“The maximum that Putin can achieve is to become a younger partner of China.” Boris Akunin about the history of the Russian state

“Babook Book Club” , which began as an individual author’s project, now made the author’s regiments of Dmitry Bykov, Boris Grebenshchikov, Sergey Guriev, Andrei Makarevich, Oleg Radzinsky, Viktor Shenderovich, several friendly publishers, sells the prohibited works by Mikhail Shishkin, Vladimir Sorokin, Dmitri Glukhovsky and other remarkable authors. "BA" decrypted as Best Authors. And this is true.

Russian readers can no longer buy my books, but I opened on the site the section “Book with a continuation”, in which my new books will be published for free, the head is behind the head. So no, it will not work to separate us.

Babook has a phenomenally capable leader - Pavel Istomin. He has a great team. After all, it all started very cabinarily - just an author’s site with the sale of my electronic books for the Russian -speaking diaspora. And now this is a real publishing house, publishing more and more new authors, with normal printing and great plans. This metamorphosis occurred in accordance with the law of conservation of mass. Like the rivers of Mikhailo Lomonosov: "If where the matter is lost, it will be added in another place."

We and Bykov, Glukhovsky and Sorokin left in the Russian Federation, but increased in Babook. The same, apparently, will be further.

- Did the current war have influenced the maintenance of your “history”?

- In the afterword, where the results are summed up, the phrase appeared:

“The geopolitical struggle between the United States and the USSR for zones of influence, the competition of economies and the arms race will become the main plot core of the history of the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties of the twentieth century, and then, after the collapse of the Soviet“ superpower ”, will lead Russia in the twenties of the new century to an attempt to restore former greatness. A story unfolding before our eyes is a logical continuation of the events of centuries -old - a branch of a tree growing from 1917. ”

Here are the tops - there are roots.

- Your book, at least officially, cannot be bought in Russia. But are there any responses to her?

- Readers write to me all the time. Many want to state their vision of a historical event or argue with something. This is normal, I counted on this effect. People mentally return again and again to the recent past, look for explanations and answers in it.

- In the book you mention the newly reproducing “Ordynsky” model of statehood, since it is necessary to keep under the control of a huge diverse territory. But how is this very instinct for “holding under control” reproduced? And why did the “plate is in the territory of the Russian Empire?

-This is a very strong and in its own way a very logical state structure. Every historical attempt to change it inevitably led to a crisis - therefore, in the end, it was restored. The last time is in our eyes, after the chaos of the nineties.

But the thing is that this system should not be restored - it must be completely dismantled. It is necessary to turn the state into a real, not a nominal federation. Or even a confederation. Until this happens, the song “The priest had a dog” will reach for infinity.

- You write about the “tree of opportunities” - the trajectory of the fork in which the story moves. Are they in the history of post -Soviet Russia?

- Undoubtedly. I will name two points: 1994, when there was a dilemma: to release Chechnya or introduce troops. As soon as the second decision was made, the mechanism of the resurrection of the empire and the inevitable of the strangulation of freedoms started. And then in 1999 it was a second decision to start a new Chechen war and make the successor of the "security forces". Therefore, I do not share the generally accepted liberal nostalgia for Boris Yeltsin. Both the first and the second - his hand.

I do not share the generally accepted liberal nostalgia for Boris Yeltsin

- According to your words, in 1917 Russia had a choice between the left and right dictatorship. It turns out, then they chose the left, and now - the right turn?

- The entire Putin period is not a turn, but a gradual return to the original state model, in which there can be neither federalism, nor separation of powers, nor free press, nor an independent court. Back movement - in 1985. It remains only to return the Union republics. Which, in fact, they are trying to do. Crookedly, askance, but stubbornly.

- At the same time, can Putin's Russia be considered a continuation of Lenin?

- Not Leninskaya for sure. Lenin wanted not to restore the empire, but to arrange a world revolution. Putin is a continuation of not only Brezhnev and Stalin, but Romanov state policy. Again, “Orthodoxy-autocracy-nationality”, again “the Third Rome”, which now refers to the global stronghold of reaction and conservative values.

- There is an opinion that both Stalin and Putin are “gray, little people”. How justified is this view?

