrupt business undermines morals and damages personal lives.
The last hundred pages of the novel depict the commemoration of the centenary of the 1917 Russian revolution, which is marked with a historical reconstruction of the event: two crowds dress up as Reds and Whites and recreate the uprising. However, what starts as a game, a spectacle, develops into a serious street fight and confrontation with the police showing how close Russia is to another social revolution, at least in some areas.
And yet, Slavnikova’s magnum opus is a must read and should not be missed if you want to get an in-depth picture of today’s Russia. The novel immerses you into a world you are not likely to visit: the heart of the Urals with its extraordinary natural beauty, unique mythology, stern and sturdy people, illegal gem hunting and stone-cutting. Slavnikova grew up in the Urals and like most locals spent many weekends hunting for precious stones with a heavy backpack, risking her life in the dense mountain forests and steep slopes. Her protagonists have real prototypes and the events are based on actual facts.
As rumour has it, a huge deposit of rubies exists in the Urals but no one has been able to find it yet. The main character, Krylov is a stonecutter of exceptional talent who works for an illegal jewelry business, for which gems are supplied by the so-called “hitniks” or rock hunters: illegal prospectors for precious stones. The rock hunters are constantly aware of the presence in their lives of a mystical connection with the mountain spirits who either help them or interfere with their plans. According to the local legend, the mountain treasures are guarded by the beautiful Stone Maiden. Her love for a mortal man brings out his real worth. She comes to Krylov as an ordinary woman whose beauty is visible to him alone. In a particularly harsh street riot Krylov loses her in the crowd and thus loses her for good because they agreed not to exchange home addresses and each time to set a new date and place for the next rendezvous. The Stone Maiden made Krylov experience true love, both sensual and spiritual, but finally abandoned him.
Meanwhile a team of rock hunters finds the legendary ruby deposit only to discover that excavations would mean an ecological disaster because the deposit happens to be in too close proximity to a dump of poisonous industrial waste. Krylov’s boss and mentor, geology professor Anfilogov perishes on the dump leaving his huge secret heritage of precious stones to his wife, which completely transforms her nature. The novel shows how corrupt business undermines morals and damages personal lives.
The last hundred pages of the novel depict the commemoration of the centenary of the 1917 Russian revolution, which is marked with a historical reconstruction of the event: two crowds dress up as Reds and Whites and recreate the uprising. However, what starts as a game, a spectacle, develops into a serious street fight and confrontation with the police showing how close Russia is to another social revolution, at least in some areas.
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"2017", in Russian and in English translation, and other novels by Slavnikova are available on loan from the SRF Library.
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Women’s Rights and Women’s Stories
Natasha Perova, Glas
In early March everybody in Russia is preoccupied with the Women’s Day which has long ceased to be perceived as “the day of solidarity of the working women of the world in the movement for their rights”. Nowadays it is just a nice day off when women get gifts from their male acquaintances and children do the dishes to give dear mummy some rest; women teachers get flowers from students, and women employees get flowers, if they do, from male colleagues accompanied by warm wishes which they don’t hear on ordinary days. This year’s holiday was somewhat marred by the recent harassment scandal involving a powerful politician in the Duma who is notorious for pestering pretty young journalists, who approach him for interviews. When several of them protested publicly not only the “dirty old man” himself was genuinely surprised, not seeing what he did wrong, but many other high-placed officials reacted sarcastically accusing the young women of provoking such attitude to themselves by dressing frivolously (meaning short skirts, low necklines, and tight trousers). They obviously assumed that the right to paw women comes with a position of power. Even women were not unanimous in censuring men’s harassment attempts which are quite common everywhere but unmentionable - it is simply not proper to discuss such things while most victims of male violence are ashamed to admit it. However, many women, especially the young, showed their full support and sympathy and talked about their own experiences. So inevitably Russian women are joining the “MeToo” movement and has probably been encouraged by it to act.
Is this reflected in literature? Practically not at all. Moreover, women authors increasingly tend to write in men’s voices and avoid specifically female issues because of the general lack of interest in them. Although the Russian readership, as in other countries, consists predominantly of women. Men also write in female voices occasionally, but such portraits are not convincing or downright false. There is no getting away from the fact that nature created us different, and that male and female biological functions inevitably affect our psychology and behaviour. So why not accept this situation and put it to your advantage.
Even from just this one anthology of 20th century Russian women writing in English translation, which is coming out in the UK this month, one can see clearly how women’s consciousness was awakening in the course of one century: Slav Sisters. The Dedalus Book of Russian Women's Literature (Dedalus Books, March 2018). Full details on http://www.dedalusbooks.com/our-books/book.php?id=00000321. The process continues and there is hope that maybe in another hundred years gender equality will be taken for granted while different biological roles will be duly respected.
I strongly advise all Russian literature lovers not to miss Slav Sisters (the title was imposed by the publisher although he was informed that half of the contributors are not Slav.) As the editor of this anthology I realize that the list of authors is certainly incomplete. Unfortunately I was allowed only ten names (I squeezed in eleven) while at the same time expected to present a true picture of Russian women writing as well as the portrait of the age. I’m anticipating lots of criticism for the omissions and I accept all criticism beforehand. But the limitations are the publishers’ responsibility and there was nothing I could do.
In the Glas series of Russian writing (where I had complete control over the choice of authors, and the only limitation was the availability of funds) you’ll find many more women authors, and from collection to collection you can trace this process of awakening consciousness and psychological progress made by women in Russia from dependent position of second-rate citizens to the present-day status when they can openly challenge men in power insisting on respectful treatment and equal rights at any level.
Is this reflected in literature? Practically not at all. Moreover, women authors increasingly tend to write in men’s voices and avoid specifically female issues because of the general lack of interest in them. Although the Russian readership, as in other countries, consists predominantly of women. Men also write in female voices occasionally, but such portraits are not convincing or downright false. There is no getting away from the fact that nature created us different, and that male and female biological functions inevitably affect our psychology and behaviour. So why not accept this situation and put it to your advantage.
Even from just this one anthology of 20th century Russian women writing in English translation, which is coming out in the UK this month, one can see clearly how women’s consciousness was awakening in the course of one century: Slav Sisters. The Dedalus Book of Russian Women's Literature (Dedalus Books, March 2018). Full details on http://www.dedalusbooks.com/our-books/book.php?id=00000321. The process continues and there is hope that maybe in another hundred years gender equality will be taken for granted while different biological roles will be duly respected.
I strongly advise all Russian literature lovers not to miss Slav Sisters (the title was imposed by the publisher although he was informed that half of the contributors are not Slav.) As the editor of this anthology I realize that the list of authors is certainly incomplete. Unfortunately I was allowed only ten names (I squeezed in eleven) while at the same time expected to present a true picture of Russian women writing as well as the portrait of the age. I’m anticipating lots of criticism for the omissions and I accept all criticism beforehand. But the limitations are the publishers’ responsibility and there was nothing I could do.
In the Glas series of Russian writing (where I had complete control over the choice of authors, and the only limitation was the availability of funds) you’ll find many more women authors, and from collection to collection you can trace this process of awakening consciousness and psychological progress made by women in Russia from dependent position of second-rate citizens to the present-day status when they can openly challenge men in power insisting on respectful treatment and equal rights at any level.
Mikhail Levitin: Reviving Forgotten Classics
Natasha Perova, Glas
The latest premiere at the Hermitage Theatre is yet another stage adaptation of a literary work from the early 20th century, this time by Valentin Katayev. It compelled me to sing the praises of Mikhail Levitin, the artistic director of the Hermitage Theatre, who has done more than many to revive and popularise the forgotten literary celebrities of our Silver Age. He was the first to produce on stage Daniil Kharms and other stars of the absurd (OBERIU), and also Yuri Olesha, Isaac Babel, Nikolai Erdman, to name a few. Thus he re-introduced them to wider audiences and brought them back to us after decades of oblivion. And he enthusiastically continues to seek forgotten classics and promote them in his innovative theatre productions, TV shows, talks, and literary works.
Born in 1945 in Odessa he left it at the age of 16 to study at the Academy of Theatre Arts in Moscow. He worked with Yuri Lubimov at the Taganka Theatre before starting a company of his own in 1979, the now famous Hermitage Theatre.
Levitin is more known internationally as a stage director, but in Russia he is also well-known as a prize-winning author of more than twenty books and numerous magazine publications. Suffice it to mention his novel Total Impropriety which was short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize. The novel is a tribute to the now forgotten experimental stage director Igor Terentiev in which Levitin recognized his “brother-in-arts”. He writes: “I came across some notes on Terentiev describing him as an ‘artistic wonder of the twenties’, ‘a remarkable artist, a poet of the left-wing’, ‘the most left-wing of the left’. I felt insulted on behalf of Terentiev, myself and all those who have been or may in future be put in quotation marks."
Francis Greene, a noted specialist on Russia and lover of Russian culture, gives the best recommendation of Levitin: “Your theatre has very often brought me to laughter or to tears and has, just as often, shocked, startled or amazed me by the originality of its productions. This to be sure is the hallmark of its protean director Mikhail Levitin, whom I first encountered not in his theatrical persona but in one of his other guises as a writer whose novel Total Impropriety had been short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize. Somehow even the name of the book gives a vision of its author, of his outrageous iconoclasm to which all responded with enthusiasm.”
Levitin's novel Total Impropriety is a highly sympathetic attempt to imaginatively recreate an intimate portrait of Terentiev. Some major cultural figures such as Mayakovsky and Lily Brik, Kruchenykh, Malevich, and Meyerhold also appear in the novel which evokes the irresponsibility and self-assuredness of the theatrical left, and their total separateness from the supposedly left-wing regime which, for a time, they were allowed to serve.
We meet Igor Terentiev when he is trying to flee from the Bolsheviks to Constantinople. Instead he ends up in Moscow where he mounts a wildly unconventional and unpopular production of a Soviet play, then returns to his native city of Yekaterinoslavl and mischievously applies for Party membership, giving his father's occupation as Colonel of the Tsarist Gendarmerie. He is arrested, naturally, and is facing execution but reprieved at the last moment and exiled to a labour camp on the White Sea. We encounter the curiously unreal reality of Terentiev's mistress Emilia who supposedly spent her youth in exalted circles in New York and Paris, but in fact came from the little town of Skadovsk near Odessa. She has a totally improper relationship with Terentiev with the complaisance of her husband Vladimir who unreservedly admires Terentiev’s genius. Terentyev’s wife Natasha is the daughter of the owner of a flour mill, very pretty, and totally devoted to him, if also excluded from what it is his theatre is all about. She actually has been to Paris when she was little, and is indeed thoroughly European and ill at ease in Russia.
Of much interest is Levitin’s fictionalized biography of Alexander Tairov, the founder of the famous Chamber Theatre which made a great impact on Russian theatre culture, and particularly on Levitin himself. The book features many prominent cultural figures of the 1920s and 30s. In With Only Sandals on his Feet Levitin then a precocious young man with a passion for theatre, discovers a book about the mysterious Chamber Theatre in a second-hand bookshop and makes it his mission to find out more about it. In the course of his quest he discovers many interesting details about the Chamber Theatre and shares them with the reader.
Born in 1945 in Odessa he left it at the age of 16 to study at the Academy of Theatre Arts in Moscow. He worked with Yuri Lubimov at the Taganka Theatre before starting a company of his own in 1979, the now famous Hermitage Theatre.
Levitin is more known internationally as a stage director, but in Russia he is also well-known as a prize-winning author of more than twenty books and numerous magazine publications. Suffice it to mention his novel Total Impropriety which was short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize. The novel is a tribute to the now forgotten experimental stage director Igor Terentiev in which Levitin recognized his “brother-in-arts”. He writes: “I came across some notes on Terentiev describing him as an ‘artistic wonder of the twenties’, ‘a remarkable artist, a poet of the left-wing’, ‘the most left-wing of the left’. I felt insulted on behalf of Terentiev, myself and all those who have been or may in future be put in quotation marks."
Francis Greene, a noted specialist on Russia and lover of Russian culture, gives the best recommendation of Levitin: “Your theatre has very often brought me to laughter or to tears and has, just as often, shocked, startled or amazed me by the originality of its productions. This to be sure is the hallmark of its protean director Mikhail Levitin, whom I first encountered not in his theatrical persona but in one of his other guises as a writer whose novel Total Impropriety had been short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize. Somehow even the name of the book gives a vision of its author, of his outrageous iconoclasm to which all responded with enthusiasm.”
Levitin's novel Total Impropriety is a highly sympathetic attempt to imaginatively recreate an intimate portrait of Terentiev. Some major cultural figures such as Mayakovsky and Lily Brik, Kruchenykh, Malevich, and Meyerhold also appear in the novel which evokes the irresponsibility and self-assuredness of the theatrical left, and their total separateness from the supposedly left-wing regime which, for a time, they were allowed to serve.
We meet Igor Terentiev when he is trying to flee from the Bolsheviks to Constantinople. Instead he ends up in Moscow where he mounts a wildly unconventional and unpopular production of a Soviet play, then returns to his native city of Yekaterinoslavl and mischievously applies for Party membership, giving his father's occupation as Colonel of the Tsarist Gendarmerie. He is arrested, naturally, and is facing execution but reprieved at the last moment and exiled to a labour camp on the White Sea. We encounter the curiously unreal reality of Terentiev's mistress Emilia who supposedly spent her youth in exalted circles in New York and Paris, but in fact came from the little town of Skadovsk near Odessa. She has a totally improper relationship with Terentiev with the complaisance of her husband Vladimir who unreservedly admires Terentiev’s genius. Terentyev’s wife Natasha is the daughter of the owner of a flour mill, very pretty, and totally devoted to him, if also excluded from what it is his theatre is all about. She actually has been to Paris when she was little, and is indeed thoroughly European and ill at ease in Russia.
