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Tag: Putin

  • Maidan: one year on

    Andrey Kurkov, author of ‘Death and the Penguin’ and Vice-President of Ukrainian PEN, reports back on his country’s revolution and counter-revolution, and how despite diplomatic stalemate and all-out war, the people do not regret attempting to take their fate into their own hands

    Translated from the Russian by Amanda Love Darragh

    The first anniversary of the Maidan protests fell shortly after the declaration of the ‘second’ Minsk ceasefire, on 12 February. This ceasefire, like the previous one, was ushered in to the roar of exploding missiles. Not along the entire frontline this time, admittedly, but at certain points where the separatists had planned their advance. President Poroshenko made a brief but significant appearance on a dark, damp evening in Kiev – on Institutskaya Street, which is still closed to traffic, and which not so long ago ran with the blood of protestors killed by snipers – and then a symphony orchestra played Mozart’s Requiem. The whole country seemed to be standing still, with tears running down her face.

    A year has passed. Those who were killed during the Maidan protest became Heroes of Ukraine (posthumously). Many of those who survived went to Donbass as volunteers, to defend the country’s territorial integrity. Many are still fighting. During the course of the conflict some even decided to become professional soldiers or police officers. Just as military operations began in Eastern Ukraine the country began to implement a programme of reforms, starting with the police force. The police reforms are being spearheaded by a young Georgian woman, Eka Zguladze, who has been appointed First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. She is the one credited with successfully tackling corruption in the Georgian police force at the beginning of Mikheil Saakashvili’s presidency. Saakashvili, now the former President of Georgia, is also here in Ukraine, tasked with overseeing reforms. But progress is slow and subtle, while the ‘eastern front’ endures continual military operations day and night, with scant regard for the ceasefire. The fighting, the bombing raids and the funerals of those killed in the conflict make it all but impossible for many Ukrainians who took part in Maidan or sympathised with protestors to look back and see things clearly: how far has Ukraine come this past year? What has been achieved?

    If you ask people during the course of a conversation what they think about Maidan now, it usually takes them a while to reply. ‘Maidan’ is history. It has been ‘pushed back’ – first by the annexation of Crimea, then by the unsuccessful attempt to incite armed uprisings against the government in Kiev throughout the south-east of the country, from Donetsk to Odessa and Pridnestrovie, and finally by the gradual deterioration of the situation in Donbass to a state of war – a war that wouldn’t be happening were it not for the tens of thousands of tons of Russian missiles and mines making their way into Ukraine, were it not for the volunteers, the mercenaries, the regular and reserve army officers, coming from all over Russia to fight in Ukraine.

    It’s impossible to predict how and when Putin’s war against Ukraine will end. Every now and then European leaders promise not to ‘abandon’ Ukraine, but they don’t want to ‘abandon’ Russia either; they are already suffering from the economic sanctions they themselves have imposed. At the same time European politicians understand that if Putin manages to destroy Ukraine – both economically and politically – he won’t stop there.

    Today, when I ask people in Kiev if they would have gone to Maidan in 2013 if they had known where it would lead, they pause before answering, but most of them say yes. ‘We had no alternative!’ they explain. ‘Yanukovych had already sold Ukraine to Putin, and that’s why he turned his back on Europe! Yanukovych used the threat of rapprochement with Europe to blackmail Putin. If Maidan hadn’t happened, then we would no longer have an independent Ukraine.’

    I have my own vivid memories of Euromaidan. Not of the tragedy it became and on account of which it ultimately succeeded, but rather of the spirit of the Ukrainian people, their desire to influence the fate of their own country and their readiness to take action.

    Now the word ‘Maidan’ has acquired new relevance – there have been calls for a third Maidan protest, with the aim of overthrowing the new government. Next there will be calls to take direct action against the war, against mobilisation, against everything that the new President and Cabinet of Ministers are doing. The new government is responding to this threat by attempting to introduce internet censorship and stricter control over the content of political talk shows on TV. But even Yanukovych was unable to subject Ukraine to the Russian model of total control over society through censorship and the judicial system. The majority of Ukrainians know perfectly well who stands to benefit most from a third Maidan; on this basis a third Maidan seems considerably less likely than a third ‘Minsk ceasefire’.

