Interview: science fiction writer Dmitry Glukhovsky - “Americans are a more reading nation than us. You started our conversation by making the present interesting.

The actions of Dmitry Glukhovsky's novels usually take place in a confined space. In the legendary trilogy it was the metro, in Twilight it was an Arbat apartment, now it’s a smartphone. And every time, a whole life arises in this space, which millions of readers live together with the author. The just released “Text” is perhaps the most hermetic of all, but at the same time it is even more acutely in touch with everyone’s life, although the heroes of the novel are exceptional in their fate and position. Released after a seven-year prison sentence, still a young man, convicted on false charges allegedly for drug trafficking, in fact due to a personal conflict with an FSKN operative, is released from the zone in Solikamsk, comes to Moscow, finds out that his mother two days before died. And the life he planned to return to is now impossible. And he, in a state of passion, kills the man who sent him to serve these seven years. Takes his smartphone, finds the password for it...

And this is where Monte Cristo ends and the story begins about how one person lives for another.

This is the first novel that is written in a completely different genre than the previous ones. When you took on it, did you somehow formulate the task for yourself?

There are books that grow from an idea, and there are books that grow from a hero. And this book grew precisely from the hero. Feelings and thoughts accumulated from what was happening to the country, and I wanted to convey them through the collisions of his life.

- What exactly worried you?

Here are the transformations that have affected the country, especially the capital, over the past seven years, and the collapse of ethics, the abolition of ideas about good and evil from top to bottom of society, and here is the total penetration of prison culture into ordinary life. It seemed to me that a story about a man who served a sentence for seven years, returned to Moscow and lives his life for another person could absorb many experiences.

Your hero is the complete opposite of you in terms of upbringing, origin, and activities. Where do you get your understanding of this psychology and this life, including prison?

I don’t know, probably someone described this better than me, but this is my personal discovery: what we consider ugly manifestations of personality (excessive aggression, downtroddenness, etc.) is simply a response to the environment, which is designed to ensure the survival of the body. If your parents drink and beat you, then you grow up to be a thief and a hooligan, because otherwise you will not survive in this family. This deforms you, you become aggressive, you get used to either suppressing others, or keeping your opinion to yourself, and then it develops into a pattern of behavior. It is designed to allow you, like an animal, to adapt to your environment and survive in it. Any influence leads to transformation. And if you can imagine these influences, then you can imagine how a person who has been subjected to these influences behaves. On the other hand, if you are not looking for genuine texture for such a book, then nothing will work. And my manuscript was read by current law enforcement officers, former FSKN employees, and several imprisoned criminals... And I, first of all, asked them about psychological reliability. One said: “It’s written right about me.”

- One of your main characters is raised by a mother with principles, the other by a father without principles. But both of them commit crimes. Do you believe that natural instincts, in this case the thirst for revenge, are stronger than education?

From what remains after reading the book and after writing it, this is probably the central question. And this has a lot to do with what is happening. People belonging to the system of power, as well as people who collaborate with power, help it to exist, adhered to this behavior before, but now they are beginning to openly proclaim these principles. There is a complete rejection of ideas about ethics. The concepts of good and evil no longer apply. It started with the top officials of the state who openly lie to the camera. For example, regarding Crimea: first they claim that the peninsula will not be annexed, and two weeks later they annex that there are no Russian troops there, then they admit that there are our special forces. Now Putin, in an interview with Oliver Stone, says that our media is independent from the state and that the intelligence services do not read the correspondence of Russians. This is generally a joke for the chickens. And then, admitting everything after the fact, he smiles and says that it was such an Indian battle trick and that it was all justified. That is, again the end justifies the means. And this is not just practiced, but preached from the highest levels.

- If people accept this shameless lie and continue to support the authorities, then it means that it is easier for them to live with rose-colored glasses, not distinguishing between ideas about good and evil. The President simply takes into account and exploits popular psychology.

What Putin says is the right of the strong. I can afford it, so I allow myself. And further in the spirit that there is neither darkness nor light, everyone is dirty, everyone is smeared, and in the West they are smeared.

