Vladimir Sorokin: Zombie USSR is standing, historical trauma is war

Postmodernist Sorokin was born in the Moscow region on August 7, 1955, and was published before reaching adulthood. He graduated as an engineer at a mining university, but then went straight to work in the press. He wrote as well as illustrated, in the 1980s he was active in the Moscow underground scene. He was banned at home under communism, his work was published by samizdat as well as in France. Officially, its text appeared in the Soviet Union from the end of 1989. V in Czech several books published, Studio Hrdinů adapted the dystopian novel The Oprichnik’s Day as a play for one actor.

At the start of the new millennium, she won several major Russian literary awards, but at the same time she was investigated for alleged pornography in her literature. He often lives in Germany, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine he has lived outside his homeland.

Putin’s imperialist monster

“On February 24, 2022, the shell of the ‘enlightened autocrat’ exploded, where Vladimir Putin he had been hiding for twenty years, and it was falling to pieces. And the world saw a monster, mad in his desires and ruthless in his decisions. The monster grows gradually, gaining strength year after year and oozing the nutrition of its absolute power, imperial aggressiveness, hatred fueled by post-Soviet hatred and hatred for Western democracy,” Sorokin wrote in late February last year, shortly after Putin’s invasion. .. from Ukraine.

“When an ailing Yeltsin put Putin on the throne of Russian power in 1999, his face was sympathetic, perhaps even appealing, and his rhetoric wholly sound. Many have the impression that the top of the pyramid of Russian power is being climbed by intelligent officials who are alien to any arrogance or condescension, and at the same time modern people who understand that post-Soviet Russia has only one prospective path of development. in front of him – democracy. He talked a lot about him in his first interview he promised Russian citizens the continuation of reforms, free elections, freedom of speech, respect for human rights by the government, cooperation with the West, but above all the rotation of people in the highest posts.” wrote Sorokin in the essay A Monster from the Past, whose Czech translation (by Sorokin’s translator Libor Dvořák) was published by the magazine Visitor.

“I have no intention of holding on to that chair!” Sorokin recalled Putin’s words at that time. But: “At first glance, an imperial monster began to slowly be born in this sympathetic and agile person.”

“Power in Russia is pyramidal. This pyramid was built in the sixteenth century by Ivan the Terrible – an ambitious and ruthless tsar plagued by paranoia and many flaws of character. She, with the help of her personal bodyguard, called the oprichnina, bloodlessly and violently divided the Russian state into Power and People, into natives and foreigners, between whom she dug deep trenches,” Sorokin turns to history. “The alliance with the Golden Horde convinced him that there is only one way to manage great Russia: as an occupying power in this vast occupied territory. The power by the behavior of the invaders must be strong, ruthless, unpredictable and incomprehensible to the people. The people are only allowed to listen and obey .”

Zombies don’t rot

According to the author, these principles persisted even under communism, which at the same time announced its overthrow. “The state destroys the individual, and he, in turn, values ​​his relatives and neighbors. We have a very traumatized society. And now this trauma has taken the form of war.” he said now in an interview with Radio Svoboda.

“Zombies, as usual, came back to life, but did not become human. They pushed Yeltsin’s body into a corner and covered it in sawdust, hoping it would decompose.” depicts the return of Soviet imperialism. “It was revived by the imperial grudge supporters. They brought electrodes to the corpse and the corpse rose from its knees.” he explained, alluding to Vladimir Putin’s ideological thesis that the West has brought Russia to its knees. “Now he is destroying cities, threatening the world with a nuclear club. It’s not for nothing that the main symbol of this mad war is the letter Z – Zombie,” in turn refers to the apocalyptic horror novel and film World War Z: A Zombie World War History.

Other countries have managed to deal with the scourge of totality. Unfortunately, not like in Germany in the late 1940s or in the Czech Republic in the 1990s. Vaclav Havel unfortunately he is not with us. There was a military defeat in Germany – and the winner decided everything. The corpses of Nazism dug up graves and were pushed there by anti-fascist Germans. In most of the former socialist bloc countries, the bodies of totalitarianism were also buried in the 1990s. But the Soviet Union collapsed not because of military defeat, but because of its own incompetence.” judge Vladimir Sorokin.

Julia Craig

"Certified bacon geek. Evil social media fanatic. Music practitioner. Communicator."

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