    The fact of the matter is that a third ‘Minsk ceasefire’, which will be possible only after the second ceasefire is officially acknowledged to be defunct and the country suffers several more months of bloody and devastating warfare, will say less about Ukraine than about her Western comrades-in-arms – the European Union and the United States. It will be a verdict on their indecision, on their reluctance to take more effective economic, financial and diplomatic steps to stop the Russian Federation sending arms, men and machinery to Donbass, without which military operations would never have begun.

    Andrey Kurkov’s book Ukraine Diaries, translated by Sam Taylor, is available to buy through our bookseller partner Foyles.

    Amanda Love Darragh’s translation of The Diary of Lena Mukhina is also available through Foyles.

  • Kiev’s Militant Spring

    This article is part of the English PEN Between EU and Me project, supported by the European Commission

    Translated from the Russian by Anne Marie Jackson

    In Kiev it’s warm, and this year the chestnuts and lilacs have come into bloom ten days early. Kiev is especially beautiful in May and at this time of year the city brims with tourists. At the moment there are fewer people around than usual; the tourists are wary, concerned about their safety. After all, the east of the country is at war. And although Russian tanks have not crossed the Ukrainian border, the events in Donetsk, Luhansk and to some extent Kharkiv constitute war in every sense, crippling the country’s economy and damaging the people’s psyche.

    The physical consequences of war can be effaced: fortifications dismantled, minefields cleared, cities and industry restored. But the psychological wounds take generations to heal and even then will never completely disappear. The 23 years of Ukraine’s independence were a peaceful time, the break-up of the Soviet Union occurring here without armed conflict. Throughout these years Russia was fighting in the Caucasus – Chechnya, Dagestan and Georgia – and its troops were deployed in civil confrontations in Central Asia and Transnistria. Independent Ukraine is short on war in its history; however it’s also short an army.

    In the early 90s, Ukraine’s army was 700,000 strong; its armaments included 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 2,600 tactical nuclear weapons. By surrendering its nuclear arsenal, Ukraine gained guarantees of its territorial integrity from the United States, Great Britain and Russia. What need does a country have of powerful armed forces when its security is guaranteed by the three biggest nuclear powers in the world? Who would even think of attacking such a country? Over the course of two decades, Ukraine reduced the size of its army nearly tenfold. Its combat-ready weaponry was used chiefly for UN peacekeeping operations in Africa. No one could have imagined that one of its guarantor states would turn into an aggressor and annex part of Ukraine’s territory.

    Ukraine can now confidently be described as a state without an army. The Berkut special police force and Ukrainian security service might have been up to the task of easing the tensions in the country’s eastern provinces. While dismantling the army, the Yanukovych regime had taken care to build up the special services as its mainstay and defence should the country experience an outbreak of discontent. It was the Berkut that Yanukovych sent to put down the Maidan protest during the winter of 2014. But after protesters were fired upon on 18-20 February, after hundreds were killed and thousands injured, the Berkut was disbanded and the remaining services completely demoralised. Consequently, today’s Ukraine is a state without an army and without a police force.

    There may be no forces of law and order in the country, but neither is there chaos. On the outside, Kievans’ daily lives look about the same as usual. The annual marathon was run in late April. Just a few days earlier, Russian PEN and the Khodorkovsky Foundation held a conference that was attended by writers, journalists and human rights activists from both Russia and Ukraine. And there is a major poetry festival coming up in the middle of May – the Kiev Lavry, or Laurels. In the evenings, jazz can be heard on the streets and every seat in the street cafés is taken, even if the café in question is located between the first and second lines of the Maidan barricades. The Maidan could disperse, now that it has achieved its primary objective – the removal of Yanukovych from office – but it hasn’t dispersed. The people aren’t too sure about the new Government; they’re unhappy with its actions in Donetsk and Luhansk. The Maidan, noticeably less peopled, stands as a reminder of whose will the Ukrainian authorities must answer to.

