Igor Irteniev announced the exit from the Pen-Center

The poet Igor Irteniev sent a statement to the leadership of the Russian Pen-Center to withdraw from this organization in connection with the refusal of its leadership from human rights activities.

He reported this on Monday, December 7, on Facebook by the writer Lev Timofeev .

As the literary critic and publicist Nikolai Podosokorsky notes in his blog, in early October, Irteniev turned to members of the Pen-Center with an open letter , in which he criticized the refusal of the organization of the organization from human rights activities.

In March of this year, Lev Timofeev also terminated his membership in the Russian PEN Center, saying that "I was not interested in taking part in the current activities of the Russian foam, and sometimes even ashamed." Subsequently, the writer published on his website the Chronicle “Loss of Pen Club” dedicated to the crisis in the organization.

On December 2, at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Pen-Center, a resolution was adopted, in which, in particular, it was said: “To recognize public insults to colleagues, as well as private and public statements on the Internet and in the media on behalf of the Russian Pen-Center,” as well as the unacceptable and contradictory. What kind of statements are in question, the minutes of the meeting is not said. This fall, many members of the Pen-Center have defended the library of Ukrainian literature and in support of the Memorial human rights center .

On December 6, Evgeny Popov, vice-president of the Russian Pen-Center, published an appeal on the organization’s website explaining the position of the executive committee. In it, he criticized members of the Pen-Center, which “with might and main for permission, used the prestigious brand, the Russian Pen-Center brand.”

In response, the translator Olga Drobot reminded Popova that "the international Pen always stated that he was not an elite union of writers, but an organization of protection of freedom of expression."

The Russian Pen-Center was created in 1989, Andrei Bitov became its president, in 1998 the Russian branch of the International Pen-Club was renamed the Russian PEN Center.

Until the end of the 1980s, all attempts to organize a pen club in our country were unsuccessful. So, in 1956, the head of the Department of Culture of the CPSU Central Committee Dmitry Polikarpov to the proposal of the Union of Writers of the USSR on joining the International Pen-Club replied: “The Pen-club charter contains the provisions unacceptable for Soviet writers: to oppose censorship, to use its influence in order to prevent a class struggle, to criticize the government, etc.”

Among the types of activities of the Russian Pen-Center listed on his website , “observation of how and the right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression in the Russian Federation and in all countries of the world is carried out and ensured, an immediate reaction to any reliable information about the infringement of these freedoms of anyone and anywhere”, as well as “protection of writers, journalists, and any types of discrimination of discriminations. for the exercise of their professional duties and the rights and freedoms granted by law. ”