What was happening with the Trump campaign was an attempt to discredit their electoral system. We didn't particularly need Trump, an eccentric, unpredictable, uncontrollable person. It was necessary to prove that the American electoral system was so rotten that it would not allow a person truly popular among the people to come to power. The elites will unite in a conspiracy and will not allow him to win. We were prepared for this by all means. And when he won, it was a crushing surprise for everyone.

- The old trick: instead of cleaning ourselves up, we try to cover up others?

We are not trying to prove that we are better (this is implied), we are simply paying attention to who is trying to teach us - people who are completely corrupt, unprincipled, and even homosexuals. They are trying to impose on us a picture of the world in which ideas about elementary ethical categories simply do not work.

And this standard of behavior is set by the first person of the state, no matter whether he plays the boy or the godfather. And we allow this to him, because he is an alpha male, because he is a king, he is allowed. This goes down the pyramid: the boyars behave the same way, and teach their slaves the same thing, and then there is the re-education of the population in the spirit of complete disregard for the concepts of good and evil. Anything is possible if you can. If you can bend others, bend them, be a predator, eat the weak.

- And in the “Text” we are faced with a representative of a system that shares these beliefs.

With a hereditary representative. Because this FSKN operative, whom the main character kills, avenging his lost youth, is a hereditary security officer. His dad is a police general, deputy head of personnel management for the city of Moscow at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He placed his son in a place of bread because there was an opportunity to place him. The mother did not want to, she knew that her son was weak-willed, arrogant, a scoundrel and a bug, but she was afraid to argue with his father. And then the father teaches his son his life principles. And the principles are simple - eat those you can eat, collect dirt on those you cannot eat.

- But this is a typical secret service policy towards people.

The president's idea of ​​people is very much predetermined by his professional formation. He doesn't believe in virtue at all, in my opinion. He believes that all people are vicious, unprincipled, that they must either be bribed or blackmailed. He is a recruiter, and he looks at us like a recruiter. He does not even recognize the theoretical right to be guided by other criteria, to be incorruptible, for example.

- Well, he doesn’t see many incorruptible people...

Now the principles have really been devalued, and people are not ready to fight or die for them.

- But you also have the main character’s mother, who raised him in strict concepts of honor; when he goes to prison, she teaches him to keep his head down, adapt, etc. It turns out that life is really more valuable than principles?

The times are such that life is more valuable than principles. I suspect that this has always been the case. We were brought up on the Soviet myth, but what did we know about that time? People who consume mass culture do not know much about what really happened at the front and in the rear, to what extent people were motivated by patriotic feelings...

The Nazis killed a family, and this is where you really can’t get over yourself, and then you are capable of some heroic actions. Not because you love the abstract Motherland, or even more so some kind of Stalin, but because you cannot live otherwise. True motivations are much more personal. Especially in a country where the Bolsheviks established their power for 20 years through bloodshed and coercion. Well, how can you love such a Motherland recklessly? No matter how brainwashed you are by propaganda, you still have personal experiences that contradict this.

- Have you noticed that the reenactors who filled Moscow on holidays are all dressed in military uniform? What is the reason for this militarization of consciousness?

There are two points here. The first is the fear of looking into the future, perhaps purely biological among people of the post-war generation. They know the Brezhnev world, they know the world of perestroika, but they no longer know the new world well. What lies ahead? 10-15 years of more or less active mental and physical labor? The presidential term that we are living through is a period where everything is turned exclusively back to the past.

- Your hero lives someone else's life on a smartphone, just like today's younger generation. And if he observes the life of another family, then children discover in their gadgets a different world, unlike the one they see when emerging from virtual reality. Can the authorities cope with the dissonance that sounds more and more insistently in their brains?

The children will inevitably win; the question is whether the current government will have time to spoil them. The change of generations is a historical process, and few people have managed to transform the national mentality in four years. Maybe only Saakashvili, but he broke people over his knee. The ideas of his reformist activities to eradicate corruption, the power of “thieves in law”, etc. gave people the opportunity to move to another country within four years. However, when he left, everything began to grow back in the same dense direction.

In our situation, we still have to wait for a change of generations, the arrival of people with a different mentality. Now even the FSB has them.