Of much interest is Levitin’s fictionalized biography of Alexander Tairov, the founder of the famous Chamber Theatre which made a great impact on Russian theatre culture, and particularly on Levitin himself. The book features many prominent cultural figures of the 1920s and 30s. In With Only Sandals on his Feet Levitin then a precocious young man with a passion for theatre, discovers a book about the mysterious Chamber Theatre in a second-hand bookshop and makes it his mission to find out more about it. In the course of his quest he discovers many interesting details about the Chamber Theatre and shares them with the reader.
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Levitin’s only English translations so far appear in the Glas book of his three long pieces: the above-mentioned Total Impropriety (excerpt from the novel), With Only Sandals on his Feet, and A Jewish God in Paris, all devoted to theatre life.
There is a copy of this book in the Scotland-Russia Forum Library. |
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Natasha Perova, Glas
“I am a literary nonexistence working honestly for existence”
Today Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887-1950) has been internationally recognized as one of the world’s foremost authors. He has been published in many countries, conferences are devoted to him, and his works are studied at universities. Krzhizhanovsky is compared to Swift, Poe, Gogol, Kafka, and Beckett. However, in his lifetime practically none of his stories appeared in print. He tried approaching Maxim Gorky for a recommendation but the proletarian classic found Krzhizhanovsky’s brilliant mind and fantastic erudition too much for working class tastes and refused to support him – another case of “woe from wit”. Only in the early perestroika times was Krzhizhanovky finally published to the delight of Russian literature lovers, who immediately saw that here was another great Russian writer.
The very discovery of Krzhizhanovky’s manuscripts was extraordinary: a young scholar specializing in the arts of the 1920s was working in the literary archives on a completely unrelated theme and happened to catch a mention of an unknown name, whom the then distinguished critic called “a writer-visionary, an unsung genius”. The scholar was intrigued because he thought he knew that period inside out. He did not have to look far: in the same archives he found a thick folder with 3,000 pages of typed text waiting to be discovered – it had been there for almost three decades, since Krzhizhanovsky’s wife deposited the folder there after his death. When the first book came out in 1989 people were stunned, it was too good to be true. Since then his complete works have been published and re-published, and translated into foreign languages. I’m proud that Glas was the first to publish a Krzhizhanovsky book in English and inspired publishers in other countries to translate his works.
His remarkable stories are noted for a boundless imagination, wry humour and breathtaking irony, depicting “something aberrant, which is strongly rooted in something true, with a unique mixture of heresy and logic.” In short, there is nothing like it.
Krzhizhanovsky made his own lonely way through literature; he was one of those doomed literary innovators who ran in his lifetime into a brick wall of suspicion and outright hostility by the authorities and unquestionable adoration by posterity. Unlike so many other writers of the time, Krzhizhanovsky did not disappear into the Gulag. Instead, frustration and rejection pushed him into poverty and alcoholism.
He was also a Shakespeare scholar and his essays on the subject are still relevant. Reading Shakespeare "I felt that I had a friend who could protect me from the metaphysical delusion."
Krzhizhanovsky’s fiction has been brilliantly translated by Joanne Turnbull who was awarded several prizes for her work. After the Glas edition of his “Seven Stories” five books have already been published by the NYRB Classics which specializes in translated world classics. These books are not to be missed.
A copy of the Glas edition of Krzhizhanovsky’s "Seven Stories" (in English) is available on loan from the SRF Library.
Today Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887-1950) has been internationally recognized as one of the world’s foremost authors. He has been published in many countries, conferences are devoted to him, and his works are studied at universities. Krzhizhanovsky is compared to Swift, Poe, Gogol, Kafka, and Beckett. However, in his lifetime practically none of his stories appeared in print. He tried approaching Maxim Gorky for a recommendation but the proletarian classic found Krzhizhanovsky’s brilliant mind and fantastic erudition too much for working class tastes and refused to support him – another case of “woe from wit”. Only in the early perestroika times was Krzhizhanovky finally published to the delight of Russian literature lovers, who immediately saw that here was another great Russian writer.
The very discovery of Krzhizhanovky’s manuscripts was extraordinary: a young scholar specializing in the arts of the 1920s was working in the literary archives on a completely unrelated theme and happened to catch a mention of an unknown name, whom the then distinguished critic called “a writer-visionary, an unsung genius”. The scholar was intrigued because he thought he knew that period inside out. He did not have to look far: in the same archives he found a thick folder with 3,000 pages of typed text waiting to be discovered – it had been there for almost three decades, since Krzhizhanovsky’s wife deposited the folder there after his death. When the first book came out in 1989 people were stunned, it was too good to be true. Since then his complete works have been published and re-published, and translated into foreign languages. I’m proud that Glas was the first to publish a Krzhizhanovsky book in English and inspired publishers in other countries to translate his works.
His remarkable stories are noted for a boundless imagination, wry humour and breathtaking irony, depicting “something aberrant, which is strongly rooted in something true, with a unique mixture of heresy and logic.” In short, there is nothing like it.
Krzhizhanovsky made his own lonely way through literature; he was one of those doomed literary innovators who ran in his lifetime into a brick wall of suspicion and outright hostility by the authorities and unquestionable adoration by posterity. Unlike so many other writers of the time, Krzhizhanovsky did not disappear into the Gulag. Instead, frustration and rejection pushed him into poverty and alcoholism.
He was also a Shakespeare scholar and his essays on the subject are still relevant. Reading Shakespeare "I felt that I had a friend who could protect me from the metaphysical delusion."
Krzhizhanovsky’s fiction has been brilliantly translated by Joanne Turnbull who was awarded several prizes for her work. After the Glas edition of his “Seven Stories” five books have already been published by the NYRB Classics which specializes in translated world classics. These books are not to be missed.
A copy of the Glas edition of Krzhizhanovsky’s "Seven Stories" (in English) is available on loan from the SRF Library.
Russian Christmas
Natasha Perova, Glas
Kolyada, kutia and Ded Moroz
It may seem ridiculous that in Russia the Christmas holiday season starts when the festivities are long over in the West. It is even more ridiculous that our winter holidays happen in reverse order: first we celebrate New Year's Eve on 31 December (when believers are supposed to be fasting before Orthodox Christmas), then Christmas on 7 January (now an official holiday), and then what we call Old New Year on 13 January. The thing is that the Russian Orthodox Church is still using the old Julian calendar and not the Gregorian one used in the West and adopted by Soviet Russia in 1918. The decision of the church to adhere to the old calendar was a kind of protest at the time and now it is too late and would confuse churchgoers even more..
Christmas was banned by the Soviets and until the 1930s there was no official winter holiday. Later New Year's Eve was declared a public holiday and celebrated with all the trappings of Christmas. It was only in 1991, with the downfall of the USSR, that Christmas was restored to its former status.
Curiously, with the coming of glasnost in the late 1980s it suddenly transpired that most communists, even presidents and high-ranking officials, were devout Christians all along. For many ordinary people in the post-perestroika dislocation the church represented something solid in a world of crumbling ideals.
The ban on religion in post-revolutionary Russia and the persecutions of the 1920s led to the imprisonment and executions of tens of thousands of priests and believers. No wonder that few Russians today remember the old Christmas rites. Apart from the partying the one ritual which many people are keen to observe is the Mass held on the night of 6 January, the Orthodox Christmas Eve. The main service is held in the huge Cathedral of Christ the Saviour not far from the Kremlin, conducted by the Patriarch and attended by the President, top public figures, and many celebrities from the world of arts.
Worshippers are supposed to fast on Christmas Eve until the first star appears. Then the feasting begins. There should be 12 dishes on the table, one for each month. The main dish is a special porridge called kutya. It is made of grain, usually wheat or rice, symbolizing hope and immortality, and contains honey and poppy seeds which are meant to ensure happiness and success. The kutya is eaten from a common dish as a mark of unity. Other dishes include various pies and dumplings, roast suckling pig or goose, various pickles and of course vodka. This is also a night for fortune telling. The most popular method is to pour molten wax into water and guess the future by interpreting the thickening outline it forms. Alternatively you can put lighted candles before a mirror in a darkened room and wait patiently for the image of the future to appear in the looking-glass.
Another feature of Russian Christmas is kolyada: house to house carol singing and the sharing of good wishes for the New Year. It's a little like Halloween with young people going around in carnival costumes asking for treats and money. Most of the carols have rustic rather than religious themes as the custom has more to do with the old Pagan tradition marking the passing of the winter solstice. This tradition is followed mostly in the countryside.
One aspect of the Russian Christmas, which is markedly different is Grandfather Frost. He looks very much like Santa Claus: a red coat with white fur cuffs and collar and a long white beard. But Grandfather Frost, or Ded Moroz is accompanied on his journeys by Snegurochka, a young Snow Maiden always clad in white. Grandfather Frost survived the seven decades of Communism and is now being widely commercialized in Russia. You can arrange, through one of the numerous Christmas agencies, for Grandfather Frost to visit you for half an hour to play with your children and give them presents bought by you beforehand. Since 1998 the official residence of Grandfather Frost was opened in the town of Veliky Ustyug in northern Russia. His estate includes a banya (steam sauna) with a swimming pool, a museum, workshops for toys, a post office and a souvenir shop. The place is a popular tourist attraction.
According to a poll eight out of ten Russians celebrate Christmas on 7 January and a significant number also celebrate it on 24-25 December. So the birth of Christ is celebrated twice, on two different days. The more the merrier, you might say.
18 December 2017
Christmas was banned by the Soviets and until the 1930s there was no official winter holiday. Later New Year's Eve was declared a public holiday and celebrated with all the trappings of Christmas. It was only in 1991, with the downfall of the USSR, that Christmas was restored to its former status.
Curiously, with the coming of glasnost in the late 1980s it suddenly transpired that most communists, even presidents and high-ranking officials, were devout Christians all along. For many ordinary people in the post-perestroika dislocation the church represented something solid in a world of crumbling ideals.
The ban on religion in post-revolutionary Russia and the persecutions of the 1920s led to the imprisonment and executions of tens of thousands of priests and believers. No wonder that few Russians today remember the old Christmas rites. Apart from the partying the one ritual which many people are keen to observe is the Mass held on the night of 6 January, the Orthodox Christmas Eve. The main service is held in the huge Cathedral of Christ the Saviour not far from the Kremlin, conducted by the Patriarch and attended by the President, top public figures, and many celebrities from the world of arts.
Worshippers are supposed to fast on Christmas Eve until the first star appears. Then the feasting begins. There should be 12 dishes on the table, one for each month. The main dish is a special porridge called kutya. It is made of grain, usually wheat or rice, symbolizing hope and immortality, and contains honey and poppy seeds which are meant to ensure happiness and success. The kutya is eaten from a common dish as a mark of unity. Other dishes include various pies and dumplings, roast suckling pig or goose, various pickles and of course vodka. This is also a night for fortune telling. The most popular method is to pour molten wax into water and guess the future by interpreting the thickening outline it forms. Alternatively you can put lighted candles before a mirror in a darkened room and wait patiently for the image of the future to appear in the looking-glass.
Another feature of Russian Christmas is kolyada: house to house carol singing and the sharing of good wishes for the New Year. It's a little like Halloween with young people going around in carnival costumes asking for treats and money. Most of the carols have rustic rather than religious themes as the custom has more to do with the old Pagan tradition marking the passing of the winter solstice. This tradition is followed mostly in the countryside.
One aspect of the Russian Christmas, which is markedly different is Grandfather Frost. He looks very much like Santa Claus: a red coat with white fur cuffs and collar and a long white beard. But Grandfather Frost, or Ded Moroz is accompanied on his journeys by Snegurochka, a young Snow Maiden always clad in white. Grandfather Frost survived the seven decades of Communism and is now being widely commercialized in Russia. You can arrange, through one of the numerous Christmas agencies, for Grandfather Frost to visit you for half an hour to play with your children and give them presents bought by you beforehand. Since 1998 the official residence of Grandfather Frost was opened in the town of Veliky Ustyug in northern Russia. His estate includes a banya (steam sauna) with a swimming pool, a museum, workshops for toys, a post office and a souvenir shop. The place is a popular tourist attraction.
According to a poll eight out of ten Russians celebrate Christmas on 7 January and a significant number also celebrate it on 24-25 December. So the birth of Christ is celebrated twice, on two different days. The more the merrier, you might say.
18 December 2017
The Beauty and the Horrors of Solovki
Natasha Perova, Glas
Юрий Бродский, «Соловки. Лабиринт преображений». Издательство «Новая газета», Москва 2017
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Yuri Brodsky.
Source: Novaya Gazeta
Yuri Brodsky, a professional art photographer and writer, has recently been awarded the prestigious “Prosvetitel” (Enlightener) prize for his book Solovki: Labyrinth of Transformations published by Novaya Gazeta. This is Brodsky’s second book on the Solovki Archipelago, which he has studied for more than forty years. Solovki is notorious for its 15th century monastery which was turned in the 16th century into the most forbidding prison by Ivan the Terrible; and for the first post-revolutionary labour camp, which set the example for other such camps around Russia, and was called “the mother of gulags” by Solzhenitsyn.
I know that I’m expected to write about books which exist in English translation. But in this case I can’t help making an exception for two reasons. First, because half of the 450 page book consists of Brodsky’s photographs and pictures of notable individuals imprisoned in Solovki - some 500 pictures telling their own graphic story that need no translation. Second, because I find this book a most suitable visual illustration for the centenary of the Russian revolution which is marked this year.
Brodsky tries to be dispassionate in his description of Solovki’s history unfolding amidst its majestic nature, and of its present fight between the defenders of the gulag memorial and the greedy aspirations of the church. He says: “What gorgeous beauty nature has created there and what hell inside this beauty man has created.”
The monks’ prayers and the prisoners’ curses rose to the skies simultaneously day and night. The monks served as executioners and jailors, and nothing much changed after the revolution. Both the Whites and the Reds exiled their opponents to Solovki during the Civil War. They were received by the monastery administration against a receipt. Then came the Bolsheviks who organized a POW camp there. From 1923 it was turned into a “special prison camp” which officially existed until the end of 1939. Many of the early Bolshevik jailors ended up as prisoners there. The chiefs of the prison camps were inevitably killed one after another, often without any obvious guilt, simply for “loss of Party and Cheka vigilance”. More than a million prisoners served time on Solovki, including those who organised and administered the camp. After each change of management the entire documentation was liquidated. Prisoners were dying in hundreds, mostly of hyperthermia, felling logs in severe winter cold – in the 1930s Russia exported not oil, as today, but timber and the prisoners’ free labour allowed Russia to export timber at dumping prices. The slogan on the main gates of the Solovki labour camp said: “Through Labour to Freedom!”. In 1934 it was borrowed by the Third Reich who translated it as “Arbeit macht frei”.
