"The people can choose their favorite beer variety and their favorite sausage variety"

Why is the expiration of the next presidential term like the expectation of the end of the world?

NT: *Talk about the surge of national identity. Do you think he is? *

It seems to me that for the first time in 70 years, our people can choose, for example, a favorite beer variety and a favorite sausage variety. To date, this is the main surge in popular self -awareness. This process of intoxication of a market economy, or in other words, the process of digesting the products consumed - this is our national identity now. In such a situation, the people are completely managing, and all futuristic ideas and strong -willed decisions will, as always, go down from above. So it will not be the people who drink beer, but the presidential administration.

NT: *In cinema, already, in fact, there is a state order. And in literature? *

* Vladislav Surkov, assistant to the President of the Russian Federation, in 1999-2012-deputy head of the presidential administration, author of the concept of "sovereign democracy"

If you let writers along the path of the state order, recalling the Stalinist phrase that “writers are engineers of human souls”, then they must be provided with a new creative method, as social realism performed this function before. I think that Surkov*, together with our patriots, should develop a method of sovereign-democratic realism. Then the idea of ​​the state order will be correct. Now we, writers, write to hell that, as anyone wants. And if you organize the writer's masses? Maybe you need to more seriously approach this task - to create a union of writers again. But then to give cottages in Peredelkin, and to revive the entire nomenclature writing system. And when this happens, I will begin to write the “norm” -2.

NT: *What is the principle of this method? *

In a nutshell, this is a sovereign-democratic reflection of modern revived Russia. Probably so.

NT: *How do you feel about the idea that such a state order is a kind of Product PlaCement. For example, the main character is a healing addict? *

I see the ending of such a novel called, for example, “Thunderstorm over Guangzhou”, where our special services workers returned from a dangerous business trip to China, where he fought with the enemies of Russia. He puts his scratched case on the paving stones of Red Square, looks at the Kremlin, sighs in relief and is baptized sweepingly. Such literature is probably promising in this situation.

NT: *And imperial trends in society, do you think now are strong now? *

Now many have started talking about this, newspapers print articles where people pour out their longing for the empire. But you know, Russia is an unpredictable country. Especially when the people quietly drink beer, it can be anything.

NT: Well, some officials regarded your anti -utopia “Oprichnik Day” ** *as a utopia. *

** In the "Day of the Oprichnik" Russia is separated from the western world by the Great Russian Wall. The country is ruled by the sovereign. He relies on the guardsmen. The objectionable are executed. One religion is Orthodox. And in everyday life, the support is made on “primordially Russian values”: a bath, vodka, salty loads, kvass.
*** Almost simultaneously, the story of Vladimir Sorokin “Oprichnik's Day”, the novel “2017” Olga Slavnikova, “Rinsal” Dmitry Bykov, came out almost simultaneously. They confront the utopia of Mikhail Yuryev “Third Empire”: in Russia a paradise on Earth was built, based on strength and patriotism

Yes, for me this, of course, is in many ways amazing. Different people told me that our officials, and at different levels, liked the book. It is so fantastic. Imagine that in the midst of the Cold War, when “1984” Orwell was written, a certain member of the English parliament reads a novel, claps on it and says: “A very sensible book”. In general, we live in a fantastic country.

NT: And what can you explain that in one year different writers, without saying a word, turned to such a far from a most common genre as anti -utopia? ***

I think this is not by chance and really speaks of the unpredictability of the Russian future. No one can give an answer in our country that it will be with it in five years, for example, what power will be. Writers are the same mediums who feel this uncertainty. That is why these books have published. In addition, we really have voices about the isolation of Russia, about the Russian path, more and more often we have more and more often. The fact that under socialism everything was fine except the CPSU. She is not there now, so you need to take all the best that was in the Soviet Union, and instead of the CPSU, put the Russian Orthodox Church. This is all together and gives rise to some expectations.

NT: *It turns out that the expectation of the end of the next presidential period causes eschatological motifs and once every 8 years we will prepare for the end of the world? *

Yes, we have the end of the reign of one team among the population is horrified by what will happen next. Eyewitnesses of Stalin’s death told me that their parents, their grandfathers, who were sitting in the 30s, was terrified. It seems that a crack passed through the universe. This suggests that democracy is still a outlandish flower that blooms from a hundred years long.

For the first time I chubby in NT No. 4 dated March 5, 2007