- But among the 86 percent who support the president, there are clearly many people with a new mentality, but what’s the point?

There is a demand for a feeling of belonging to a superpower in all segments of the population. For young people, especially teenagers, this is coupled with the need to increase their own self-esteem.

A person who does not belong to administrative bodies or supervisory agencies has little chance of feeling the necessary self-respect. He lives in constant fear of clashing with the system; he has no rights. If you are beaten by a policeman and have no one to call, it is your fault. If there is someone from the system to stand up for you - a judge, a prosecutor, at least a doctor who operated on someone - you need to pull the person out of the system in order to protect yourself. This is our fundamental difference from Western countries, where there are basic legal guarantees and where, if there is no absolutely severe conflict of interest, you are protected by rules and laws

That is, a substitution occurs - if there is no way to feel respect for oneself, then one has to be proud that the state is respected...

By iconizing and canonizing Stalin and Nicholas II, people simply want to say that they are part of the empire. I am an ant, I can be crushed, run over and eaten, including by my own people, but the whole forest, the whole district, is afraid of us like an anthill. The feeling of one’s own insignificance is redeemed by the feeling of belonging to some kind of superbeing that brings fear to the surrounding area... Hence the desire to again feel like a superpower. Such a sublimation of self-respect, which we so lack.

And the constant desire to be appreciated by the West (because we are complex as a people) also comes from private life. Let them not be afraid of me, because I’m drinking in the yard in sweatpants and an alcoholic T-shirt, but let them be afraid of the country to which I belong.

- And the larger the country, the more respect there is?

Berdyaev says in “The Russian Idea” that the only national idea that has taken root here and turned out to be universal is the idea of ​​territorial expansion. Habitat is a very tangible, measurable, very animal concept. Not conscious, but irrational and understandable in a basic way. And it is important that, unlike the implanted Orthodoxy, this is a supra-religious thing. I talked with Kalmyks, on the one hand, they feel like national people, they have a difficult attitude towards Russians, whom they despise for their weakness, for their softness, for their drunkenness, but at the same time they feel proud of the fact that they belong to Russia. And when Russia behaves threateningly towards its neighbors, they enjoy it. Therefore, when we thunder with our shod heels or caterpillar tracks across the squares of all sorts of small European states - 1956, 1968, 2008 - a wave of pride rises in inexperienced souls.

- In my opinion, you overestimate everyone's knowledge of history.

Well, okay, they know it in some mythologized way, in which the media feeds them with conversations that not everything is so simple in our dramatic history. Beria, okay, strangled the raped gymnasts, but he created an atomic bomb. As if one could somehow be redeemed by the other. Here are the origins of teenage Stalinism. And therefore, Putin, positioning himself as a cool guy, of course, finds some kind of response among them. It was in vain that he admitted to Stone that he has grandchildren. Putin, grandfather, is a step away from the young.

- Yes, for young people, this whole agenda that is discussed on TV is pure crap.

A culture has already been formed on the Internet where all these achievements - Crimea, Donbass, endless war, purchased systemic oppositionists, hired intellectuals, Duma, neutered cats - are not very relevant and relevant to these people. However, in order to continue to rule, the authorities begin to invade this little world and take away freedom. And it begins to affect them.

- The authorities don’t understand that by doing so they are digging a hole for themselves?

We proportionally do not have many young people. And I don't think she can do anything now. How can a change of power occur in a country? Even if you capture the Kremlin, not to mention the Post Office and train stations, it will be of no use. The power is not in the Kremlin. Power lies in the consensus of the elites. A change of power probably occurs when Dzerzhinsky’s division refuses to move forward, when the military begins to cry, when important people stop answering the phones - at that moment power passes to others.

- Are you seeing a consensus among the elites now?

All people who now have a lot of money owe it to the authorities. And now there is not a single major player capable of challenging the authorities; it will immediately be ground into powder. Most likely, he will not dare to do this, because tons of compromising evidence will definitely be found on him.

- But Navalny made up his mind.