    The warm Kiev evenings and lyrical jazz melodies of the street musicians create an almost perfect illusion of peaceful life. But however much the war may recede into the back of our minds, we’re never completely free of it. It’s always with us. And it’s not just the bad news that comes each day from the east. Putin’s quiet war is depriving each of us of a part of our past. We can no longer go back to the Crimea that used to be, that we are all connected to in some way; and Crimea will never again be what it was. Widespread violence has radically transformed the small towns in the north of Donetsk province, destroying the people’s accustomed way of life and blurring the boundary between the thinkable and the unthinkable. Like a slowly moving conflagration, the war is creeping from east to west, turning to ash the peaceful life of a great people. The war is distancing us from the past, emphasising its unattainability, and making the future insubstantial and surreal. Is it even worth thinking about the future when at any moment it could all disappear? The war leaves us only with the present – the laidback moments of these warm spring evenings and the fluid jazz on the Kiev streets. The evenings linger slow and unhurried, yet passing by swiftly and for ever.

  • The apricot border with Russia, or separatism on Skype

    With the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, poet and dramatist Liubov Iakymchuk writes for PEN Atlas in an exclusive dispatch about saboteurs, families divided, Russia’s exporting of fear, and the new resolve of the people.

    Translated from the Ukrainian by Steve Komarnyckyj

    Here, in Ukraine, we follow the latest forecasts of the provocations from Russia as closely as we used to follow the weather reports. We’ve given up watching TV series and just look at the news, which has become like a dystopian novel. Every day here feels like a year, but we are getting smarter as well as older. We have learned to be vigilant and all our attention is focused on the border. At last we have realised that the boundary between us and Russia exists.

    There is one weird thing in all of this. If you cross the Eastern border of Ukraine, which is brimming with plantations of apricot trees, and enter Russia, you notice that there are far fewer apricot trees in the country that you are entering. The apricot trees define the territory more clearly than any border guards or crossing points, separating our own from foreign ground. It is as if they show us that this border takes us to another world, where there is only a weak connection between people and reality. Where people believe the television when it says that everyone loves Putin. However, in Angela Merkel’s words, the Russian President has lost his grip on reality.

    They don’t let every Ukrainian across this ‘apricot’ border now, especially not journalists. At best, those rash and brave enough to cross might be interrogated for five hours or more and then released, like in the case of the journalists from the Ukrainian TV station 5 Kanal. In the worst case scenario, those who make this crossing might simply disappear. At least that’s the fear spreading throughout these border areas.

    On the other side, where there are no apricots, the Russians have established military encampments and field hospitals, 50 km from the border. A huge Russian military force is gathered there; they reconfigure them occasionally and the numbers of personnel vary, but not by much. There are no exact figures but it’s rumoured that there are hundreds of thousands.

    Ukrainian citizens live on this side of the border with its abundance of budding apricot trees. People are compelled to live with the daily fear of the ‘contagion’ of military personnel on the border, this abscess which grows daily, which might push through the boundary and turn into war. All normal people here want to avoid this, of course. Even here in Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk, where there was always a low level of civic activism, people go to anti-war protests in bigger numbers than during the Euromaidan. The common enemy has compelled a usually passive population to rise up and we probably need to thank our foe for that.