Brodsky is trying to understand why the phenomenon of Solovki happened in Russia, why gulags became possible in this country and specifically in Solovki. He comes to the conclusion that the Moscow form of Orthodoxy is partly responsible for it, not Orthodox Christianity as such, but precisely its Moscow form, meaning that Orthodoxy was created in the interests of the Moscow rulers and Solovki has become a place of self-identification of Russia as a whole.
The situation persists to this day. The monastery authorities are trying to get rid of the museum of gulag victims and to suppress any mention of them. The monastery wishes to monopolize all tourist activities on Solovki. In fact they don’t need secular residents and tourists there but only monks and pilgrims – they want to be the sole owners of the island. True, monks came there first but the inmates of the prison camp outnumbered monastery residents by at least ten times for five centuries.
The monastery authorities have long been trying to stop Yuri Brodsky’s research and when his new book came out they declared it insulting to the church because Brodsky talks, among other things, about the monks’ collaboration with the GPU and their unsavoury role in the running of the prison and the labour camp. Now signatures are being collected against the author and letters come in threatening his physical liquidation. Brodsky is a brave man and believes in the cause of defending the memory of the innocent victims of the Solovki gulag. But watching the outburst of religious radicalism in Russia today you start fearing the worst.
7 November 2017
I know that I’m expected to write about books which exist in English translation. But in this case I can’t help making an exception for two reasons. First, because half of the 450 page book consists of Brodsky’s photographs and pictures of notable individuals imprisoned in Solovki - some 500 pictures telling their own graphic story that need no translation. Second, because I find this book a most suitable visual illustration for the centenary of the Russian revolution which is marked this year.
Brodsky tries to be dispassionate in his description of Solovki’s history unfolding amidst its majestic nature, and of its present fight between the defenders of the gulag memorial and the greedy aspirations of the church. He says: “What gorgeous beauty nature has created there and what hell inside this beauty man has created.”
The monks’ prayers and the prisoners’ curses rose to the skies simultaneously day and night. The monks served as executioners and jailors, and nothing much changed after the revolution. Both the Whites and the Reds exiled their opponents to Solovki during the Civil War. They were received by the monastery administration against a receipt. Then came the Bolsheviks who organized a POW camp there. From 1923 it was turned into a “special prison camp” which officially existed until the end of 1939. Many of the early Bolshevik jailors ended up as prisoners there. The chiefs of the prison camps were inevitably killed one after another, often without any obvious guilt, simply for “loss of Party and Cheka vigilance”. More than a million prisoners served time on Solovki, including those who organised and administered the camp. After each change of management the entire documentation was liquidated. Prisoners were dying in hundreds, mostly of hyperthermia, felling logs in severe winter cold – in the 1930s Russia exported not oil, as today, but timber and the prisoners’ free labour allowed Russia to export timber at dumping prices. The slogan on the main gates of the Solovki labour camp said: “Through Labour to Freedom!”. In 1934 it was borrowed by the Third Reich who translated it as “Arbeit macht frei”.
Brodsky is trying to understand why the phenomenon of Solovki happened in Russia, why gulags became possible in this country and specifically in Solovki. He comes to the conclusion that the Moscow form of Orthodoxy is partly responsible for it, not Orthodox Christianity as such, but precisely its Moscow form, meaning that Orthodoxy was created in the interests of the Moscow rulers and Solovki has become a place of self-identification of Russia as a whole.
The situation persists to this day. The monastery authorities are trying to get rid of the museum of gulag victims and to suppress any mention of them. The monastery wishes to monopolize all tourist activities on Solovki. In fact they don’t need secular residents and tourists there but only monks and pilgrims – they want to be the sole owners of the island. True, monks came there first but the inmates of the prison camp outnumbered monastery residents by at least ten times for five centuries.
The monastery authorities have long been trying to stop Yuri Brodsky’s research and when his new book came out they declared it insulting to the church because Brodsky talks, among other things, about the monks’ collaboration with the GPU and their unsavoury role in the running of the prison and the labour camp. Now signatures are being collected against the author and letters come in threatening his physical liquidation. Brodsky is a brave man and believes in the cause of defending the memory of the innocent victims of the Solovki gulag. But watching the outburst of religious radicalism in Russia today you start fearing the worst.
7 November 2017
Overlooked Translations: Irina Muravyova and Victor Beilis
Natasha Perova, Glas
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Russian literature lovers often complain that too few books are translated into English. This makes every translated title particularly valuable and worthy of attention. Regrettably, small publishers don’t have the funds to promote their books properly. So people hear of the well-advertised books while the rest remain unnoticed. I thought readers of the SRF site, who follow Russian literary news, would appreciate additional information on Russian books available in English translation. I assume that you know all the famous books, so I’d like to draw your attention to some overlooked books which might be just as good or better. This time I’ll spotlight Irina Muravyova’s Day of the Angel (translated by John Dewey) and Victor Beilis’s Death of a Prototype (translated by Leo Shtutin) - both are available from Amazon and other platforms.
Irina Muravyova’s writing stands out for her striking contrasts between unfashionable sentimentality and a sharp sober vision of life. She names Tolstoy as her main influence in rendering major historical events which crush human lives and affect personal relationships. Day of the Angel follows the fates and fortunes of a Russian émigré family who had to flee from the Russian Revolution. Anastasia accompanies her husband Patrick, an idealistic British journalist, to Moscow in the 1930s, where he reports on the terrible famine caused by Stalin's collectivization campaign in which millions died. Here they encounter the notorious historical character Walter Duranty (awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1934), a corrupt and unscrupulous British journalist in the pay of the Kremlin who disseminated reports denying the famine. Matters are complicated when Anastasia finds herself physically attracted to Duranty, leading to a disastrous liaison which wrecks her marriage. Published in English, French, Arabic, Serbian, Slovak, and Hungarian, the novel is somewhat reminiscent of Doctor Zhivago. Irina Muravyova is a prolific author well known and appreciated in Russia for her unusual angles of vision and musical language verging on poetry.
"A recognized talent in Russian literature, Muravyova should garner praise among English-language readers with her brisk and dynamic work." - Publishers Weekly
Victor Beilis’s novel is set in Moscow’s artistic circles of the 1990s. Its members are engaged in mutual bantering mixed with serious discussions of art and poetry as well as analyzing two basic principles of human existence: male and female. There are flashbacks to the 19th-century Russia, Italy, and France, literary allusions to German poetry, Italian Mannerism, and much else. And above all, a mysterious portrait of an unknown beautiful woman runs as a red thread through the story, affecting the fates of the characters. The above provide a background to a love story whose heroine figures in various guises, she is viewed from different angles and by different individuals. As the story unfolds the reader becomes increasingly aware that the woman featuring in various love affairs must be the same person. Finally a collective portrait is created of a striking and talented woman loved by several no less talented men, who all depict her as a personification of love itself. Beilis proclaims a person’s private life as the supreme value considering all the other factors as less important. A former scholar of African folklore he traces human archetypes and is fascinated by mythological thinking and ritual features in human behaviour. Tatyana Tolstaya described his prose as “philological fiction”. And its translator Leo Shtutin remarks that “this novel not only challenges but also rewards the reader.”
September 2017
Irina Muravyova’s writing stands out for her striking contrasts between unfashionable sentimentality and a sharp sober vision of life. She names Tolstoy as her main influence in rendering major historical events which crush human lives and affect personal relationships. Day of the Angel follows the fates and fortunes of a Russian émigré family who had to flee from the Russian Revolution. Anastasia accompanies her husband Patrick, an idealistic British journalist, to Moscow in the 1930s, where he reports on the terrible famine caused by Stalin's collectivization campaign in which millions died. Here they encounter the notorious historical character Walter Duranty (awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1934), a corrupt and unscrupulous British journalist in the pay of the Kremlin who disseminated reports denying the famine. Matters are complicated when Anastasia finds herself physically attracted to Duranty, leading to a disastrous liaison which wrecks her marriage. Published in English, French, Arabic, Serbian, Slovak, and Hungarian, the novel is somewhat reminiscent of Doctor Zhivago. Irina Muravyova is a prolific author well known and appreciated in Russia for her unusual angles of vision and musical language verging on poetry.
"A recognized talent in Russian literature, Muravyova should garner praise among English-language readers with her brisk and dynamic work." - Publishers Weekly
Victor Beilis’s novel is set in Moscow’s artistic circles of the 1990s. Its members are engaged in mutual bantering mixed with serious discussions of art and poetry as well as analyzing two basic principles of human existence: male and female. There are flashbacks to the 19th-century Russia, Italy, and France, literary allusions to German poetry, Italian Mannerism, and much else. And above all, a mysterious portrait of an unknown beautiful woman runs as a red thread through the story, affecting the fates of the characters. The above provide a background to a love story whose heroine figures in various guises, she is viewed from different angles and by different individuals. As the story unfolds the reader becomes increasingly aware that the woman featuring in various love affairs must be the same person. Finally a collective portrait is created of a striking and talented woman loved by several no less talented men, who all depict her as a personification of love itself. Beilis proclaims a person’s private life as the supreme value considering all the other factors as less important. A former scholar of African folklore he traces human archetypes and is fascinated by mythological thinking and ritual features in human behaviour. Tatyana Tolstaya described his prose as “philological fiction”. And its translator Leo Shtutin remarks that “this novel not only challenges but also rewards the reader.”
September 2017
“Non/fiction” in Distress
Natasha Perova, Glas
Compared to the more notorious events happening right and left in Russia today the threat to the existence of our special book fair for high-quality fiction and nonfiction, known as “Non/fiction Book Fair”, may not seem too important – after all it is intended specifically for a serious readership, that is, a relatively small group of intellectuals. I care personally for this wonderful book event as I’ve been on its expert committee since the very beginning and, together with my more distinguished colleagues, contributed much time and effort to its development. It is the only regular book event in Russia which is truly international and truly intellectual. One could say it has become a veritable parade of national intellectual achievements, a national asset, according to general opinion, which should be preserved. It is here that foreign publishers come, if they do, to get acquainted with publishing news. Last year Great Britain was the guest of honour at “Non/fiction” bringing a large group of noted British authors and organising many unforgettable events to introduce contemporary British culture to us.
“Non/fiction” book fair was founded in 1999 and was held annually in the Central House of Artists. The building belonged, until recently, to the International Confederation of Artists Unions, the successor of the USSR Artists Union which ceased to exist after the collapse of the USSR itself. But in 2016 the Confederation was accused of all sorts of financial violations, including the unlawful sales of paintings from their huge art collection at Sotheby`s and thus earning two million euros. The Supreme Court found them guilty and ruled to close the Confederation. It came as a shock to all concerned. It is not clear yet who will now own the building and whether the “Non/fiction” book fair will have a venue this year at all (it opens at the end of November.) The Central House of Artists has been sharing this spacious modern building with the State Tretyakov Gallery who are rumoured to be given the whole building, and who may not be interested in hosting the book fair which has nothing to do with their activities.
There were several attempts before to destroy the building and construct something more commercial in its place (the location is extremely attractive – centrally situated on the bank of the Moscow River and facing “Park Kultury”, a popular amusement park) but each time the Moscow intelligentsia rallied round to defend this important cultural centre, a popular meeting place for art lovers. They might not have succeeded, of course, had it not been for a succession of economic crises which compelled the authorities to give up large-scale construction plans for the time being. And now this!
The organisers of the “Non/fiction” book fair are determined to hold it this coming November as planned, but what happens next they don’t know. It is so easy to destroy a successful project and so difficult to re-start it and keep it up.
August 2017
“Non/fiction” book fair was founded in 1999 and was held annually in the Central House of Artists. The building belonged, until recently, to the International Confederation of Artists Unions, the successor of the USSR Artists Union which ceased to exist after the collapse of the USSR itself. But in 2016 the Confederation was accused of all sorts of financial violations, including the unlawful sales of paintings from their huge art collection at Sotheby`s and thus earning two million euros. The Supreme Court found them guilty and ruled to close the Confederation. It came as a shock to all concerned. It is not clear yet who will now own the building and whether the “Non/fiction” book fair will have a venue this year at all (it opens at the end of November.) The Central House of Artists has been sharing this spacious modern building with the State Tretyakov Gallery who are rumoured to be given the whole building, and who may not be interested in hosting the book fair which has nothing to do with their activities.
There were several attempts before to destroy the building and construct something more commercial in its place (the location is extremely attractive – centrally situated on the bank of the Moscow River and facing “Park Kultury”, a popular amusement park) but each time the Moscow intelligentsia rallied round to defend this important cultural centre, a popular meeting place for art lovers. They might not have succeeded, of course, had it not been for a succession of economic crises which compelled the authorities to give up large-scale construction plans for the time being. And now this!
The organisers of the “Non/fiction” book fair are determined to hold it this coming November as planned, but what happens next they don’t know. It is so easy to destroy a successful project and so difficult to re-start it and keep it up.