The fact that one particular Navalny managed to excite a certain number of young people throughout the country, especially in two or three large cities, is the beginning of a trend. I’m not saying that now schoolchildren will go into the breach, stain the bayonets of the riot police with their innocent blood, and everything will turn upside down. Paris in 1968, of course, shook de Gaulle, but we are not there, and we are not de Gaulle. We have total control over the media, we can say that Navalny distributes drugs to children there, and so on. However, if there is blood of young innocent people, then there is a fork in the road: either the one who shed this blood loses legitimacy in the eyes of the people, or he is forced to further impose his legitimacy, turning into a dictator.

- Navalny is not in danger of this in the foreseeable future…

- ... and Putin avoids becoming a dictator, he is satisfied with a relatively soft authoritarian regime, where the opposition is squeezed out, and only in rare cases is it eliminated by the hands of some vassals, and it is not clear whether this happens as a result of hints or on the initiative of the localities. He, apparently, does not need the country to become a dictatorship; he would still like to be recognized by the international community. He does not want the role of Gaddafi, nor the role of Hussein, or even the more prosperous Kim Jong-un, although we can exist hermetically, as we have already done. All, let's say, repressions occurred out of fear of losing power, and were a response to some kind of social fluctuations. This is a semi-thermidor, a reaction to the semi-revolution that did not happen in 2012. And it is a reaction precisely to the confusion that has arisen among the power elite, and an attempt to flex its muscles to restore order in its camp, and to intimidate any oppositionists with the redundancy of these measures.

- Does he really believe that the whole world doesn’t sleep, doesn’t eat, just thinks about how to deal with us, or is this also a propaganda story?

You have been taught for at least five years that there are enemies around, everyone is trying to recruit each other, everyone must be suspected... You understand what the tragedy is. In the final stages of the existence of the Roman Empire, the commanders of the Praetorian Guard came to power one after another, because they had the resource to eliminate the real emperors.. And this did not lead to anything good; their power, although at some point absolute, was They were unable to use it for the benefit of the nation and empire. The fact is that the Praetorians, like representatives of the State Security Committee, are very special people, trained to find and eliminate threats to power.

But a professional politician, capable of carrying out grandiose reforms in his country and directing it along a new path, is a completely different quality. Peter the Great is not a special service agent, not a KGB agent, Gorbachev is not a special service agent or a KGB agent, and even Lenin is not a special service agent or a KGB agent. This is a completely different scale of people.

- Well then, Putin is not to blame. It was the people who put him in power who did not take into account his professional qualities.

It seems to me that he knows how to tell people what they want to hear from him, and he is a brilliant manipulator. In addition, an excellent personnel officer has surrounded himself with an impenetrable wall of people who owe everything to him and depend on him for everything. He knows how to protect himself from all threats.

- This is a tactic. What's the strategy?

But there is no strategy, and never has been. Conservation of the current situation, he manages us like clerks in a corporation. The President is not a statesman, he is a cunning politician, all he does is solve the problem of how to stay in power. There is no project for the country, and there never has been. The stupid conversations about the future under Medvedev were invented by some hipsters, I don’t know why. But there is no project for the country, no understanding of what we should become, ceasing to be the Soviet Union. Empire, okay. What to do to become an empire?

- Crimea, for example, should be annexed.

Well, no. With a shitty economy, you can’t annex any Crimea. Take the example of Deng Xiaoping - what a statesman. First, lift the country out of poverty, give people the opportunity to support and feed themselves, to move their lives for the better, and they will move this whole stranded ship forward, like barge haulers on the Volga. But no, the middle class poses a danger to the authorities. Talk about supporting business is just talk; for them, business is just fodder for the security forces. Reliance is on the security forces and state employees, on people who depend on the state.

- How can the rest survive? For those who are not going to adapt to power and do not want to sit on the stove.

The era when it was possible to succeed is over, the country will not develop under this rule. The president is afraid to initiate change, perhaps thinking he won't be able to ride the rising tide. His only proactive act was Crimea. A perfect hit on imperial nostalgia. But from the point of view of the country's development, the step is catastrophic. We are in international isolation, resources for modernization are drying up, financial bonds are being replaced by administrative ones, an entire generation has grown up accustomed not to serve the Fatherland, but to treat it as rent. This is no longer stagnation in the blood, this is gangrene. And I’m afraid that the next presidential term will be a period of further degradation.