    My mother’s cousin, who lives near the Russian side of the border, asked my parents, who live close to the border on the Ukrainian side, ‘Isn’t it time you fled Ukraine?’ My parents found these words laughable, a consequence of the hatred for Ukrainians that is preached in Russia. The result of this cultivated antipathy is that three quarters of Russians would support the Kremlin in the event of a war breaking out with Ukraine. Perhaps our Russian relatives are ready to support this war too, perhaps they will be delighted when bombs drop on Ukraine where they were born. This cultivated fear is meant to divert the attention of Ukrainians and allow Russia to send troupes of provocateurs into the east of Ukraine. These people arrange skirmishes, support their own self-proclaimed governors, and ultimately try to amputate this part of Ukraine. The Russian army is massing by the border and the men in green who may be Russian intelligence troops or local militia have begun appearing in the streets of east Ukrainian towns.

    A war with Ukraine is supported by 74% of the people in Russia. The awareness of such a statistic is enough to drive you mad, and many people have gone mad, including those on the Ukrainian side, and their symptoms are distinctly Putinesque. The Donetsk separatists, who are instructed by the leading Kremlin political scientist, Aleksandr Dugin, have already noted down what they need to do to make sure Donbass becomes Russian. The key points of their plan are as follows: don’t go to work, disrupt the Ukrainian presidential elections, take up arms, seize power locally, and open the eastern borders. This is so Russians can ‘save’ Ukrainians from themselves and restore the dictator Yanukovych to power. So the Kremlin trains separatists via Skype and, I suspect, terrorists as well. Neither European nor American sanctions will affect the pace of events; they will only reinforce the creation of an image within Russia of America and Europe as foes.

    One of the worst things about this is that family relationships are being ruined on different sides of the ‘apricot’ border. This may be endured and healed over in time. The worst aspect of the situation is that the Russian aggressor, who has for long enough held their fellow citizens in fear, is managing to extend this terror to Ukrainians. Fear and terror, the satellites of the Russian empire, grow like tumours, longing to occupy all the space that can be occupied, and transform everything into a cancerous growth. The most pervasive fears on the Ukrainian border within the Russian-speaking population are the fear that the Russian language may be prohibited, the fear of the mythical ‘banderites’ (Ukrainian nationalists who form a fictitious internal enemy) and the fear that there may be a Maidan tax (but no one really knows what this might be). These fears are ruining people’s ability to consider things right.

    However, fear can affect other people differently, sometimes even positively. It summons up a feeling of unity with one’s people against an external enemy. Even though the east of Ukraine has been relatively passive in the past, it is not without hope and action now. The fear of war provokes not only the usual chat in the kitchen but also draws people out to demonstrate in city streets and squares, becoming visible like the blossoming apricot trees on the Ukrainian border.

     

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    Liubov Iakymchuk is a Ukrainian poet and dramatist who was born in Pervomaysk, Luhansk Province in 1985. After graduating from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy she worked as a radio broadcaster, screenwriter, and independent journalist. She is the author of such collections of poetry as U Chotyrokh Stinakh (Within Four Walls) and ​Yak MODA (How FASHION). She has won several poetry prizes notably the international Slovyanska poetychna premiya (Slavic poetry prize). The Anglo-Ukrainian music project Afrodita was created on the basis of her verses: http://www.olesyazdorovetska.com/index.php/ensembles/78-aphrodite

     

  • World War III: a dress rehearsal

    In another exclusive dispatch from Ukraine, Andrey Kurkov describes the atmosphere of tension and surreality in Kiev and Crimea, the schizophrenia of the political situation, and the ominous absence of birds before the arrival of war 