August 2017
A New Name: Alexei Vinokurov
Natasha Perova, Glas
Each time I find an outstanding text in the never-ending flow of manuscripts coming into my email inbox I experience mixed feelings: a hunter’s joy at discovering something worthwhile, on the one hand, but on the other, a premonition of many rejections before the text is appreciated by some publisher. It has happened to me so many times before that I am almost reconciled to the conservatism of people’s reading habits, and the human mind in general. And I am mentally prepared for the long process of persuading publishers of the merits of the new work. I remember how in the early 1990s publishers in all countries unanimously rejected Victor Pelevin, because his works were “too immersed in Soviet experience which our readers will never understand.” Previously, Russian publishers rejected his first novel “Omon Ra” (now translated into many foreign languages and still in print) because they simply saw nothg outstanding in this gem of a novel which is both funny and frightening, and sums up any totalitarian experience so aptly. Look at him now – he is probably the most widely-read Russian author outside Russia. And I can’t forget the fierce fight among the Russian Booker jury members in 1995 when I was on the jury and so was Martin Dewhirst who had the same literary preferences as I. The then young authors, whom we both supported and managed to get into the short list, were hardly known even in Russia, so Martin’s appreciation was completely objective. They have all become distinguished authors since then with many titles and prizes to their name: Yuri Buyda, Peter Aleshkovsky, and Alexei Slapovsky. The first two are available in English translation as well as other languages, and Slapovsky has been a success in France. There are many other examples I could give – it’s almost a rule: those who stand out are never accepted from the start.
One of my current favourites, Alexei Vinokurov, is not well known yet although he has been highly acclaimed by critics and literature lovers who had the chance to read him. Suffice it to mention that Znamya magazine awarded two top prizes to his novel People of the Black Dragon. Prior to the magazine publication I proposed this same novel to publishers and, expectedly, it was rejected, just like his other novel, Guardian Angels, about the war conflict in Donbas. I was not surprised about the rejection of the latter novel and quickly sent it to the fine Ukrainian publishing house Fabula who grabbed it enthusiastically and have already published it in both Russian and Ukrainian. But the novel People of the Black Dragon (Black Dragon is the Chinese name for the Amur, a river in the Far East, marking the border between China and the Russian Federation) speaks of such seemingly harmless things as a hard path towards co-existence of such culturally different people as Russians, Chinese, and Jews - it should have acceptable for any publisher. But Vinokurov’s critical mind and metaphorical treatment of his material, fresh and novel, put publishers on guard. The authority of the Znamya prizes made publishers reconsider and this time they liked the novel, published it right away and even nominated it for some prizes. However they haven’t accepted his subsequent novel, Dark Summits, which is about the corrupting force of absolute and lasting power invariably transforming a perfectly normal person into a tyrant. The allusions in this novel are too flagrant, so the publishers’ rejection was predictable. I’ve already sent synopses of Vinokurov’s three novels to quite a few foreign publishers, and the response was “too immersed in Russian experiences which our readers will never understand.” I’ll continue proposing Vinokurov in the hope of finding an independent-minded publisher who will appreciate his inventive plots, vivid imagery, and original angle of vision. This month Vinokurov, a professional Sinologist, also published an adorable travelogue on modern China (China Deciphered) which I recommend to anyone who is still perplexed with this part of the world. The witty, observant, and perspicacious book is a pleasure to read and provide many clues to the inscrutable Chinese culture.
I know that most readers of SRF blogs don’t read Russian (although some do, I think) and have to wait till the book comes out in translation. But maybe someone who reads this short note works in publishing, or he/she knows a publisher interested in Russian literature, and will be willing to recommend a new name. This is an effective way to help build bridges between cultures and thus increase mutual understanding.
August 2017
One of my current favourites, Alexei Vinokurov, is not well known yet although he has been highly acclaimed by critics and literature lovers who had the chance to read him. Suffice it to mention that Znamya magazine awarded two top prizes to his novel People of the Black Dragon. Prior to the magazine publication I proposed this same novel to publishers and, expectedly, it was rejected, just like his other novel, Guardian Angels, about the war conflict in Donbas. I was not surprised about the rejection of the latter novel and quickly sent it to the fine Ukrainian publishing house Fabula who grabbed it enthusiastically and have already published it in both Russian and Ukrainian. But the novel People of the Black Dragon (Black Dragon is the Chinese name for the Amur, a river in the Far East, marking the border between China and the Russian Federation) speaks of such seemingly harmless things as a hard path towards co-existence of such culturally different people as Russians, Chinese, and Jews - it should have acceptable for any publisher. But Vinokurov’s critical mind and metaphorical treatment of his material, fresh and novel, put publishers on guard. The authority of the Znamya prizes made publishers reconsider and this time they liked the novel, published it right away and even nominated it for some prizes. However they haven’t accepted his subsequent novel, Dark Summits, which is about the corrupting force of absolute and lasting power invariably transforming a perfectly normal person into a tyrant. The allusions in this novel are too flagrant, so the publishers’ rejection was predictable. I’ve already sent synopses of Vinokurov’s three novels to quite a few foreign publishers, and the response was “too immersed in Russian experiences which our readers will never understand.” I’ll continue proposing Vinokurov in the hope of finding an independent-minded publisher who will appreciate his inventive plots, vivid imagery, and original angle of vision. This month Vinokurov, a professional Sinologist, also published an adorable travelogue on modern China (China Deciphered) which I recommend to anyone who is still perplexed with this part of the world. The witty, observant, and perspicacious book is a pleasure to read and provide many clues to the inscrutable Chinese culture.
I know that most readers of SRF blogs don’t read Russian (although some do, I think) and have to wait till the book comes out in translation. But maybe someone who reads this short note works in publishing, or he/she knows a publisher interested in Russian literature, and will be willing to recommend a new name. This is an effective way to help build bridges between cultures and thus increase mutual understanding.
August 2017
Paean for Ludmila Ulitskaya from Natasha Perova
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Glasgow University Russian Dept recently posted on Facebook (Eastern and Central European Cultures at SMLC, University of Glasgow, 10 July 2017):
"We have some fantastic news about our centenary: thanks to the help of the Institut Perevoda and of the Russian Consulate in Edinburgh, we will have the honour of having Ludmila Ulitskaya with us! More details to follow over the next weeks!" The university is celebrating the centenary of the Russian Dept in September. Ludmila Ulitskaya will be speaking at Glasgow University on 15 Sept and at Edinburgh University on 18 Sept. More information: Talks and conferences. |
Among the authors published in Glas in its early years Ludmila Ulitskaya is one of those I’m particularly proud of and I follow her success with much satisfaction. Her literary career is a bit of a Cinderella story. She started writing rather late in life, when she was about 50, and already by 60 she was an international celebrity. But I met her when she had only several unpublished stories to her name and was finishing her famous short novel Sonechka. Some years earlier she submitted her stories to Novy Mir, the then leading literary magazine, but they never even responded. In the early 1990s she happened to meet the Russian-born Gallimard editor Semyon Mirsky who loved her writing at first sight. When Sonechka was awarded the Medici Prize for foreign fiction in France the Novy Mir editors called Ulitskaya to reproach her for her “unpatriotic” action in sending her texts to France before showing them to the magazine. “Look on your shelves,” she retorted, “you’ll find them there – they’ve been sitting with you for almost seven years.”
Since then Ulitskaya has received many prizes, both in Russia and abroad. Her novels Sonechka and Medea and her Children were shortlisted for the Russian Booker, Kukotsky’s Enigma won the Russian Booker Prize. Her prizewinning novels also include The Big Green Tent, Sincerely Yours, Shurik, Daniel Stein, Interpreter, and Yakov´s Ladder (the last two won Russia’s topmost prize: the Big Book.) And most of her novels have been published in many countries.
A geneticist by training Ulitskaya has an extraordinary insight and understanding of human nature. Her prose is always wise and witty without being accusatory or condescending. There have never been heroines in literature who were less heroic while at the same time being so striking and psychologically precise. In her intelligent narratives human dignity triumphs against all odds over misery and oppression.
And yet her first literary efforts published in Russia were met with hostility or simply ignored, as is often the case here with works by independent-minded authors who have a distinctive voice and critical eye for detail. Her Funeral Party, devoted to Russian emigre life in the USA, was the first novel which was noticed in Russia and reviewed positively, but only after it came out in America. As her success in other countries grew, especially in France and Germany, she was increasingly appreciated at home. Today she is a bestselling author of fine fiction.
In the UK she was noticed almost at once thanks to the competent and elegant translations by Arch Tait. Readers of Glas invariably singled her out in all our collections. The press has been generous with their praise. Suffice it to quote from Lesley Chamberlain’s review of Sonechka in The Observer:"Ulitskaya's fresh, delicately sensual writing, full of the joys and pitfalls of every day, is a world away from gloomy, fear-driven reflections on the plight of human beings under the Soviet heel. Sonechka, twisting and turning unexpectedly among a small group of sympathetically drawn characters and across the generations, is in the end a tribute to the civilizing, humanly sustaining power of reading. With Ulitskaya, contemporary Russian fiction rediscovers a consoling and universal normality."
Or from the World Literature Today: “Ludmila Ulitskaya’s writings combine telling sociological detail with acute psychological portraiture. Her heroines contend with trying, at times even agonizing circumstances in a manner that evokes compassion and admiration without bathos. It is a pleasure to enter Ulitskaya’s fictional world.”
Ulitskaya is very much like her books: wise and witty. This small woman fearlessly defends human rights and always speaks out when the truth is trampled.
July 2017
Since then Ulitskaya has received many prizes, both in Russia and abroad. Her novels Sonechka and Medea and her Children were shortlisted for the Russian Booker, Kukotsky’s Enigma won the Russian Booker Prize. Her prizewinning novels also include The Big Green Tent, Sincerely Yours, Shurik, Daniel Stein, Interpreter, and Yakov´s Ladder (the last two won Russia’s topmost prize: the Big Book.) And most of her novels have been published in many countries.
A geneticist by training Ulitskaya has an extraordinary insight and understanding of human nature. Her prose is always wise and witty without being accusatory or condescending. There have never been heroines in literature who were less heroic while at the same time being so striking and psychologically precise. In her intelligent narratives human dignity triumphs against all odds over misery and oppression.
And yet her first literary efforts published in Russia were met with hostility or simply ignored, as is often the case here with works by independent-minded authors who have a distinctive voice and critical eye for detail. Her Funeral Party, devoted to Russian emigre life in the USA, was the first novel which was noticed in Russia and reviewed positively, but only after it came out in America. As her success in other countries grew, especially in France and Germany, she was increasingly appreciated at home. Today she is a bestselling author of fine fiction.
In the UK she was noticed almost at once thanks to the competent and elegant translations by Arch Tait. Readers of Glas invariably singled her out in all our collections. The press has been generous with their praise. Suffice it to quote from Lesley Chamberlain’s review of Sonechka in The Observer:"Ulitskaya's fresh, delicately sensual writing, full of the joys and pitfalls of every day, is a world away from gloomy, fear-driven reflections on the plight of human beings under the Soviet heel. Sonechka, twisting and turning unexpectedly among a small group of sympathetically drawn characters and across the generations, is in the end a tribute to the civilizing, humanly sustaining power of reading. With Ulitskaya, contemporary Russian fiction rediscovers a consoling and universal normality."
Or from the World Literature Today: “Ludmila Ulitskaya’s writings combine telling sociological detail with acute psychological portraiture. Her heroines contend with trying, at times even agonizing circumstances in a manner that evokes compassion and admiration without bathos. It is a pleasure to enter Ulitskaya’s fictional world.”
Ulitskaya is very much like her books: wise and witty. This small woman fearlessly defends human rights and always speaks out when the truth is trampled.
July 2017
How can translators help
Natasha Perova, Glas
The prestige of the translation profession has grown markedly in the past decade. And rightly so. Translation is crucial for international cultural exchanges, which are, in their turn, crucial for preserving at least a semblance of peace in this world. Translators’ role as “post-horses of culture”, to quote Chekhov, cannot be over-estimated. This profession makes translators citizens of a cross-cultural space where they are busy building bridges between different national cultures whether they are aware of it or not. Often the cultural gaps are so wide, or simply insurmountable, that translators have to be double-inventive to the point that they practically become co-authors of the translated work, and should be recognized as such.
Moreover, they are helping to put right the history of 20th century Russian literature which has been misrepresented for a long time. It should be noted that in the post-perestroika years many formerly banned or overlooked Russian classics were finally published and this completely transformed the literary map of Russia. Add to this the new works written today and you get a largely different picture from the one presented in textbooks. Regrettably, most of these newly found treasures remain unavailable for the non-Russian reader. And here again the role of literary translators is invaluable. In the last 25 years that I’ve been promoting contemporary Russian literature I saw the rise and fall of interest for it. The highest interest came with the perestroika and it has never risen so high again, and probably never will. Unfortunately the political situation plays a role here, but all the more reason to discover and spread the news about the positive aspects of a culture you work with.
What can translators do in practical terms? They can be constantly on the lookout for interesting books and offer them to publishers they know. To do this a translated excerpt of about 10-15 pages is necessary, but surely if you like a book you won’t mind spending a couple of weekends to translate an episode from it as a sample: it won’t take too much of your time. But then you’ll probably continue translating the selected author for many more years and share his/her success. Many translators did just that. Andrew Bromfield translated excerpts from Pelevin long before the latter became an international celebrity, and since then he’s been Pelevin’s main translator. Robert Chandler introduced Platonov, Grossman and Teffi having first produced translations of their works on his own initiative. Arch Tait translated Ulitskaya when she was still little known even in her home country. And Joanne Turnbull gave Krzhizhanovsky to the English reader. It is noteworthy that the first English translation of a Krzhizhanovsky story, published in Glas 8, went unnoticed because the translation, made by a retired Slavist, was rather colorless. But then Joanne translated a collection of Krzhizhanovsky stories for Glas (No. 39) and everybody gasped. Since then Krzhizhanovsky has been published all over the world while Joanne translated several more books by this author of genius for the NYRB Classics and each won her a prize. This is a good example of the power and importance of the translator’s talent.
Translators can also share information about Russian books in blogs and social networks, at conferences and in the press, and thus create awareness of the wealth of literary talent in Russia, regarding this work as a mission. There are not so many literary agents dealing with new Russian writing, their efforts don’t bring them much remuneration because translated literary fiction is not seen as commercially viable in the West. This is why what translators can contribute to the process is so important, and can be really rewarding. We all want to do something for the heart and to feel good. Literary agents, including me, will really appreciate translators’ help in creating sample translations. Occasionally I get such voluntary help and it always leads to something constructive both for the author and translator. Translators look up the list of authors on my site and select the one which seems like “their cup of tea”. The latest such offer came from Melanie Moore, an excellent literary translator, who wanted to work with Liza Alexandrova-Zorina, one of the most talented and sharpest young authors today whose themes and manner were likened to Zvyagintsev’s films. I have high hopes for this collaboration.