- It does not seem to me that Stalin and Putin are gray people. This is very not pretty, but, of course, gifted politicians. They are similar to their megalomania and the ease with which they destroy people (although Putin to Stalin in this sense, of course, is still far away). However, there are between them - as rulers - and one essential difference, which I am writing in the book. Stalin was a strong strategist and weak tactics. That is, he knew how to develop big goals (including criminal ones), but often stumbled on the way to their achievement, which was worth the country of huge victims. Putin is a rather clever tactician, but the strategic goals that he strives for are self -destructive or completely unattainable. He will not become neither the political leader of the world level, nor the ruler of the superpower. The maximum of what he can achieve is instead of being a younger partner of the West, will become a younger partner of China.

The strategic goals that Putin strive for are self -destructive or completely unattainable

-How important is the CC-KGB as independent power in the history of the USSR and now?

- The repressive device has never been an independent political force in Russia, it is not it in our time. Under the Communists, he was an instrument in the hands of the party elite. Now it is a pack of dogs, each of which Putin holds on a chain and all the time they are pulled by him. This is precisely the tactics that he owns perfectly. It is possible, however, that one of these dogs will once break from the chain and bit the owner.

- Lenin annexed the independence of Ukraine to Soviet Russia, and Putin now states that Lenin "created" it. Is it possible to find the origins of the current war in the last century or is it a matter of a purely Putin era?

- Lenin joined not only Ukraine, but all parts of the empire, to which he could reach. But the story has nothing to do with it. The Ukrainian war is certainly a personal Putin project. And Putin's miscalculation.

The dictator thought he could swallow Ukraine, but broke his teeth. Because his state is not at all the USSR, which was still, despite the lag in many parameters, an economically self-sufficient and technologically autonomous power, a real empire. The Russian Federation is under -power. Without a conditional silicone valley or its Chinese Erzatz, it will turn into a pumpkin.

- In general, how inevitable was the current war for Putinism? Why was they attacked precisely on Ukraine?

- It seems to me that the trigger was the Maidan. Putin became scared that the same scenario will repeat in Russia. And the second is the idea that the world is divided into “spheres of influence” and that Ukraine’s departure to Europe is a violation of unspoken agreements with the West. The meaning of the Putin war: “Do not touch! This is mine! "

Putin had the idea that Ukraine’s departure to Europe was a violation of unspoken agreements with the West

- How did you react to the sensational discussion after the release of the FBK film "Traitors"?

- I was upset. The fact that all participants in the discussion - but what is there, squabbles - so little care about the benefits of the common cause. The main meaning of any political propaganda is not to tell how bad your enemy is, but to demonstrate how good you yourself are. So that people look and think: "Oh, I want to follow these guys, they are cool!" So, for all these guys and girls, on both sides, few people want to go. So, the effect turned out to be negative.

- After the Crimea, Donbass, and then the start of a large war, the resentment and anger of Ukrainians in relation to the Russians in general is quite understandable. Did you feel it personally on yourself?

- Of course, bitterness against all of the Russian also affected me. What an annoyed and angry nonsense Ukrainians do not write to me, which they do not blame. I don't answer this. Because people have grief, trouble, tragedy. They scream in pain. Of course, there are a lot of those Ukrainians who write to me good. And I answer them, try to help and support.

- Do you feel a break with Russia? What is “yes” and what is “no”?

- What Russia? There are at least two of them. The one I love, and the one from which I feel sick. The first is always with me. With the second, I was always in a break.

- Your literary pace is impressive, how do you manage to write so much?

- This is such a way of existence, called Sakkado, “Tao of the Writer”. You comprehend life by constructing texts. The bee buzz, the bird waves its wings, I write. I have no weekends and vacations. My whole life is a continuous weekend and vacation. When I get tired of the book, I take another. Usually I write three in parallel, and the transition from the genre to the genre is my way to refresh.

- How will the war end?

- The most likely now seems “Korean version” - not a world, but a temporary agreement on a ceasefire, with a demarcation line and a constant danger of a new armed conflict. It will be very bad. For everyone

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Oleg Pshenichniki talked