    At five o’clock on the morning of Tuesday 4 March, I was expecting the start of World War III. Five o’clock was the time that Putin had scheduled for the storming of Ukrainian military units in Crimea. The Ukrainian troops were given a choice: the surrender of their weapons and themselves or the start of military action. I am proud that Ukraine’s soldiers and officers didn’t surrender. In fact, like the participants in EuroMaidan, they were prepared to die. But there’s always one traitor and this one was the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Navy, who had gone over to the Russian Army on the very day he was appointed. There’s no need to worry about him. He’ll get a Russian passport and pursue his career in the Russian Army. He may even become a State Duma deputy or a member of Russia’s upper house Federation Council. Russia needs people like this. Ukraine does not.A little later that same day, at around ten in the morning, there was a report that Yanukovych had died of a heart attack. The report has not been confirmed and so Russia now has two high-ranking traitors: Rear Admiral Berezovskiy and ex-President Yanukovych, who has asked Putin to conquer the Ukraine that kicked him out. For all my love of fantasy and surrealism, I feel helpless in the face of Europe’s most recent history.Meanwhile, it was foggy outside. A thick, milky fog. At seven in the morning, a man of around sixty, too lightly dressed for the weather, entered the little square on the opposite side of the road. He crumbled a bread roll on the edge of the square where there are always dozens of pigeons. This time, he sprinkled the crumbs onto empty ground. There wasn’t a single pigeon anywhere around. I was astonished, checked out the surrounding area from the window and was satisfied there were no pigeons. Just for a moment, I thought this was a very bad sign. After all, I still didn’t know that the war hadn’t started. Another ten minutes, however, and the pigeons turned up, and a normal, peaceful morning in Kiev got under way.I still can’t believe all the troubles are over. And this despite the fact that I’ve always been an optimist. I’m still trying to understand what’s been happening over the past few weeks and is still happening now. I have no questions about anything to do with EuroMaidan. The present reality of Russian-Ukrainian relations, however, is a sad conundrum. While Russian troops were smashing navigation equipment at the Ukrainian airbases they had seized and blockading Ukrainian military units, the Ukrainian government, its legitimacy not recognised by Russia, was transferring payments for gas to Gazprom almost every day. Ukrainian goods passed unimpeded through Russian customs even though, before the start of military action in Crimea, every day had brought new problems for Ukrainian exports to Russia. Perhaps the permutations of politics sometimes resemble both schizophrenia and a sophisticated mind-game at one and the same time. So far, I haven’t a clue. Although, the simplest explanation of what’s happening could be a highly rational and dispassionate policy on the part of Ukraine’s new leaders, carrying on ‘as normal’ while preparing for the worst-case scenario.Still, while the political experts write about politics and politicians, writers write about life. And it’s the little things that make up life. The other day, en route to see my Kiev publisher, who lives, like me, in the centre of Kiev, I noticed two state traffic police cars and several police officers armed with AK assault rifles at a crossroads near Kiev University. And this ‘little thing’ lifted my mood. I’ve only seen police officers in central Kiev a few times in recent days. They were patrolling the streets with People’s Self Defence representatives. No, Kiev has not descended into chaos. Life seems entirely normal and only the appearance of the occasional passerby in a flak jacket suggests that getting back to normal is still some way off.One evening recently, on March 3, I visited my publisher at home. We were eating, drinking and trying to talk but the conversation was constantly being interrupted and a deadly silence would ensue. The publisher, Petr Khazin, kept trying to put the TV on so that we could follow the news but his wife and I wouldn’t let him. The black box of the disconnected TV set psyched us out too. We already knew about the Russian troops’ ultimatum to Ukraine’s military units. We knew about the assault set for five in the morning. That must have been why all our attempts to talk about peaceful topics were doomed to failure. When I took the same route home past Kiev University, the armed police officers and their patrol cars had gone. The streets were dark, damp and quiet. I went to bed at two in the morning and woke again at six to find out whether the war had started. As it turned out, it hadn’t. I rushed to give my children the good news but they already knew. They’d been up earlier than me – to find out whether they had any future in Ukraine.

    About the author

    Andrey Kurkov, Ukrainian writer and novelist was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the cult bestseller Death and the Penguin. His latest novel, The Gardener from Ochakov was published by Harvill Secker last year.

    About the translator

    Melanie Moore has been translating Russian in all its forms for more than 25 years. Her translation of The Little Man by Liza Alexandrova Zorina was published by Glas earlier this month. She also translates from French.