The language barrier remains part of the cultural barrier which exists between Russia and the West. There is not enough awareness of this situation on both sides, and translations can help in overcoming the problem more than diplomacy or politics. The role of translators in cultural exchanges is crucial – no one else can do what they can.
July 2017
Moreover, they are helping to put right the history of 20th century Russian literature which has been misrepresented for a long time. It should be noted that in the post-perestroika years many formerly banned or overlooked Russian classics were finally published and this completely transformed the literary map of Russia. Add to this the new works written today and you get a largely different picture from the one presented in textbooks. Regrettably, most of these newly found treasures remain unavailable for the non-Russian reader. And here again the role of literary translators is invaluable. In the last 25 years that I’ve been promoting contemporary Russian literature I saw the rise and fall of interest for it. The highest interest came with the perestroika and it has never risen so high again, and probably never will. Unfortunately the political situation plays a role here, but all the more reason to discover and spread the news about the positive aspects of a culture you work with.
What can translators do in practical terms? They can be constantly on the lookout for interesting books and offer them to publishers they know. To do this a translated excerpt of about 10-15 pages is necessary, but surely if you like a book you won’t mind spending a couple of weekends to translate an episode from it as a sample: it won’t take too much of your time. But then you’ll probably continue translating the selected author for many more years and share his/her success. Many translators did just that. Andrew Bromfield translated excerpts from Pelevin long before the latter became an international celebrity, and since then he’s been Pelevin’s main translator. Robert Chandler introduced Platonov, Grossman and Teffi having first produced translations of their works on his own initiative. Arch Tait translated Ulitskaya when she was still little known even in her home country. And Joanne Turnbull gave Krzhizhanovsky to the English reader. It is noteworthy that the first English translation of a Krzhizhanovsky story, published in Glas 8, went unnoticed because the translation, made by a retired Slavist, was rather colorless. But then Joanne translated a collection of Krzhizhanovsky stories for Glas (No. 39) and everybody gasped. Since then Krzhizhanovsky has been published all over the world while Joanne translated several more books by this author of genius for the NYRB Classics and each won her a prize. This is a good example of the power and importance of the translator’s talent.
Translators can also share information about Russian books in blogs and social networks, at conferences and in the press, and thus create awareness of the wealth of literary talent in Russia, regarding this work as a mission. There are not so many literary agents dealing with new Russian writing, their efforts don’t bring them much remuneration because translated literary fiction is not seen as commercially viable in the West. This is why what translators can contribute to the process is so important, and can be really rewarding. We all want to do something for the heart and to feel good. Literary agents, including me, will really appreciate translators’ help in creating sample translations. Occasionally I get such voluntary help and it always leads to something constructive both for the author and translator. Translators look up the list of authors on my site and select the one which seems like “their cup of tea”. The latest such offer came from Melanie Moore, an excellent literary translator, who wanted to work with Liza Alexandrova-Zorina, one of the most talented and sharpest young authors today whose themes and manner were likened to Zvyagintsev’s films. I have high hopes for this collaboration.
The language barrier remains part of the cultural barrier which exists between Russia and the West. There is not enough awareness of this situation on both sides, and translations can help in overcoming the problem more than diplomacy or politics. The role of translators in cultural exchanges is crucial – no one else can do what they can.
July 2017
Russia worries about its image.
Natasha Perova, Glas
Last week I was invited to speak about Russian literature abroad at a seminar on how culture can help improve Russia’s image. There are many such seminars nowadays organized by various institutions: apparently the Russian authorities are beginning to get worried about their image abroad and have decided to consult specialists. The seminar took place at the University of Friendship among Nations which offers higher education to foreign students, mostly from Asia and Africa. I made myself unpopular from the start by pointing out that Russia has a number of images, not one, because there are many Russias and they exist in different worlds projecting different images. It is well known that since the 19th century Russian society was sharply divided into Westerners and Slavophiles, into rich and poor, the educated urban elite and ignorant peasant masses, and these oppositions exist to this day. Thus a single image representing such a big and varied country is simply impossible. Russian classics of the Golden Age are known worldwide, they are being retranslated and reprinted all the time, they are taught at universities and people read them, if they do, as “the image of Russia”. But are they really? Contemporary Russian literature has only a marginal existence abroad, it is published on a very small scale, in most cases by small publishers, provided there is some financial support, and read by Slavists and a small group of Russian literature lovers. However, it is contemporary literature that carries the current image of a nation, its mentality, way of life and customs, and does that much better than any media: it shows people as human beings and brings nations closer together. This is why many countries spend huge funds to promote their cultures. Russia could have borrowed some of their experiences. Great Britain’s Arts Council and British Council provide some good examples of such work. There may be some “tears which are unknown and unseen”, to quote Gogol, but from the outside their promotional activities seem quite effective. I wish we had such programmes in Russia.
We have two foundations which give translation grants to foreign publishers to produce Russian books. But that is nearly not enough. Eager to get published in translation, many Russian authors nowadays get their books translated into English by friends or chance people, often Russians, who produce unreadable translations which fail to achieve the desired effect and only get poor authors into debt. Unaware of the crucial role of translation quality these authors interpret rejections as “hostility against Russia”.
Language barriers and cultural gaps still prevent readers abroad from learning more about real Russia as it appears in real literature, that which will eventually become classical and will be studied at universities and seen as Russia’s image. Meanwhile in order to uphold the present level of interest towards contemporary Russian literature we must work hard to familiarize the world with what is available.
30 May 2017
We have two foundations which give translation grants to foreign publishers to produce Russian books. But that is nearly not enough. Eager to get published in translation, many Russian authors nowadays get their books translated into English by friends or chance people, often Russians, who produce unreadable translations which fail to achieve the desired effect and only get poor authors into debt. Unaware of the crucial role of translation quality these authors interpret rejections as “hostility against Russia”.
Language barriers and cultural gaps still prevent readers abroad from learning more about real Russia as it appears in real literature, that which will eventually become classical and will be studied at universities and seen as Russia’s image. Meanwhile in order to uphold the present level of interest towards contemporary Russian literature we must work hard to familiarize the world with what is available.
30 May 2017
Young Russians Join Protest Movement
Natasha Perova, Glas
Protest rallies and marches are a common sight in the West. But in Russia, they are still new and exciting, especially for those who’ve spent most of their lives under the Soviets. If it were not for the very real danger of being arrested for just being there many more Russians would join protest rallies. Compared to those I’ve seen in the West ours are not so numerous. I remember watching one in London and wondering why people are not afraid to drag along their children and aged relatives in wheelchairs. Obviously they were confident that they were in no danger as long as they behaved peacefully. But that was in pre-terrorist times.
The Russian protest movement had its peak in 2012: suffice it to recall the rallies in Bolotnaya and Sakharov Squares. Nothing was gained and people lost interest in politics and protests: “What’s the point. It’s a waste of time. We can’t change anything.” Quite a few demonstrators arrested then are still serving time and many dissidents have left the country. But with the appearance of the younger generation on the scene things changed: the “anti-corruption” rally on 26 March 2017 was relatively well attended – old-timers were joined by eager young people, even teenagers. They also showed up at the recent rally, on 29 April, organized by “Open Russia”. The crowd looked big from the distance, but when I came closer half of it turned out to be policemen. In Moscow it passed uneventfully, but in St Petersburg 120 demonstrators were arrested, and 100 more in other cities.
Some of my young writer friends, who took part in the “anti-corruption” demonstration, described their experiences as pretty scary. Liza Alexandrova-Zorina, the most fearless of them all, was arrested and spent many hours first in a prison van and then at a police station. Although she produced her press card it made no impression on the policeman who pushed her into the van: “Stick your card you know where,” he said. Liza is now facing trial.
There were 24 people with her in the van, “most of them students from good universities and teenagers from fairly well-off but not wealthy families,” she says. This generation is getting their information from the internet rather than television and the traditional press as their parents do. They are more broad-minded and well-informed but they see little future for themselves in present-day Russia. Few of them can afford to study abroad and then stay there and so they see the alternative in trying to change things at home. This is what some of them said in so many words.
The minors who had attended the meeting were later summoned to the procurator’s office and police stations with their parents and threatened with registration as juvenile delinquents, which would deny them access to higher education (it should be noted that 80% of the higher education today is paid.) Their schools were informed of their behavior and asked to watch over them.
However, there are promising developments too: e.g. writers who had left the reactionary PEN Center, have founded the “Free Word” association and are now actively defending authors and bloggers, who ran into trouble with the authorities for writing something the latter disapproved of. In fact this is what PEN is supposed to be doing but never bothered.
I also see a hopeful sign in the fact that increasingly authors turn to socially significant, controversial and even formerly “taboo” themes in their works. Just recently, almost simultaneously, I received three unsolicited manuscripts of novels about the conflict in Donbass, all three depicting the plight of the local population and the atrocities committed by all the warring sides. One of them, Guardian Angels by Alexei Vinokurov, will soon be published in Russian and Ukrainian by the Ukrainian publishing house Fabula while his other highly unorthodox novel, The Black Dragon, about ethnical confrontation and co-existence in the Far East, will be coming out from Eksmo in Moscow this summer. Watch out for this interesting young author.
1 May 2017
The Russian protest movement had its peak in 2012: suffice it to recall the rallies in Bolotnaya and Sakharov Squares. Nothing was gained and people lost interest in politics and protests: “What’s the point. It’s a waste of time. We can’t change anything.” Quite a few demonstrators arrested then are still serving time and many dissidents have left the country. But with the appearance of the younger generation on the scene things changed: the “anti-corruption” rally on 26 March 2017 was relatively well attended – old-timers were joined by eager young people, even teenagers. They also showed up at the recent rally, on 29 April, organized by “Open Russia”. The crowd looked big from the distance, but when I came closer half of it turned out to be policemen. In Moscow it passed uneventfully, but in St Petersburg 120 demonstrators were arrested, and 100 more in other cities.
Some of my young writer friends, who took part in the “anti-corruption” demonstration, described their experiences as pretty scary. Liza Alexandrova-Zorina, the most fearless of them all, was arrested and spent many hours first in a prison van and then at a police station. Although she produced her press card it made no impression on the policeman who pushed her into the van: “Stick your card you know where,” he said. Liza is now facing trial.
There were 24 people with her in the van, “most of them students from good universities and teenagers from fairly well-off but not wealthy families,” she says. This generation is getting their information from the internet rather than television and the traditional press as their parents do. They are more broad-minded and well-informed but they see little future for themselves in present-day Russia. Few of them can afford to study abroad and then stay there and so they see the alternative in trying to change things at home. This is what some of them said in so many words.
The minors who had attended the meeting were later summoned to the procurator’s office and police stations with their parents and threatened with registration as juvenile delinquents, which would deny them access to higher education (it should be noted that 80% of the higher education today is paid.) Their schools were informed of their behavior and asked to watch over them.
However, there are promising developments too: e.g. writers who had left the reactionary PEN Center, have founded the “Free Word” association and are now actively defending authors and bloggers, who ran into trouble with the authorities for writing something the latter disapproved of. In fact this is what PEN is supposed to be doing but never bothered.
I also see a hopeful sign in the fact that increasingly authors turn to socially significant, controversial and even formerly “taboo” themes in their works. Just recently, almost simultaneously, I received three unsolicited manuscripts of novels about the conflict in Donbass, all three depicting the plight of the local population and the atrocities committed by all the warring sides. One of them, Guardian Angels by Alexei Vinokurov, will soon be published in Russian and Ukrainian by the Ukrainian publishing house Fabula while his other highly unorthodox novel, The Black Dragon, about ethnical confrontation and co-existence in the Far East, will be coming out from Eksmo in Moscow this summer. Watch out for this interesting young author.
1 May 2017
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Gorky Literary Festival on the Volga
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I’ve just been at the newly launched Gorky literary festival in Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga. Nearly 100 participants from all over Russia and other republics attended. The speakers included well-known authors, such as Olga Slavnikova, Maria Arbatova, Bahyt Kenzheev, Roman Senchin, Svetlana Vasilenko, to name a few; also publishers, critics, translators. Festival curators from Moscow, St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Krasnoyarsk, Tatarstan, Karelia, Armenia, Georgia, Poland, China, Siberia, and many other places, shared their experiences in organizing literary festivals elsewhere. Some media persons were there too, but their presence was almost redundant.
Whereas all the big cities already have a literary festival there has been none in the 800-year-old city of Nizhny Novgorod, a major industrial and cultural center and the birth place of Maxim Gorky whose 150th anniversary will be marked next year.
Festivals are, arguably, the most effective tool for bringing authors and readers together. In the UK, as I was told, there are some 250 festivals and all are very well attended. In Russia the number of festivals is growing but there is nearly not enough yet. Festivals promote culture in general and new talents in particular, both needing as much attention and support as they can get.
Amazingly, this large-scale festival was financed by one person, a local businessman and author Dmitry Berman. Absence of support from the city authorities was explained by the fact that only 20% of the local taxes remain at their disposal while the rest is going to central government. And yet festival organizers intend to make it an annual event and also make it international by inviting authors from other countries. I strongly recommend everybody to visit this wonderful ancient city and its festivals (apart from this new literary festival they have the already established theatre festival, and music festival).
Located at the confluence of the Volga and the Oka Nizhny Novgorod is very scenic if a bit shabby in places, it boasts an amazing number of old churches, the well-preserved kremlin (that is, fortress), fine picture galleries and museums, and many unique cottage industries. Boldino, the place of Pushkin’s exile is not far away from Nizhny Novgorod as well as many other tourist attractions.
