Writers are leaving the Russian PEN Center

Today, January 10, the writer Alexander Ilichevsky announced the exit from the Russian Pen-Center. Earlier, Lev Rubinstein and Boris Akunin (Grigory Chkhartishvili) refused membership in the organization.

This happened shortly after the Executive Committee of the Russian Pen-Center officially announcedthe deprivation of the membership of Sergei Parkhomenko, as well as the investigation of the penalty for members of the Pen-Center Marina Vishnevetskaya and Grigory Petukhova.

“From today, I have not been on the list of members of the foam of the Russian Federation. I entered it only because I was invited by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, and took this invitation as a kind of duty. However, now I consider it impossible to be in this organization, ”wrote Alexander Ilichevsky on his Facebook.

“I share the views of the Pen-movement, but I ask you to continue not to associate me with the Russian PC. I am no longer consuming in it, ”said Grigory Chartishvili .

In his appeal in connection with the exit from the Pen-Center, Leo Rubinstein speaks of a split in an organization that “not so much ... passed along the surface of ideological or political beliefs-which everyone can have different, and this is normal-how much essential stylistic incompatibility has exposed.”

“The last straw was the news of the exclusion of foam or other repressive measures against several of my colleagues,” Rubinstein writes.

In addition, today Maxim Amelin, Alexander Arkhangelsky, Denis Dragunsky, Timur Kibirov, Nikolai Kononov, Maya Kucheskaya and other members of the Russian Pen-Center, made a statement that they called the decisions of the executive committee shameful and called for “an extraordinary meeting of the Russian Pen-Center in accordance with its officially registered charter”.

“Before the general meeting, we terminate all kinds of relations with the current executive committee of the Russian Pen Center as an unauthorized (illegitimate) body,” the statement said.

PS a number of writers joined the application, including Vladimir Sorokin and Olga Romanova.