    Additional information

    To find out more about the situation in Ukraine, and the poetry and literature of the country, English PEN, the Dash Cafe, the British Ukrainian Society present the work of Ukrainian poet Ihor Pavlyuk. Ihor’s work paints an extraordinary and complex picture of Ukraine and we will use it as inspiration to begin a conversation about the country today. Featuring the haunting and soulful music of Olesya Zdorovetska and a panel chaired by Dash Artistic Director Josephine Burton with Journalist Annabelle Chapman, translator Steve Komanyckyj and Ihor himself, this will be a celebration of Ukrainian voices that can gives us a unique perspective on the current political situation. 

     

  • Russian déjà vu at Sochi 2014 – who lost the games?

    Mikhail Shishkin writes our second PEN Atlas dispatch on the Sochi Winter Olympics, a story of billion-dollar corruption, Soviet-style propaganda, and a regime bent on hiding opposition and urban decay behind sports kitsch and a new coat of paint

    In 1980, I was studying linguistics in Moscow. During the Olympics my colleagues and I were expected to work as guides and interpreters. Our training course included a class with a ‘professor’ in plain clothes who drilled us on how to answer provocative questions from Western guests. For example: ‘Why are foreigners allowed to buy everything in special shops with foreign currency while local shops are empty?’ We immediately felt uneasy; this was a good question – why? The right answer was: ‘Yes we still have some shortages, but when we have guests we treat them the best we can, even if we have to deny ourselves.’Today, the Olympics have again turned into a huge Potemkin village: newly painted and front-facing our foreign guests, and showing a dirty backside to its own people.The Games haven’t even started yet and already the moveable ‘Feast of Sport’ has become the immovable feast of embezzlement, the festival of irresponsibility, and the visiting card of the Putin regime.Someone had whispered in Putin’s ear about holding the Winter Olympics in the subtropics of all places – and so here he is, the Father of the Nation, a stone’s throw away from Greece, building his own eternal Olympus! And the cost doesn’t matter. The money is coming from the pockets of pensioners, teachers and doctors. The real Sochi winners will be those Russian officials and oligarchs who populate in their dozens the rich-lists of the world. The cost of constructing these Olympics is twice as much as the world average. Half of the fantastical $50billion now sits in the offshore bank accounts of the officials in charge. This means that more has been stolen in Sochi than the previous cost of all Winter Games combined. Here we should remind ourselves that these multi-billion-dollar efforts are disposable. These monster edifices will fall into decay and end in ruins…The official propaganda, as before, celebrates the Olympics as ‘a Feast of Sport’. And as before, we are being told: ‘Sport is beyond politics!’ In the Soviet Union sport was always politics. Of course, it’s natural to root for sportspeople from your own country. But how can I root for the victory of a country of which I’m ashamed? Does this sound unpatriotic to you? But what does it mean – to be a patriot in Russia?In the past, in our inside-out country, the attitude towards patriotism was also inside-out. We were against the Soviets, and on the side of the Czechoslovakian hockey team, because their democratic ‘spring’ had not so long ago been crushed by the tracks of our tanks. Now those times have indeed returned.I wish I could be proud of my country, root for its sports team. But how can sport be ‘beyond politics’ if when the Russian teams win, the old Stalinist national anthem will be sung worldwide? The anthem that was reintroduced by Putin: the anthem of dictators and slaves.The athletes and politicians now preparing for their journey to Sochi should keep in mind that they will all be playing a part, as ‘backing singers’ for the global PR campaign of the regime, that the Sochi ‘Feast of Sport, Peace