Andrei Arkhangelsky

In 2024, there is a literary prize ”Prize (Literaturpreis Dar, Prix littéraire Dar)“It was created on the initiative of writer Mikhail Shishkin and is designed to support Russian-speaking authors around the world. The head of the prize's expert council, journalist and critic Nikolai Alexandrov, believes that today our literature is in a worse situation than it was after the Bolshevik coup: back then, at least, the right to the existence of culture itself was not questioned.

Nikolai Alexandrov answered questions from Radio Liberty:

- There are many prizes, including literary ones: how and why did the idea to create another one arise?

- The idea to create the Dar Prize belongs to Mikhail Shishkin. He told me how last year he came to a fair in Spain to present his book “My. Essays on Russian Literature”. And he saw, in general, the usual atmosphere: books are sold, readers meet with writers, various events, interviews and so on. But what caught my eye was the almost complete absence of books in Russian. It is clear that pro-government publishers could not be represented there. Official book publishing inside Russia today has acquired a completely different shade, a different flavor. It is a golden time for all sorts of patriotic, militaristic publications; we are seeing the rapid resumption of Soviet institutions, right down to the Union of Writers, now headed by Vladimir Medinsky. It all seems like a parody of a return to Soviet times. Some freedom in publishing still remains, but book publishers are under extreme pressure. Even more recently, extensive cooperation with foreigners and the acquisition (and sale) of rights is more than problematic. Even independent publishers - emigrant publishers or those that remain in Russia - were not represented at the fair in Spain. This segment of the market has had a hard time in recent years: the pandemic has already largely destroyed them, and the war has finished them off. Books in Russian are absent from the European book market for another reason as well: both society and our literature today are in a state of radical division and dispersion. This is not a tragedy for the world, to put it bluntly; it is primarily a drama of the humanitarian community, which, however, is also of little use to anyone. Just like the Russian language and literature, which are under threat today. And if the policy of “abolishing Russian culture” has calmed down a bit, its consequences continue to affect people.

Full text of the interview on Radio Liberty