Eurasia Press & News
While in Russia, the writer Boris Akunin is included in the register of terrorists and extremists, criminal cases are initiated and are put on the wanted list, he continues to write books. The tenth volume of the series “The History of the Russian State” (covering time from 1917 to 1953) could no longer be published in Russia, and therefore it was published again and published in another publishing house abroad. Boris Akunin told The Insider how he responds to censorship bans than, in his opinion, Putin is different from Stalin and how to write three books at the same time.
In Russia, your books were banned, but you were still able to release the tenth volume.
Helped, first of all, annoyance on blunt idiots, who imagine that in the 21st century you can take and separate the writer with readers. Therefore, they re-created and illustrated the book in record time, and in addition, what was more difficult – from scratch, they created a paper printing system. It took four months. Now the rails are laid, there will be no delays. And not just my books will go on these tracks.
The book club BAbook, which began as an individual author’s project, has now made the author’s shelves of Dmitry Bykov, Boris Grebenshchikov, Sergei Guriev, Andrei Makarevich, Oleg Radzinsky, Viktor Shenderovich, several friendly publishers, sells banned works by Mikhail Shishkin, Vladimir Sorokin, Dmitry Glukhovsky and other wonderful authors. The BA stands for the best authors. And that’s true.
Russian readers can no longer buy my books, but I opened on the site a section of the “Book” with a sequel, in which my new books will be published for free, the chapter is headed. So no, we’re not going to be separated.
BAbook has a phenomenally capable leader – Pavel Istomin. He has a great team. After all, it all began very chamberly – just an author’s website with the sale of my electronic books for the Russian-speaking diaspora. And now this is a real publishing house, publishing more and more new authors, with normal printing and big plans. This metamorphosis took place in accordance with the law of conservation of mass. Yako rivers Mikhaylo Lomonosov: If you will die, taiso will be added to another place.
My Bulkhov and I left for God and Glukhovsky and Sorokin in the Russian Federation, but added to BaBook. The same thing, I think, will continue.
Has the current war affected the content of your history?
In the afterword, where the results are summed up, a phrase appeared:
The geopolitical struggle between the United States and the USSR for zones of influence, the competition of the economies and the arms race will be the main plot of the story of the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties of the twentieth century, and then, after the collapse of the Soviet superpower, will lead Russia in the twentieth years of the new century to an attempt to restore the former greatness. The history unfolding before our eyes is a logical continuation of the events of the age-old - a branch of a tree growing from 1917.Here are the tops are the roots.
Your book, at least officially, is not to buy in Russia. But is there a response to her?
I am always written by readers. Many want to present their vision of a historical event or to argue with something. It’s normal, I expected that effect. People are mentally returning to the recent past, looking for explanations and answers.
In the book you mention the newly reproducing model of statehood, as it is necessary to keep under the control of a huge diverse territory. But how is this very instinct of the “Leading under control” reproduces? And why did the “Plastinka” veal on the territory of the Russian Empire?
It is a very durable and very logical state structure in its own way. Every historical attempt to change it inevitably led to a crisis – so in the end it was restored. The last time I’m with you, after the chaos of the nineties.
But the thing is that this system should not be restored – it must be completely dismantled. It is necessary to turn the state into a real, not nominal federation. Or even a confederation. Until this happens, the song “Wald Dog” was a dog and will be drawn to indefinitely.
You write about the trajectory of the forks, which is the history of the trajectory. Are they in the history of post-Soviet Russia?
- Definitely. I will name two things: 1994, when there was a dilemma: to release Chechnya or to introduce troops. As soon as the second decision was made, a mechanism for the resurrection of the empire and the imminent suffocation of freedoms was launched. And then in 1999, it was decided to start a new Chechen war and make it a successor to Ssilovik. Therefore, I do not share the generally accepted liberal nostalgia for Boris Yeltsin. And the first and the second is his work. I do not share the generally accepted liberal nostalgia for Boris Yeltsin.
According to you, in 1917, Russia had a choice between the left and right dictatorships. So, then they chose the left, but now the right turn?
The entire Putin period is not a turn, but a gradual return to the priminal state model, in which there can be neither federality, nor the separation of powers, nor a free press, nor an independent court. The movement back in 1985. The only thing left is to return the Union republics. Which, in fact, they are trying to do. Krivo, oblique, but stubbornly.