and Friendship’ is intended as a personal feast for the Supreme Skier and is being used by his teammates as a way to transfer public money into their already bulging pockets.This gang of criminals falsified the elections and they usurped state power, taking the whole country hostage. To participate in the Olympics means to show solidarity with the dictator, to help him make the Games a triumph and legitimise his regime. In 1980, democratic countries boycotted the Games in Moscow, showing solidarity not with the regime but with its victims. Though we all appreciate that the Olympics are an opportunity for any sportsperson, boycotting the Games means showing solidarity with those who are being held hostage.Do you really believe that the long Olympic torch relay was a celebration for the country? When people were driven together under the threat of punishment to meet the policed cortege carrying the torch with its constantly dying flame, it evoked nothing but feelings of shame and humiliation. In Saratov, manholes were welded shut and rubbish bins were removed from the torchbearer’s route. To prevent people from throwing away rubbish in the usual places, policemen were placed there instead. In accordance with the old Soviet tradition, ruins were covered with colourful facades glorifying sport. As in 1980, only the houses with dirty entrances and holes in their roofs were repaired. It’s all painfully recognisable – again, they’re putting a golden crown on a decaying tooth! And all this useless window-dressing is done by local authorities for a single man in the Kremlin. Again, it is the clammy fear of an official – scared of not satisfying the boss – that governs the country.And now the Games are becoming a real disaster for the population of Sochi. They feel discriminated against and robbed. Some people’s land and property has been seized, some people have been forced out of their homes. Their protests have been brutally suppressed. Just read some of the blogs coming out of Sochi: the local population already execrates the Olympics.One can only get into Sochi with a special permit – the so-called ‘fan-passport’. Human rights activists who apply for one are simply turned down. The city has turned into a ‘zone’: going south by car one sees along the highway, starting soon after Rostov, large banners saying ‘Sochi is closed’. Who are the Olympics for then, if not for the citizens of the country?And who will be responsible for the barbarian destruction of nature in Krasnaya Polyana and the whole unique Mzymty valley? Meanwhile the regime is busy prosecuting protesting ecologists…The clemency that’s been given to other political prisoners before the Games doesn’t exonerate the regime – instead, it anticipates new arrests and new imprisonments once the Games are over. And then the only hope will be for more clemency before the football World Cup, to be held in Russia in 2018. This gang has already spoiled the Olympics. Will they spoil football for us as well?I don’t know who’ll win medals, but the Russian population has already lost the Games. One can sum up the Winter Games even before they have started: the regime, with help from the Olympics, has raped the country yet again: Russian déjà vu.But now there arises one more analogy: after the 1980 Olympics, the USSR lasted only a decade. How long can Putin’s Russia last?I hope that Russia can change. It is such a great feeling not to be ashamed, but proud of one’s country. It is only in a future democratic Russia that sport will, at last, be beyond politics. About the authorBorn in 1961 in Moscow, Mikhail Shishkin is one of the most prominent names in contemporary Russian literature, and is the only author to have won all three major Russian Literary Prizes. He divides his time between Moscow, Switzerland and Germany.Additional informationFor more on Mikhail’s criticism of the Russian government, please see his interview with the New York Times.Read reviews of Mikhail’s novel Maidenhair, available at Good Reads.Mikhail Shishkin’s latest book, The Light and the Dark is published  by Querus and out now.  

