Genetic scientist Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s writing career began in the 1960s due to a whim of fate, when the Soviets fired her and charged her with dissident activities. “After all, Chekhov was a doctor too, and still he made it as a writer,” jokes Ulitskaya. Today her works have been translated into more than 30 languages, 8 of them have been made into films. Ulitskaya is well-known to the international audiences, she is the first woman holder of Russian Booker Prize, officer of the Legion of Honor, laureate of the Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the Medici Prize, Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts en des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters), but at home she gets splashed with paint and denounced as the “fifth column.” After Russia’s invasion in Ukraine Ulitskaya wrote an essay Farewell to Europe for the German Der Spiegel. “Russia is at war with culture, the values of humanism, individual freedom; the country suffers from aggressive ignorance, nationalism, and imperial megalomania. I am ashamed for our parliament, ignorant and aggressive, for the government, aggressive and incompetent, for the country’s leaders, the pocket-sized supermen, adepts of force and cunning, I am ashamed for all of us, for the nation that has lost its moral guiding lights,” writes Ulitskaya.
The Day spoke with the outstanding writer in Warsaw at the conference dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the Belavezha Accords. At the close of the conversation Ulitskaya was presented with the book Ukraina Incognita from Den’s Library (we would like to remind that it includes 25 keynote texts on crucial points in Ukraine’s history and the lessons of statehood).
How do you assess the situation with freedom of speech in Russia today?
“Over the past 25 years Russia has seen an unprecedented (for this country) freedom of speech, but only in the sphere of fiction. Censorship was abolished in 1991, and in my entire life I have not had to erase a single word from my texts for concerns of censorship. As for mass media – newspapers, magazines, and television in particular – there the issue of freedom of speech is totally resolved in the sense that freedom of speech is absolutely non-existent and will not appear in the near future. Journalism in Russia is killed.”
You are described as an oppositionist to the incumbent Russian regime which is defined in a number of ways, from various varieties of authoritarianism to totalitarianism to fascism. How would you define the current political regime in the Russian Federation?
“It is authoritarian, no doubt about that. If you use Umberto Eco’s definition of a fascist state, it will for the most part coincide with the characteristics of our state order.”
Are you optimistic about Russia’s future? Is its political and economic modernization possible?
“There are no grounds for modernization: the country has little money, and scientists and scholars are slowly but steadily emigrating. I think that this policy will continue as long as Putin holds the supreme authority. In the nearest decade I cannot see any prerequisites for a president with another name.”
After the Publishers’ Forum in Lviv in 2004, you said: “All who spent the greater part of their lives in the Soviet Union carry a huge print of fear. Sometimes it fades in the background, sometimes it awakens. But it is a severe illness: it will take several generations to cure.” What caused the Soviet Union to collapse in your opinion, and why are retrograde slogans and longing for the Soviet time so widespread in Russian society?
“The sole dream of any state is to keep its citizens in fear. Some states are better at it, others are worse. Our state excels. Our history is like this. The Soviet Union disintegrated due to inner causes, and not because of the dissidents’ or the US Department of State’s evil design. The USSR turned out to be economically untenable. The relation between economy and ideology is quite complex, but it is no coincidence that both these crashes, ideological and economic, were simultaneous.
Photo by the author
“To state that people want a revival of the USSR would be incorrect: people long much more for peace and certainty about what tomorrow brings and better living standards, while those who dream about the renewal of the USSR mistakenly associate the improvement of life with the return of the USSR. They are delusional.”
Ukraine prided itself on being a peaceful country, probably the only one, after the collapse of the USSR, that succeeded in avoiding armed conflicts. But then came 2014. At the same time some think that the war between Russia and Ukraine was inevitable, but Russia was distracted by the crisis of the 1990s and the war in Chechnya. Yet when it got stronger, Ukraine became the next in turn. Do you think the Russo-Ukrainian war could have been avoided?
“I think it could. But now the much more important question is, how this prolonged conflict can be resolved. Today no one can answer this question. It will probably take several generations to settle this extremely deep conflict. Five or ten years will hardly change anything in the relations between the two peoples. I can only say that now there is a certain number of people on both sides of the border who are doing their best to preserve the culture and human values, this is the only thing they can do.”
Last April, at the historical research competition for high school students “Man in History: Russia in the 20th Century,” some protesters wearing Soviet uniforms and sporting St. George ribbons yelled “No to fascism,” “No alternative history for us,” and splashed some green antiseptic on you. You chose not to report the incident to the police and instead placed your photo with green hair in social media. Do you want to take such incidents with humor? Or do you try to reach out to your opponents?
“Frankly speaking, I try to befriend life. I do not always succeed, but I will not cultivate bad mood and irritation. Indeed, society is divided; in particular, the Crimean issue proved to be the most painful. Luckily there arose no differences among my family or friends. I do not spend time in social media, so I avoid the greater part of the denouncement. My sense of humor is okay, but I have another sensation: I feel very sorry for those boys and girls with the green antiseptic and their malice, turned against those students who had written great essays about the lives of their families, neighbors, their villages and cities, their grandparents and great-grandparents. Of course I would love those young people to come in and listen. I am sorry for them because they have chosen for a path of hate. It will do them no good. I am ready for a calm and serious conversation with them, provided they will refrain from splashing any more paint.”
What inspires you to write books? What are your artistic plans?
“I do not know a thing about inspiration. When you work on a big book, on a novel, it is not inspiration you need, but work with the material. It is hard labor and a lot of reading. For me, working is always hard. Not long ago I finished my novel Jacob’s Ladder, I have no grand plans but there are some unfinished matters and debts, rather to myself.”
Speaking in Warsaw, you mentioned contemporary art in Russia and those artists who do not sell anything, who are not bound by commerce and thus find themselves in the risk zone. In particular, you meant action artist Pyotr Pavlensky. Have his performances got through to Russian society? Are there many such artistic rebels against the imperial state and terror?
“The statements expressed by samizdat, both literary and artistic, have new forms and new mouthpieces today. Pyotr Pavlensky created a sequence of actions which are ‘the art of gesture,’ express protest against the regime’s bigotry and bluntness [his performances Seam (when he sewed his mouth shut), Carcass at the entrance to the Legislative Assembly in Saint Petersburg, Separation (when he cut his earlobe off), Jeopardy (setting fire to the door of the state security building in Lubyanka) etc. – Ed.]. He has predecessors, the brightest of which in Russia is Oleg Kulik. There are not so many artists of this kind, yet nevertheless there are whole groups like Voina (“War”) and the world-famous Pussy Riot. Sometimes they and their performances gain renown, like it was with Pussy Riot, sometimes they stay on the margin. I do not think that these voices can somehow affect public opinion led by state-supported propaganda. But it is good that the movement exists.”
How can one facilitate the shaping of a “new Russia” many Russian intellectuals dream of: democratic, enjoying political pluralism and tolerance, and free from the faith in “the kind father Tsar”?
“I love observing the historical process where we participate not as contemporaries, but from a distant perspective. Since it is impossible to observe modernity from future, we only can look at the past and search for analogies there. Sometimes it is very instructive. Thus, historian Polybius who lived three hundred years before Christ pointed to the main deficiency of democracy: its tendency to degenerate into ochlocracy. ‘In a circle of state forms, ochlocracy is not only the worst, but also the last level in a sequence of forms.’ Ochlocracy means ‘the rule of force, while the crowd gathering around a leader commits murders, exiles, re-allotments of land until it runs absolutely wild and again finds a ruler and autocrat.’ This is not a direct answer to the question, but rather a theme for contemplation.”