Many interesting people convened in Nizhny, all sorts of interesting discussions and exchange of literary news were going on – it was a real intellectual feast. It turned out that Nizhny is the homeland of some well-known contemporary writers such as Ildar Abuzyarov, Andrei Kuzechkin, Elena Kryukova, Nikolai Svechin. Marina Kulakova, a fine poet and cultural activist, presented a recital of local teenage poets she tutors. We were all really impressed with the quality of their work and originality of their ideas.
One of the highlights was the prize-winning young writer Liza Alexandrova-Zorina who had just been released from detention for participating in the anti-corruption march in Moscow on 26 March, in fact for just being there. She told us about the details of the march and her arrest (more about it in my next).
I always enjoy attending literary events in the provinces where you meet amazing personalities: cultured, thinking, enthusiastic individuals who organize new projects and try to make their lives meaningful in some way.
April 2017
Whereas all the big cities already have a literary festival there has been none in the 800-year-old city of Nizhny Novgorod, a major industrial and cultural center and the birth place of Maxim Gorky whose 150th anniversary will be marked next year.
Festivals are, arguably, the most effective tool for bringing authors and readers together. In the UK, as I was told, there are some 250 festivals and all are very well attended. In Russia the number of festivals is growing but there is nearly not enough yet. Festivals promote culture in general and new talents in particular, both needing as much attention and support as they can get.
Amazingly, this large-scale festival was financed by one person, a local businessman and author Dmitry Berman. Absence of support from the city authorities was explained by the fact that only 20% of the local taxes remain at their disposal while the rest is going to central government. And yet festival organizers intend to make it an annual event and also make it international by inviting authors from other countries. I strongly recommend everybody to visit this wonderful ancient city and its festivals (apart from this new literary festival they have the already established theatre festival, and music festival).
Located at the confluence of the Volga and the Oka Nizhny Novgorod is very scenic if a bit shabby in places, it boasts an amazing number of old churches, the well-preserved kremlin (that is, fortress), fine picture galleries and museums, and many unique cottage industries. Boldino, the place of Pushkin’s exile is not far away from Nizhny Novgorod as well as many other tourist attractions.
Many interesting people convened in Nizhny, all sorts of interesting discussions and exchange of literary news were going on – it was a real intellectual feast. It turned out that Nizhny is the homeland of some well-known contemporary writers such as Ildar Abuzyarov, Andrei Kuzechkin, Elena Kryukova, Nikolai Svechin. Marina Kulakova, a fine poet and cultural activist, presented a recital of local teenage poets she tutors. We were all really impressed with the quality of their work and originality of their ideas.
One of the highlights was the prize-winning young writer Liza Alexandrova-Zorina who had just been released from detention for participating in the anti-corruption march in Moscow on 26 March, in fact for just being there. She told us about the details of the march and her arrest (more about it in my next).
I always enjoy attending literary events in the provinces where you meet amazing personalities: cultured, thinking, enthusiastic individuals who organize new projects and try to make their lives meaningful in some way.
April 2017
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Evgeny Vodolazkin’s Aviator, a review
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The flyer is released to freedom,
Having swung his two blades, as a beast
Into the water of the sea,
He slipped into the air streams.
From Alexander Blok’s Aviator (1910-1911), trans. Lyudmila Purgina
Having swung his two blades, as a beast
Into the water of the sea,
He slipped into the air streams.
From Alexander Blok’s Aviator (1910-1911), trans. Lyudmila Purgina
The latest winners of the annual Big Book Prize (Bol’shaya Kniga) were announced in December last year at the Pashkov House in Moscow. This year’s winner was Leonid Yuzefovich (1947), who was awarded the first place for his historical autobiography The Winter Road (Зимняя дорога, 2015). Respectively, second and third places were awarded to Evgeny Vodolazkin for his historical novel Aviator (Авиатор) and to Lyudmila Ulitskaya for her novel Jacob’s Ladder (Лестница Якова), a family saga. While Yuzefovich and Ulitskaya are well known in Russia and outside Russia, Vodolazkin still awaits full recognition as an important contemporary writer.
Evgeny Vodolazkin (b. Kiev 1964) is a Russian scholar of old Russian literature at the renowned Pushkinsky Dom in St Petersburg. He gained both national and international acclaim for his historical novel and bestseller Laurus (Лавр, 2012: trans. Lisa Hayden, publ. Oneworld Publications), the winner of the Big Book Prize of 2013, for which he has been compared to Umberto Eco and Garcia Marquez by more than one reviewer. With his latest novel Aviator, he confirms his status as a respected writer by taking the same genre much further while engaging with fantasy.
Aviator sets out the story of Innokentii Petrovich Platonov, a young Russian man, who wakes up during the late nineties in a Russian hospital with a complete loss of memory. Gradually Innokentii recovers his memory due to the help of his personal doctor, named Geiger, who advises him to keep a diary. Through his diary notes, the complex world of the hero is revealed.
The reader quickly discovers that Innokentii, born in 1900, has been the victim of a Soviet experiment which took place in the Solovki prison camps during the thirties. As part of an experiment to prolong the lives of the party nomenclature, he was frozen alive. Surprisingly, he survived and he was eventually defrosted by Geiger, who brought him out of a deep coma. Against this background, the life of Innokentii is set out, carrying the reader back into St. Petersburg at the beginning of the twentieth century. Vodolazkin’s meticulous narrative style sketches convincing and readable accounts of Innokentii’s youth, his passion for aviation and his first love story, leading up to his imprisonment in the Solovki prison camps, where he is sent for murder.
Innokentii’s recovery is set in the nineties, a period which in the novel is characterised by disorder and kleptocracy, but also by fundamental societal change. As in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (Innokentii’s favorite book), the hero finds himself all of a sudden in unknown territory, a new era in Russian history, in a country where technology, media and consumerism are representing the ‘new’ normal. Through the use of subtle humour, Vodolazkin mocks the sore points of the time. It does not take long before the hero becomes the target of the Russian media, the government and big business which are all struggling to get hold of him to further their political and/ or commercial agendas. He is chosen ‘Man of the Year’, he gets awarded the highest order of the government (in the form of rehabilitation), he is hunted down by paparazzi and he is even asked to appear in advertisements for deep-frozen products,
The hero’s search for his own identity develops into an original attempt to discover truth about or at least answers to the Soviet past. This is stylistically facilitated through dexterously moving back and forth in time with St. Petersburg as central reference point. A multiplicity of narrating voices translates Innokentii’s quest into a dynamic portrait of Russian history, while fundamental questions about the past are raised and sore points such as the Solovki camps and Stalin’s legacy are highlighted. The hero, who gradually develops into a symbol for the post-Soviet generation, digs into literature and archives in an attempt to recover his identity and find answers to the many unsolved questions which jeopardise his quest.
This dive into history is not only typical of post-Soviet Russian writers’ ‘obsession’ with Russia’s past, but it also refers to a broader trend in contemporary Russian society, where ‘rewriting Russian history’ has become a crucial aspect of successive regimes’ attempts to redefine Russianness, well exemplified in the restoration of pre-revolutionary and Soviet symbols in everyday life such as the Soviet anthem or the celebration of days honouring the army, for example, the Defender of the Fatherland Day (Den’ Zashchitnika Otechestva).
It is rather difficult to pinpoint the central idea of the novel as the writer touches upon various fundamental questions such as the concept of history seen from a personal versus a societal point of view or the post-communist transformation and the Russian obsession for ‘truth’ during the nineties. Most interesting from my point of view, however, is the interaction between national identity and history in the negotiation of the difficult question of judgement and guilt with respect to Russia’s twentieth century. Vodolazkin brilliantly addresses the latter in Platonov’s relationship vis-à-vis Geiger. When it comes to his judgement of the Soviet legacy, Geiger, depicted as a typical liberal, leaves little doubt about the utter necessity to acknowledge the inhumanity of the former regime. Innokentii however, holds a more nuanced vision on the same question. Critical of the Soviet system and in particular of the figure of Stalin, who is seen as a source of terror, Innokentii flirts with the idea of the inevitability of the collision of time, history (and fate?).
Vodolazkin’s novel is a worthy second place winner of the Big Book Prize and this is reflected in its positive reception in Russia. If we read the character of Platonov as a metaphor for the post-Soviet citizen, his quest addresses the ongoing search for a definition of Russianness in the 21st century. This makes the novel a must-read as it, in the best Russian literary tradition, provides a key to an understanding of contemporary Russia. The narrative structure of the novel is arguably the strongest element of the novel. It successfully leaves space for the disparate voices present in today’s society, which Vodolazkin observes as an aviator, who is watching the world from his plane.
February 2017
Evgeny Vodolazkin (b. Kiev 1964) is a Russian scholar of old Russian literature at the renowned Pushkinsky Dom in St Petersburg. He gained both national and international acclaim for his historical novel and bestseller Laurus (Лавр, 2012: trans. Lisa Hayden, publ. Oneworld Publications), the winner of the Big Book Prize of 2013, for which he has been compared to Umberto Eco and Garcia Marquez by more than one reviewer. With his latest novel Aviator, he confirms his status as a respected writer by taking the same genre much further while engaging with fantasy.
Aviator sets out the story of Innokentii Petrovich Platonov, a young Russian man, who wakes up during the late nineties in a Russian hospital with a complete loss of memory. Gradually Innokentii recovers his memory due to the help of his personal doctor, named Geiger, who advises him to keep a diary. Through his diary notes, the complex world of the hero is revealed.
The reader quickly discovers that Innokentii, born in 1900, has been the victim of a Soviet experiment which took place in the Solovki prison camps during the thirties. As part of an experiment to prolong the lives of the party nomenclature, he was frozen alive. Surprisingly, he survived and he was eventually defrosted by Geiger, who brought him out of a deep coma. Against this background, the life of Innokentii is set out, carrying the reader back into St. Petersburg at the beginning of the twentieth century. Vodolazkin’s meticulous narrative style sketches convincing and readable accounts of Innokentii’s youth, his passion for aviation and his first love story, leading up to his imprisonment in the Solovki prison camps, where he is sent for murder.
Innokentii’s recovery is set in the nineties, a period which in the novel is characterised by disorder and kleptocracy, but also by fundamental societal change. As in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (Innokentii’s favorite book), the hero finds himself all of a sudden in unknown territory, a new era in Russian history, in a country where technology, media and consumerism are representing the ‘new’ normal. Through the use of subtle humour, Vodolazkin mocks the sore points of the time. It does not take long before the hero becomes the target of the Russian media, the government and big business which are all struggling to get hold of him to further their political and/ or commercial agendas. He is chosen ‘Man of the Year’, he gets awarded the highest order of the government (in the form of rehabilitation), he is hunted down by paparazzi and he is even asked to appear in advertisements for deep-frozen products,
The hero’s search for his own identity develops into an original attempt to discover truth about or at least answers to the Soviet past. This is stylistically facilitated through dexterously moving back and forth in time with St. Petersburg as central reference point. A multiplicity of narrating voices translates Innokentii’s quest into a dynamic portrait of Russian history, while fundamental questions about the past are raised and sore points such as the Solovki camps and Stalin’s legacy are highlighted. The hero, who gradually develops into a symbol for the post-Soviet generation, digs into literature and archives in an attempt to recover his identity and find answers to the many unsolved questions which jeopardise his quest.
This dive into history is not only typical of post-Soviet Russian writers’ ‘obsession’ with Russia’s past, but it also refers to a broader trend in contemporary Russian society, where ‘rewriting Russian history’ has become a crucial aspect of successive regimes’ attempts to redefine Russianness, well exemplified in the restoration of pre-revolutionary and Soviet symbols in everyday life such as the Soviet anthem or the celebration of days honouring the army, for example, the Defender of the Fatherland Day (Den’ Zashchitnika Otechestva).
It is rather difficult to pinpoint the central idea of the novel as the writer touches upon various fundamental questions such as the concept of history seen from a personal versus a societal point of view or the post-communist transformation and the Russian obsession for ‘truth’ during the nineties. Most interesting from my point of view, however, is the interaction between national identity and history in the negotiation of the difficult question of judgement and guilt with respect to Russia’s twentieth century. Vodolazkin brilliantly addresses the latter in Platonov’s relationship vis-à-vis Geiger. When it comes to his judgement of the Soviet legacy, Geiger, depicted as a typical liberal, leaves little doubt about the utter necessity to acknowledge the inhumanity of the former regime. Innokentii however, holds a more nuanced vision on the same question. Critical of the Soviet system and in particular of the figure of Stalin, who is seen as a source of terror, Innokentii flirts with the idea of the inevitability of the collision of time, history (and fate?).
Vodolazkin’s novel is a worthy second place winner of the Big Book Prize and this is reflected in its positive reception in Russia. If we read the character of Platonov as a metaphor for the post-Soviet citizen, his quest addresses the ongoing search for a definition of Russianness in the 21st century. This makes the novel a must-read as it, in the best Russian literary tradition, provides a key to an understanding of contemporary Russia. The narrative structure of the novel is arguably the strongest element of the novel. It successfully leaves space for the disparate voices present in today’s society, which Vodolazkin observes as an aviator, who is watching the world from his plane.
February 2017
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The UK as Guest of Honour at the Moscow Book Fair
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For 18 years now the first week of December has been the time for the main book event in Moscow: the International Non/Fiction Book Fair. This misleading name was given to the book fair when “nonfiction” was a new word in Russia and sounded attractively foreign and mysterious. In actual fact the “nonfiction” Book Fair offers a wide variety of all sorts of books, fiction and nonfiction, and the only limitation is that no trash is allowed. The big commercial publishers are permitted to participate with only their high-quality literary fiction and nonfiction. This rule, incidentally, encouraged commercial publishers to launch or extend their series of good books for a more educated readership.
By the time the organisers realised that the Book Fair’s name creates problems for foreigners (because for non-Russians “nonfiction” is just nonfiction and does not sound at all glamorous) it was too late to change the name and it stuck.