  • What is the real cost of the Sochi Winter Olympics?

    Hamid Ismailov investigates the underside of the Sochi Olympics for PEN Atlas: while the Western media focuses on LGBT rights, there is also the shocking unheard story of migrant labourers held in captivity, mercury and uranium deposits from construction work, jingoism, corruption and worse

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the Olympics, be it in the summer or winter, and this includes Sochi. From a very early age, in our Soviet childhoods, we were encouraged to wake up in the middle of the night to watch our ice hockey team playing in Sapporo or Calgary, cheering when they would beat the Canadian team and weeping as they lost to the Czechs. There was an iconic Soviet song at the time: ‘We seek victory, nothing else, but victory for us all, and we don’t give a damn about the cost’. Nowadays, with hindsight, I’m a bit disturbed by these words.In my novel, The Dead Lake, published by Peirene Press this February, I looked at the Soviet nuclear site in Semipalatinsk, which was one of the key sites in the nuclear race between the USSR and the US to produce the deadliest bombs – another example of when we didn’t give a damn about the cost. What I tried to describe in this book is what happens when countries and their elites try to jump higher than the rest of the world – speaking figuratively, it results in their trousers tearing. And those who are left to pay the price or who are left naked in the metaphor are not the elites themselves, but the little people.I find the same disturbing signs with the Sochi Olympics. Here again, the Russian authorities, under President Putin, took up the same motto: ‘We seek victory, nothing else, but victory for us all, and we don’t give a damn about the cost’ – in order to establish the image of Russia as a re-emerging global super-power.First of all, the literal cost of this Olympics is, at a modest estimate, over £30billion – this is as much as all previous winter games combined. When I ask my Russian friends why it’s so excessive, as though the organisers are going to present every single participant and spectator with a personal hand-made snow-flake, they reply with this popular Russian joke:’There was once a tender put out to build an object, and three organisations bid for it. First, an organisation of migrant workers put forward their application: “We’ll build the object very quickly for three million, but no warranties.” Then the state organisation offered their bid: “We’ll build it for six million, but slowly and with guarantees.” Then a bunch of crooks and gangsters bid for the same tender: “It’ll cost nine million: three million to you, three million to us, and then we’ll hire the migrants to build it for three million.”‘Russian authorities vehemently deny allegations of corruption, but both Russian and Western journalists have reported many cases reminiscent of this joke… My BBC colleagues Lucy Ash and Anastasia Uspenskaya are running a series of investigative programmes looking into this problem, as well as other problems regarding the so-called ‘cost’ of the Sochi Olympics. Their conclusion is: the Olympics have brought to Sochi, and to Russia as a whole, an array of new first-class sports complexes, hotels, jobs, entertainment, as well as amnesty to Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot, yet in the shadows of that shiny, glossy and encouraging facade there are many untold, darker stories.The Western media have focused a great deal on LGBT rights, but after President Putin’s confession to Andrew Marr that he ‘has gay friends’ it seems that the issue was dropped from the headlines… Less is known in the West about the issue of widespread abuse of migrant workers’ human rights, workers who’d been building the Olympic complex in great numbers. There are reported cases of migrants being severely beaten-up by Cossack vigilante groups, encircled like cattle and kept in metal hangars for several days without food and water, in the middle of the cold winter. Many of them were later deported by force and without any payment for their work.The unpredictable environmental costs of this showcase of Russian might are another worry for local and international activists. On the one hand, activists are worried about the proximity of the gigantic Olympic facilities to the Caucasian and Sochi National Park, with its rare plant and animal species, some of them under threat of extinction. On the other hand, facilities built on the hills by the seashore are under threat of landslides, according to activists, and the excessive use of concrete foundations and stilts may affect the structure of the ground and of the underground aquifers of mineral waters. There were also many concerns about the newly-built cargo port and fears that mercury and uranium deposits might become hazardous because of inappropriate construction work on the slopes. Moreover, while building these facilities on the shore, hundreds if not thousands of ordinary people’s houses were demolished without their consent and in some cases without any compensation…Once again, the same philosophy: ‘We seek after gain so much that we don’t give a damn about the cost’. These poor people are still campaigning for a boycott of the Games. Their voices though remain unheard.About the authorHamid Ismailov is an Uzbek journalist and writer who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 and came to the United Kingdom, where he took a job with the BBC World Service. His works are banned in Uzbekistan. He published dozens of books in Uzbek, Russian, French, German, Turkish and other languages. Hamid Ismailov translated Russian and Western classics into Uzbek, and Uzbek and Persian classics into Russian and some Western languages.Additional informationThe Dead Lake will be launched with three events. The author, Hamid Ismailov, and his publisher, Meike Ziervogel, would be delighted if you could join them. Booking is essential.Tuesday 25th February: Peirene Experience, with music & dramatic performance at Big Green Bookshop.Thursday 26th February: Peirene Supper Club at Book & Kitchen. Join the author for an evening of delicious food, good conversation and great literature.Saturday 1st March: Peirene Salon: An evening of literature, dinner and drink at the publisher’s house.