At the same time, can Putin’s Russia be considered a continuation of the leninist?
Not Leninist for sure. Lenin did not want to restore the empire, but to organize a world revolution. Putin is a continuation of not only Brezhnev and Stalin’s, but Romanov’s state policy. Again in the “Orthodine” or autocracy, the people, again, the Third Rome, which now means the world stronghold of reactionary and conservative values.
There is an opinion that both Stalin and Putin are gray, small people. How justified is this view?
I don’t think Stalin and Putin are gray people. These are not very cute to me, but certainly gifted politicians. They are similar to their megalomania and the ease with which they are destroying people (although Putin to Stalin in this sense, of course, is still far away). However, there is between them – as rulers – and one essential difference, which I write about in the book. Stalin was a strong strategist and a weak tactician. That is, he could develop big goals (including criminal ones), but often stumbled on the way to their achievement, which cost the country huge victims. Putin is a rather clever tactician, but the strategic goals he seeks are self-destructive or unattainable. He is neither a world-class political leader nor a ruler of a superpower. The most he can achieve, instead of being a junior partner of the West, will become China’s junior partner.
The strategic goals Putin aspire to are self-destructive or unattainable.How important is the HC-KGB as an independent force in the history of the USSR and now?
The repressive apparatus has never been an independent political force in Russia, it is not it in our time. Under the Communists, he was an instrument in the hands of the party top. Now it’s a lap of dogs, each of whom keeps Putin on chains and is harassing them all the time. That’s just the tactics he owns. It is possible, however, that one of these dogs will one day break off the chain and bite the owner.
Lenin annexed Ukraine to Soviet Russia, which tried to gain independence, and Putin now declares that Lenin has created it. Is it possible to find the origins of the current war in the last century or is it a matter of the purely Putin era?
Lenin annexed not only Ukraine, but all parts of the empire to which he was able to reach. But history has nothing to do with it. The Ukrainian war is certainly a personal Putin project. And Putin’s miscalculation.
The dictator thought that he could swallow Ukraine, but broke his teeth. Because his state is not at all the USSR, which was still, despite the lag in many respects, an economically self-sufficient and technologically autonomous power, a real empire. RF is a reaper. Without a conditional silicone valley or its Chinese ersatz, it will turn into a pumpkin.
How inevitable was the current war for Putinism? Why did they attack Ukraine?
I think the trigger was Maidan. Putin feared that the same scenario would happen again in Russia. And the second is the idea that the world is divided on the influence of the sphere and that Ukraine’s departure to Europe is a violation of secret agreements with the West. The Meaning of Putin’s War: Don’t Touch! This is mine! ..
Putin had the idea that Ukraine's departure to Europe was a violation of unspoken agreements with the West.How did you react to the acclaimed discussion after the release of the FBK film ?
I’m upset. The fact that all the participants in the discussion – what are there, squabbles – care so little about the benefits of the common cause. The main point of any political propaganda is not to tell your enemy how bad it is, but to demonstrate how good you yourself. To make people look and think, “Oh, I want to go after these guys, they’re cool! So, behind all these guys and girls, on both sides, few people will want to go. So the effect was negative.
After the Crimea, Donbass, and then the beginning of a great war, the resentment and anger of the Ukrainians towards the Russians in general are understandable. Did you feel it personally?
Of course, the fierceness against the whole of the Russian thing affected me. What annoyed and angry nonsense Ukrainians do not write to me, what they do not accuse me of. I don’t answer that. Because people have grief, trouble, tragedy. They’re screaming in pain. Of course, there are many Ukrainians who write good to me. And I answer them, try to help and support.
Do you feel the break with Russia? What is it and what is no?
With what Russia? There are at least two. The one I love and the one I’m sick of. The first is always with me. I’ve always been in a break.
Your literary pace is impressive, how do you manage to write so much?
This is a way of existence, called saccado, the writer’s. You get life by constructing texts. The bee is buzzing, the bird is waving its wings, I write. I don’t have weekends and holidays. My whole life is a whole weekend and a vacation. When I get tired of the book, I take on another. I usually write three in parallel, and the transition from genre to genre is my way of refreshing.
How will the war end?
The most likely now is the Korean version – not peace, but an interim ceasefire agreement, with a demarcation line and the constant danger of a new armed conflict. It’s going to be very bad. For all