During the 18 years of its existence this special book fair for “intellectual” books has undergone certain transformations, reflecting the evolution of Russian public life and the publishing situation. It started as a kind of a safety-valve to provide a breath of fresh air in the conditions of total commercialisation and wild capitalism of the 1990s. Hundreds of new independent publishers were springing up then to satisfy readers’ interest in formerly forbidden books, both Russian and foreign. Most of those small publishers had to close down later or were consumed by the big publishing houses. Today the surviving small publishers are united into a Book Alliance and exhibit in a collective stand supported by the Book Fair. At some point the big publishers started exhibiting as well but we strictly see to it that they observe the rule of “no trash is allowed”. Inevitably they introduced an element of commercialism in the general atmosphere and functioning of our book fair. But since there are 400 events taking place on eight platforms it still remains one of the most important intellectual events of the year. This year 300 exhibitors from 18 countries participated, and nearly 50,000 visitors attended.
This year, as part of the “UK-Russia Year of Language and Literature 2016”, the United Kingdom was the Guest of Honour at “Non/Fiction”, and this is at a time when Russia has managed to make itself conspicuously unpopular among the international community. I was really happy to hear the members of the British delegation I talked to, unanimously say that problems in the political top circles makes it all the more important to broaden cultural exchanges.
The programme was rich and varied. The venues were packed to bursting, people crowded in the aisles and sat on the floor. We all enjoyed the inimitable English humour, the art of rhetoric, and professionalism of the speakers. We were thrilled to see some famous authors in person (Julian Barnes, Jonathan Coe, Andrew Davies, Sebastian Faulks) and discover new names (Emma Healey, Laline Paull). We enjoyed very informative and lively lectures by Emma House of the Publishers Association, the brilliant lecture on current UK literature by Cortina Butler of the British Council, and Professor Marianne Elliott’s eye-opening historical survey, to name a few. I only regret not being able to multiply so that I could be present at all the British events.
As I listened to them I thought that in Britain, just as in Russia, intellectuals are invariably critically-minded individuals not much influenced by official brainwashing, they make their own judgements and tend to give the benefit of the doubt, refraining from hasty opinions if they don’t have sufficient information. There are different sorts of people, naturally, but my British friends belong to the above-described category and I’ve never stayed long enough in Britain to discover other sorts.
20 December 2016
By the time the organisers realised that the Book Fair’s name creates problems for foreigners (because for non-Russians “nonfiction” is just nonfiction and does not sound at all glamorous) it was too late to change the name and it stuck.
During the 18 years of its existence this special book fair for “intellectual” books has undergone certain transformations, reflecting the evolution of Russian public life and the publishing situation. It started as a kind of a safety-valve to provide a breath of fresh air in the conditions of total commercialisation and wild capitalism of the 1990s. Hundreds of new independent publishers were springing up then to satisfy readers’ interest in formerly forbidden books, both Russian and foreign. Most of those small publishers had to close down later or were consumed by the big publishing houses. Today the surviving small publishers are united into a Book Alliance and exhibit in a collective stand supported by the Book Fair. At some point the big publishers started exhibiting as well but we strictly see to it that they observe the rule of “no trash is allowed”. Inevitably they introduced an element of commercialism in the general atmosphere and functioning of our book fair. But since there are 400 events taking place on eight platforms it still remains one of the most important intellectual events of the year. This year 300 exhibitors from 18 countries participated, and nearly 50,000 visitors attended.
This year, as part of the “UK-Russia Year of Language and Literature 2016”, the United Kingdom was the Guest of Honour at “Non/Fiction”, and this is at a time when Russia has managed to make itself conspicuously unpopular among the international community. I was really happy to hear the members of the British delegation I talked to, unanimously say that problems in the political top circles makes it all the more important to broaden cultural exchanges.
The programme was rich and varied. The venues were packed to bursting, people crowded in the aisles and sat on the floor. We all enjoyed the inimitable English humour, the art of rhetoric, and professionalism of the speakers. We were thrilled to see some famous authors in person (Julian Barnes, Jonathan Coe, Andrew Davies, Sebastian Faulks) and discover new names (Emma Healey, Laline Paull). We enjoyed very informative and lively lectures by Emma House of the Publishers Association, the brilliant lecture on current UK literature by Cortina Butler of the British Council, and Professor Marianne Elliott’s eye-opening historical survey, to name a few. I only regret not being able to multiply so that I could be present at all the British events.
As I listened to them I thought that in Britain, just as in Russia, intellectuals are invariably critically-minded individuals not much influenced by official brainwashing, they make their own judgements and tend to give the benefit of the doubt, refraining from hasty opinions if they don’t have sufficient information. There are different sorts of people, naturally, but my British friends belong to the above-described category and I’ve never stayed long enough in Britain to discover other sorts.
20 December 2016
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What is Russian Women’s Writing Like Today?
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The evolution of Russian women’s writing was quite unlike that in Western countries. Women did write in the old days, but none of those early literary efforts have stood the test of time and they are known today only to scholars. Female presence in 19th century Russian literature was in the form of memorable literary heroines: either idealized or demonized, either angels or femmes fatales.
Women authors came on the literary scene only with the arrival of the Silver Age in the early 20th century, and at first they were mostly poets (Akhmatova, Tsvetayeva and Gippius, to name a few). How was it possible that such a promising beginning then ran into the sand and women kept a low profile until the end of Soviet censorship in the 1990s? It seems that in conditions of male-dominated totalitarian ideology anything unorthodox, even not openly subversive, was an irritation to the authorities. Women were discouraged from writing about their personal problems and social status since these were an embarrassment to the state, while the inner world of thinking women was of little interest to society.
With the ideological shackles gone, women's writing in Russia progressed rapidly. The tone of early-wave women’s literature was plaintive at first as they tried to get their painful Soviet experiences off their chests. A decade later their tone had a more vigorous and confident ring to it, reflecting increased self-awareness and growing feminist attitudes. More recent stories by women were still focused on women’s rights, often being straightforwardly autobiographical or essayistic, and their literary quality improved markedly. Another decade later you could no longer tell male and female writing apart and women’s rights were taken for granted. Today young women authors increasingly tend to write in men’s names to emphasize the fact that gender is irrelevant in real art.
A good example is Liza Alexandrova-Zorina, a brilliant novelist and essayist exposing the seamy side of the Russian society and providing a frank and merciless picture of today’s world. She is the author of six books some of which have already been translated into English, French, Ukrainian, Estonian, Hindi and Arabic. Her writing reflects her active public position and social protest. She depicts the life of misfits made redundant under the new regime. These ‘humiliated and insulted’ individuals are nevertheless prepared to fight for their rights. Alexandrova-Zorina paints graphic pictures of squalid life in the provinces, the ruthless Moscow mafias, police lawlessness, and people’s helplessness in dealing with the corrupted authorities and indifferent society. "Even though it's dark there's something that shines through as redeemable - perhaps it's the ability to reveal the darkness for what it is without condoning it." – Melanie Moore, the translator of The Little Man.
Liza Alexandrova-Zorina was born in 1984 in a little town on Cola Peninsula beyond the Arctic Circle (the setting of her prize-winning novel The Little Man). After school graduation she left her native town for Moscow where she soon became a prolific journalist, famous blogger, a popular columnist on leading periodicals, and a public activist. Liza was a finalist in two important literary competitions: the Debut Prize and NOS (2012) with her novel The Little Man. She also won the Northern Star Prize (2010) for her collection of short stories The Rebel. Critics compared The Little Man to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. And also to Zvyagintsev’s prize-winning film Leviathan which is set in the same parts but released two years later than Alexandrova-Zorina’s novel.
“The image of the ‘little man’ features in the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov, and Gorky. In Western literature this traditions is taken further by Camus, Beckett and Kafka. In other words, our Liza Alexandrova-Zorina is in good company which means that readers will expect her to live up to this level.” – The Free Press
Her later novel The Broken Doll makes the protagonist experience all the ulcers of the modern megacity after she becomes homeless as a result of cruel intrigues against her. In Man Is a Noun a modest face-blind person is wrongly accused of a murder, but reviewing his life during his long prison confinement he comes to the conclusion that all people are guilty of something and deserve punishment. Her novel Homophobia, about urban terrorism, is pending publication.
December 2016
Women authors came on the literary scene only with the arrival of the Silver Age in the early 20th century, and at first they were mostly poets (Akhmatova, Tsvetayeva and Gippius, to name a few). How was it possible that such a promising beginning then ran into the sand and women kept a low profile until the end of Soviet censorship in the 1990s? It seems that in conditions of male-dominated totalitarian ideology anything unorthodox, even not openly subversive, was an irritation to the authorities. Women were discouraged from writing about their personal problems and social status since these were an embarrassment to the state, while the inner world of thinking women was of little interest to society.
With the ideological shackles gone, women's writing in Russia progressed rapidly. The tone of early-wave women’s literature was plaintive at first as they tried to get their painful Soviet experiences off their chests. A decade later their tone had a more vigorous and confident ring to it, reflecting increased self-awareness and growing feminist attitudes. More recent stories by women were still focused on women’s rights, often being straightforwardly autobiographical or essayistic, and their literary quality improved markedly. Another decade later you could no longer tell male and female writing apart and women’s rights were taken for granted. Today young women authors increasingly tend to write in men’s names to emphasize the fact that gender is irrelevant in real art.
A good example is Liza Alexandrova-Zorina, a brilliant novelist and essayist exposing the seamy side of the Russian society and providing a frank and merciless picture of today’s world. She is the author of six books some of which have already been translated into English, French, Ukrainian, Estonian, Hindi and Arabic. Her writing reflects her active public position and social protest. She depicts the life of misfits made redundant under the new regime. These ‘humiliated and insulted’ individuals are nevertheless prepared to fight for their rights. Alexandrova-Zorina paints graphic pictures of squalid life in the provinces, the ruthless Moscow mafias, police lawlessness, and people’s helplessness in dealing with the corrupted authorities and indifferent society. "Even though it's dark there's something that shines through as redeemable - perhaps it's the ability to reveal the darkness for what it is without condoning it." – Melanie Moore, the translator of The Little Man.
Liza Alexandrova-Zorina was born in 1984 in a little town on Cola Peninsula beyond the Arctic Circle (the setting of her prize-winning novel The Little Man). After school graduation she left her native town for Moscow where she soon became a prolific journalist, famous blogger, a popular columnist on leading periodicals, and a public activist. Liza was a finalist in two important literary competitions: the Debut Prize and NOS (2012) with her novel The Little Man. She also won the Northern Star Prize (2010) for her collection of short stories The Rebel. Critics compared The Little Man to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. And also to Zvyagintsev’s prize-winning film Leviathan which is set in the same parts but released two years later than Alexandrova-Zorina’s novel.
“The image of the ‘little man’ features in the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov, and Gorky. In Western literature this traditions is taken further by Camus, Beckett and Kafka. In other words, our Liza Alexandrova-Zorina is in good company which means that readers will expect her to live up to this level.” – The Free Press
Her later novel The Broken Doll makes the protagonist experience all the ulcers of the modern megacity after she becomes homeless as a result of cruel intrigues against her. In Man Is a Noun a modest face-blind person is wrongly accused of a murder, but reviewing his life during his long prison confinement he comes to the conclusion that all people are guilty of something and deserve punishment. Her novel Homophobia, about urban terrorism, is pending publication.
December 2016
Post-Frankfurt Reflections
Natasha Perova, Glas
This October I went as usual to the Frankfurt Book Fair. It is the world’s largest and most representative book fair and reflects the situation in and sets the trends for the international book world. The fact that interest in contemporary Russian fiction is only marginal was no news to me, but I tried to understand the current reasons for it and whether there is anything to be done about it. It was reported that the number of translations published in the UK and US rose 20% in the last two years. However, the number of translations from Russian fell dramatically. Is the reason only political? It can’t be. I wonder what the SRF readers think is the real reason.
For almost 30 years I’ve been proposing excellent Russian authors to foreign publishers who would typically say things like: “Why should our readers be interested in your Russian problems?” or “This is good literature but we need something more awesome to impress our readers.” Or “This book is too focused on your local issues.”
I asked my publisher friends to name a book the kind of which they would definitely consider for translation. Many mentioned Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, already translated into many languages. I grabbed one of them and read it greedily. I did not find it particularly remarkable except for the visual descriptions of a working-class suburb of Naples in the 1950s from which you learn much about the everyday life, local types, traditions, and morals and mores of the day. In other words, readers all over the world are sufficiently interested in the Italian world (or Scandinavian, German, French, etc.) but they are not interested in the Russian world. Of course there are people who still love Russian literature and don’t associate it with the country’s officialdom. But then you have to accept the fact that the West at large is tired of Russia and the short-lived interest after our perestroika ended in disillusionment. I could clearly see in Frankfurt that the West is living a life of its own and has no use of the Russian experience.
True, classical Russian literature has long become part of world’s culture, so much so that many people don’t even realize it’s 19th century and read it, if they do at all, as contemporary writing. And those books immerse them in the Russian world, its everyday life, local types, traditions, and morals and mores of the day. If people were curious about today’s Russia they would find ample information in contemporary Russian fiction, and moreover, this information is much closer to the truth in fact than any journalism, because a talented author paints a visual picture which the reader can interpret in his/her own way and make his/her own deductions.
Not only literature lovers can benefit from reading the best in contemporary literary fiction but also sociologists, human-rights activists, politicians, businessmen, etc. Works of literature will take you to distant places which you are not likely to visit, they will give you a glimpse into the various sections of Russian society and ethnic communities, and into the proverbial “Russian soul”, which has also undergone considerable evolution. And at least some of the misconceptions will be dispelled.
November 2016
For almost 30 years I’ve been proposing excellent Russian authors to foreign publishers who would typically say things like: “Why should our readers be interested in your Russian problems?” or “This is good literature but we need something more awesome to impress our readers.” Or “This book is too focused on your local issues.”
I asked my publisher friends to name a book the kind of which they would definitely consider for translation. Many mentioned Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, already translated into many languages. I grabbed one of them and read it greedily. I did not find it particularly remarkable except for the visual descriptions of a working-class suburb of Naples in the 1950s from which you learn much about the everyday life, local types, traditions, and morals and mores of the day. In other words, readers all over the world are sufficiently interested in the Italian world (or Scandinavian, German, French, etc.) but they are not interested in the Russian world. Of course there are people who still love Russian literature and don’t associate it with the country’s officialdom. But then you have to accept the fact that the West at large is tired of Russia and the short-lived interest after our perestroika ended in disillusionment. I could clearly see in Frankfurt that the West is living a life of its own and has no use of the Russian experience.
