When the humanities and social sciences, or even journalism, cannot
fully capture reality, literature becomes a way to approach it. ---- Inan essay on Russian literature, art, and music, the Russian writer, now
living in Switzerland and a long-time opponent of the Putin regime,
takes a bold gamble: explaining that artists, broadly defined, possess
an intuition of the future. He aims to give a general meaning to texts
he has been publishing for the past ten years, emphasizing that the arts
in general, and literature in particular, allow for a critique of
absolutism. He offers a gallery of portraits ranging from Dostoevsky to
Chekhov, including musicians like Shostakovich, to show that some
artists have always been critical of power while simultaneously serving
it. For the author, even when the Russian or Soviet regime attempts to
subjugate writers and artists, the latter always end up subverting and
fighting it. In a reflection that leaves the reader perplexed and
somewhat bewildered, he notes that Kolyma made Shalamov's existence
possible... In the same vein, his lengthy attempt to define Russian
literature falls flat. It is its universal character that gives it its
humanity... One wonders, then, if this otherwise brilliant and often
incisive novelist wouldn't have been better off continuing to do what he
does best: novels and articles denouncing the realities of the current
regime.
Andrei Kurkov offers the continuation, but perhaps not the end, of what
was intended to be a trilogy (after *The Ear of kyiv* and *The Heart of
kyiv*): *The kyiv Baths*. Samson Kolechko, now a local police inspector,
investigates the mysterious disappearance of 28 Red Army soldiers from
the city's municipal swimming pool after a particularly boozy evening.
The formula that made the first two volumes so successful is present:
Ukraine ravaged by civil war, a conflict between Reds, Whites, and
Greens, and the fleeting shadow of the Makhnovists. Kourkov doesn't
hesitate to use details and absurd anecdotes to bring his story to life.
Searching for the missing, the inspector stumbles upon a major
trafficking operation: caviar. He plunges into the city's underworld,
quickly realizing the absolute power of the Cheka, the communist
political police, which enforces the Red Order with an iron fist.
Sometimes, fiction reflects reality.
This is the case in Antoine Sénanque's latest novel. Drawing on a wealth
of literature to construct his narrative, the author invents a fictional
character, Sylla Bach, the adopted daughter of a tanner, a refugee in
Budapest, who was deported for nine years to Kolyma. There, to survive,
she went to work for the blatnoi, the camp underworld to whom the NKVD
entrusted the daily management of the camp, much to the terror of the
other victims of the concentration camp system. The heroine is hardly
sympathetic; she served as an instrument of the camp killers, whether
they were thugs or Chekists. Then, during its partial dismantling,
solely for the benefit of the thugs, the heroine finds herself in
Budapest in 1956, in the midst of the uprising. The accounts of the
camps remain unsettled, giving rise to an investigation revealing how
the Soviet regime generated...
This long-standing echo continues in contemporary Russian literature.
For example, Maxim Osipov, who was forced to flee Russia after taking a
stand against the invasion of Ukraine, depicts the country's decay in
this collection of four powerful short stories, including an abandoned
children's hospital. The rise of a neo-nationalism tinged with
antisemitism and the quest for an eternal Russia-the unfortunate thing,
one might say, is that this hope is shared by a portion of the
population who remained, as the latest news suggests, while voices of
protest are silenced or forced into exile.
Saving the best for last, Sergei Lebedev, after *Men of August* about
the communist conservatives who attempted to seize power in 1991 and
*The Beginner* about the Soviet secret services, succeeds in *The White
Lady* in telescopeing the past and present for the better... in service
of describing the worst. The story begins in the Donbass in 2014 in a
coal mine. Five narrators take turns telling the story of the region,
embodying five different pasts and describing the suffering and reality
of the region's past, which has been and remains a land of blood where
bloodthirsty tyrants clash on the backs of the people, from the great
famine in Ukraine to the great terror and the extermination of the Jews.
The White Lady reminds us that the past always catches up with
murderers, even if she cannot punish them.
The White Marble Boat
Mikhail Shishkin
Noir sur Blanc 2025 336 pp. EUR24
The Baths of kyiv
Andrei Kurkov
Liana Levi 2025 382 pp.
Farewell Kolyma
Antoine Sénanque
Grasset 2025 400 pp. EUR23
Luxemburg
Maxime Osipov
Verdier 2025 160 pp. EUR20
The White Lady
Sergei Lebedev
Noir sur Blanc 2025
https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8682
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