True, classical Russian literature has long become part of world’s culture, so much so that many people don’t even realize it’s 19th century and read it, if they do at all, as contemporary writing. And those books immerse them in the Russian world, its everyday life, local types, traditions, and morals and mores of the day. If people were curious about today’s Russia they would find ample information in contemporary Russian fiction, and moreover, this information is much closer to the truth in fact than any journalism, because a talented author paints a visual picture which the reader can interpret in his/her own way and make his/her own deductions.
Not only literature lovers can benefit from reading the best in contemporary literary fiction but also sociologists, human-rights activists, politicians, businessmen, etc. Works of literature will take you to distant places which you are not likely to visit, they will give you a glimpse into the various sections of Russian society and ethnic communities, and into the proverbial “Russian soul”, which has also undergone considerable evolution. And at least some of the misconceptions will be dispelled.
November 2016
Alexander Melikhov
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Overlooked Russian Talents
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In this column I would like to draw your attention to unjustly overlooked Russian authors, who enjoy the admiration of most discriminating readers in Russia but somehow do not look attractive to publishers abroad. One of the most glaring examples is Alexander Melikhov whom critics have compared to Nabokov and Thomas Mann.
Born in 1947 Melikhov spent his childhood in Northern Kazakhstan where his father, a historian, fled to avoid a second arrest for his unorthodox views on Russian history. A science prodigy, Melikhov graduated from Leningrad University majoring in mathematics, defended his PhD and worked at a research institute for many years.
A budding author in Soviet times he could not get published because his writing did not conform to approved aesthetic and ideological standards and also because he was Jewish. On the advice of the editors of a literary magazine he changed his Jewish family name Meylahs to the Russian surname Melikhov, but that did not help much. Luckily perestroika arrived soon after and with it the end of censorship. Just then he submitted two of his novels to the Northern Palmira Prize where the jury was not supposed to see the authors’ names until they select the winner. The jury considered two books for the top prize and finally decided to divide the prize between them. The author turned out to be one and the same person – Alexander Melikhov. This is how his nationwide fame began.
His philosophical-psychological writings continue the tradition of the great 19th century Russian literature with its intense spiritual and intellectual search, and at the same time they contain a strong dose of modernism. Winner of the Nabokov Prize, the Russian PEN Prize, the Gogol Prize, and many other prizes, short-listed for the Russian Booker and the Big Book Prize, Melikhov has some 20 books to his name, all in print.
Melikhov addresses the most painful problems of Russian society, such as the Jewish question, drugs and alcoholism, the disabled, the generation gap, etc. But these problems exist in other countries as well and should be of interest to readers everywhere. Melikhov possesses an extraordinary understanding of life, he offers a multitude of apt observations, parables, and wisdoms, his powerful and merciless texts are integral and wonderfully bitter-sweet. Although his novels are primarily interesting for their lyrical and philosophical digressions the plots are always original and exciting.
Confessions of a Jew and Farewell to Eden describe his hungry but happy childhood in Kazakhstan when he thought that “Jew” was just a swear word and had nothing to do with him, when his world was wild and frightening but whole and logical. His father "taught foreign languages, geography, and history, becoming for several generations a symbol of a perfect Teacher." His mother, a descendant of wealthy Ukrainian farmers exiled to Kazakhstan, was a physics teacher. "For a Jew my scientific career progressed bearably, although with all the expected humiliations." He depicts in fact the tragedy of alienation experienced by thinking individuals if they wish to retain their independence of mind and inner freedom.
In Escape from Retribution the protagonist’s dead father comes to him in a dream and asks him to punish the prosecutor who had incriminated him on a false charge in 1936 as a result of which he had to abandon his successful academic career and make do to with a pitiful life of a village teacher. The father’s spirit tells him to find the prosecutor’s children and reveal to them the true nature of their father. The son swears to avenge his wronged father. His personal investigations bring out many different truths and motives whereby some scoundrels and executioners appear as victims and heroes. The river of oblivion washed them all away, even any memory of them, and the only one spared is the that very prosecutor: he had lived a full and satisfying life amidst loving family, wealth and respect.
Melikhov’s novel The Plague is based on his attempts to save his own son from drug addiction. He depicts the world of drug addicts, unscrupulous drug peddlers, and drug clinics, all drawn from real life.
Romance with Prostatitis is based on Melikhov’s own experiences of the early perestroika years when he had to make a living by "shuffling" goods from abroad for resale at home in the company of women traders who used him as a porter and a bodyguard. He describes the society in the throes of violent change affecting people’s minds. The Schweik-like protagonist keeps philosophizing as the group travels all over Russia, China, Turkey, and other places.
In The Federation of Fools the real world is juxtaposed with the home for the mentally handicapped. The inmates dream of a certain international refuge for the insane where they will one day retire. Melikhov have for many years been involved in the rehabilitation programs for the disabled.
Melikhov’s latest novel, Rendezvous with Quasimodo, looks at the fatal role of beauty in human lives and shows the relativity and ambivalence of beauty. The heroine considers herself unattractive and is obsessed with a search for pure beauty and true love. She works in forensic medicine (this provides brilliant insert novellas about convicts) dealing with misfits in situations of a clash with the normal world. She tends to take the side of the accused and always finds exonerating circumstances. In the end she is cruelly murdered by a serial killer who contacts women by internet, inspires their pity by describing himself as a Quasimodo, lures them into his den and kills them.
September 2016
List of works by Alexander Melikhov (FTM site)
Glasgow University Library has three books by Melikhov. For more information or to search for other library copies see COPAC. To purchase books see suggestions at the top of this page. The novel "Чума" can be read online on
loveread.ec.
Born in 1947 Melikhov spent his childhood in Northern Kazakhstan where his father, a historian, fled to avoid a second arrest for his unorthodox views on Russian history. A science prodigy, Melikhov graduated from Leningrad University majoring in mathematics, defended his PhD and worked at a research institute for many years.
A budding author in Soviet times he could not get published because his writing did not conform to approved aesthetic and ideological standards and also because he was Jewish. On the advice of the editors of a literary magazine he changed his Jewish family name Meylahs to the Russian surname Melikhov, but that did not help much. Luckily perestroika arrived soon after and with it the end of censorship. Just then he submitted two of his novels to the Northern Palmira Prize where the jury was not supposed to see the authors’ names until they select the winner. The jury considered two books for the top prize and finally decided to divide the prize between them. The author turned out to be one and the same person – Alexander Melikhov. This is how his nationwide fame began.
His philosophical-psychological writings continue the tradition of the great 19th century Russian literature with its intense spiritual and intellectual search, and at the same time they contain a strong dose of modernism. Winner of the Nabokov Prize, the Russian PEN Prize, the Gogol Prize, and many other prizes, short-listed for the Russian Booker and the Big Book Prize, Melikhov has some 20 books to his name, all in print.
Melikhov addresses the most painful problems of Russian society, such as the Jewish question, drugs and alcoholism, the disabled, the generation gap, etc. But these problems exist in other countries as well and should be of interest to readers everywhere. Melikhov possesses an extraordinary understanding of life, he offers a multitude of apt observations, parables, and wisdoms, his powerful and merciless texts are integral and wonderfully bitter-sweet. Although his novels are primarily interesting for their lyrical and philosophical digressions the plots are always original and exciting.
Confessions of a Jew and Farewell to Eden describe his hungry but happy childhood in Kazakhstan when he thought that “Jew” was just a swear word and had nothing to do with him, when his world was wild and frightening but whole and logical. His father "taught foreign languages, geography, and history, becoming for several generations a symbol of a perfect Teacher." His mother, a descendant of wealthy Ukrainian farmers exiled to Kazakhstan, was a physics teacher. "For a Jew my scientific career progressed bearably, although with all the expected humiliations." He depicts in fact the tragedy of alienation experienced by thinking individuals if they wish to retain their independence of mind and inner freedom.
In Escape from Retribution the protagonist’s dead father comes to him in a dream and asks him to punish the prosecutor who had incriminated him on a false charge in 1936 as a result of which he had to abandon his successful academic career and make do to with a pitiful life of a village teacher. The father’s spirit tells him to find the prosecutor’s children and reveal to them the true nature of their father. The son swears to avenge his wronged father. His personal investigations bring out many different truths and motives whereby some scoundrels and executioners appear as victims and heroes. The river of oblivion washed them all away, even any memory of them, and the only one spared is the that very prosecutor: he had lived a full and satisfying life amidst loving family, wealth and respect.
Melikhov’s novel The Plague is based on his attempts to save his own son from drug addiction. He depicts the world of drug addicts, unscrupulous drug peddlers, and drug clinics, all drawn from real life.
Romance with Prostatitis is based on Melikhov’s own experiences of the early perestroika years when he had to make a living by "shuffling" goods from abroad for resale at home in the company of women traders who used him as a porter and a bodyguard. He describes the society in the throes of violent change affecting people’s minds. The Schweik-like protagonist keeps philosophizing as the group travels all over Russia, China, Turkey, and other places.
In The Federation of Fools the real world is juxtaposed with the home for the mentally handicapped. The inmates dream of a certain international refuge for the insane where they will one day retire. Melikhov have for many years been involved in the rehabilitation programs for the disabled.
Melikhov’s latest novel, Rendezvous with Quasimodo, looks at the fatal role of beauty in human lives and shows the relativity and ambivalence of beauty. The heroine considers herself unattractive and is obsessed with a search for pure beauty and true love. She works in forensic medicine (this provides brilliant insert novellas about convicts) dealing with misfits in situations of a clash with the normal world. She tends to take the side of the accused and always finds exonerating circumstances. In the end she is cruelly murdered by a serial killer who contacts women by internet, inspires their pity by describing himself as a Quasimodo, lures them into his den and kills them.
September 2016
List of works by Alexander Melikhov (FTM site)
Glasgow University Library has three books by Melikhov. For more information or to search for other library copies see COPAC. To purchase books see suggestions at the top of this page. The novel "Чума" can be read online on
loveread.ec.
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Glas Revisited or How the Glas-SRF Partnership Came About
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Based in Moscow Glas has been publishing English translations of contemporary Russian authors and overlooked 20th century classics for more than 25 years and still remains a showcase for new Russian writing. With more than 150 names represented in our thematic anthologies and single-author issues, GLAS is an important English-language source on Russian literature today. However over the last two years we were not able to publish any new titles (for purely financial reasons) while the need for an independent publishing program to promote new talents from Russia is greater than ever before.
At this point the SRF, who have been sympathetic to our cause for some time, extended a helping hand by offering a page on their site as a channel for information on Russian literary life. Regretfully, Russian literature is again divided into officially accepted, accepted with reservations, and unaccepted, to say nothing of the most implacable of censors – the market economy.
SRF is known for their wide-ranging activities to bridge the gap between the UK and Russia by organising events and projects as well as supplying objective information on various aspects of Russian life and culture. They see an additional angle of vision on Russia in its literature. So together we are launching this online resource on Russian literature. This is a logical move since literary fiction provides a more accurate picture of a society than any media which many of us have long ceased to trust. If you want to know what people feel and think, what makes them tick, what aspirations they have, and what losses they sustained, you should get to know their poetry and prose, their narrative nonfiction and drama. You do need to have some background information though to better understand and appreciate Russian fiction but I’m sure that readers of the SRF publications have all the basic facts on Russia, both its past and present.
I intend to present to you Russian authors not yet available in English or just recently published for the first time in English and little known yet. For quite a few new authors I have detailed synopses and translated excerpts from their books, but occasionally I’d like to attach extracts in Russian for those who can read the language, and particularly for translators looking for new authors they might want to offer publishers for translation. I’ll be happy to answer readers’ questions and respond to their comments. The latter sometimes show the extent of the gap still existing between the English-language and Russian worlds – I often come across signs of them in translations I line-edit with the original. I’m particularly interested to spot the various misunderstandings and address them. Psychologists believe that fears derive from insufficient information and in turn lead to aggression. So lack of knowledge breeds aggression. People interested in cross-cultural matters can prevent this. I think literature can be helpful here too.
July 2016. Originally published in SRF Forum No.35.
At this point the SRF, who have been sympathetic to our cause for some time, extended a helping hand by offering a page on their site as a channel for information on Russian literary life. Regretfully, Russian literature is again divided into officially accepted, accepted with reservations, and unaccepted, to say nothing of the most implacable of censors – the market economy.
SRF is known for their wide-ranging activities to bridge the gap between the UK and Russia by organising events and projects as well as supplying objective information on various aspects of Russian life and culture. They see an additional angle of vision on Russia in its literature. So together we are launching this online resource on Russian literature. This is a logical move since literary fiction provides a more accurate picture of a society than any media which many of us have long ceased to trust. If you want to know what people feel and think, what makes them tick, what aspirations they have, and what losses they sustained, you should get to know their poetry and prose, their narrative nonfiction and drama. You do need to have some background information though to better understand and appreciate Russian fiction but I’m sure that readers of the SRF publications have all the basic facts on Russia, both its past and present.
I intend to present to you Russian authors not yet available in English or just recently published for the first time in English and little known yet. For quite a few new authors I have detailed synopses and translated excerpts from their books, but occasionally I’d like to attach extracts in Russian for those who can read the language, and particularly for translators looking for new authors they might want to offer publishers for translation. I’ll be happy to answer readers’ questions and respond to their comments. The latter sometimes show the extent of the gap still existing between the English-language and Russian worlds – I often come across signs of them in translations I line-edit with the original. I’m particularly interested to spot the various misunderstandings and address them. Psychologists believe that fears derive from insufficient information and in turn lead to aggression. So lack of knowledge breeds aggression. People interested in cross-cultural matters can prevent this. I think literature can be helpful here too.
July 2016. Originally published in SRF Forum No.35.