- So should we leave?

Well, first of all, not everyone wants and can leave.

- Yes, they don’t really expect us there.

And the Chinese are not very welcome, but the Chinese are everywhere. I cannot call for emigration, I myself emigrated three times, but at the moment I live here. It's a matter of everyone's motivation. When the Union collapsed, I was 12 years old. I belong to that generation of people who see opportunities in the collapse of the Iron Curtain - to go study and see the world.

Why do you have to make a choice once and for all - leave Russia or stay and endure, play pseudo-patriotic games like “Zarnitsa”, knowing what people who profess such patriotism actually do?

The concept of patriotism - stay and suffer with the country - is imposed by people whose children have long been in London and Paris, as we see from their Instagrams. We once again agree to play the games that are imposed on us. And you just need to abstract yourself from it and do what’s good for you.

I am not ready to call for revolution or emigration. The situation in the country is not so desperate that there is a choice - either flee or go to the barricades. Still, Russia in 2017 is not the same as a hundred years ago; the situation there was much more desperate.

- Moreover, private life has not yet been prohibited.

Of course, current authoritarianism is much wiser than what it was under Brezhnev. If you are doing something of your own, do it, homosexual - there is no article about homosexuality, just don’t preach, if you want American music - please, if you want to go study - go, if you want to emigrate - it’s your business. On the contrary, let all the active ones leave as quickly as possible rather than sit here and whine and suffer abroad from the inability to adapt. This is such authoritarianism, adjusted for all modern theories and textbooks.

There is no catastrophe. The trend is just wrong. We traveled by train to Europe, and at night we switched carriages and went in the direction of Kolyma. We are not in Kolyma, but the direction is no longer European.

- Your hero, one might say, is a modern Petrarch. Just as the poets of the late Renaissance were inspired by unattainable women, so he sacrifices himself for the sake of platonic love. Do you consider love a reliable refuge from external adversity?

-...In the novel, the main character falls in love forcedly. To survive for a week, he needs to get into the skin of the dead man, that is, into his phone, and understand the intricacies of his life. In particular, in a very conflictual relationship with his parents, with a woman whom he tried to leave and could not leave. And our hero, Ilya Goryunov, as often happens in a man’s life, falls in love based on a picture on his phone. And through this love he begins a certain transformation. He finds out that she is pregnant and feels guilty for taking the life of the father of the unborn child. And therefore, when he finds out that she is going to have an abortion, he weaves a complex intrigue to keep her from doing so, and gives her 50 thousand rubles, which he had hardly obtained to escape from the country.

- That is, he saves someone else’s child at the cost of his own life.

He understands that he still belongs to the world of the dead, and she belongs to the world of the living. And he still can’t escape responsibility; his mother taught him to think that everything comes with a price to pay. However, saving his beloved, and not himself, is his choice. A person always decides for himself - who he wants to be, who he wants to remain.

- And this after so many years of living in such a perverted society as prison?

Any feelings become stronger and brighter when it is impossible to realize them. If you can get a girl or a young man on the first, second, third date, you don’t even have time to ignite the feeling within yourself. In the Middle Ages, probably, or in such a moralistic society, which we had in the 70-80s, sexual freedom seemed to be a rebellion against a system that assumed standard behavior - to look after oneself, not to allow too much, to repel sexual attacks. Through the regulation of sexual life, the state gains significant power over a person. The platonic flourishes where the physiological is not allowed to grow. Through prohibition, since human nature is weakly amenable to transformation, all that can be done is to instill a sense of guilt. But the person is guilty, he is a priori loyal.

On the other hand, now many girls, if a young man doesn’t try to drag them into bed after two weeks, get upset and wonder what’s wrong with him - is he gay?.. And simultaneous romances for girls with several young men, and for young men with girls, until they began to live together, it is not only the norm, but something completely taken for granted. In principle, Russia is not a conservative society; on the contrary, we have a rather wild country. I think this is good, because all societies where sexuality is regulated are much more prone to fascism.

- Conservative in everyday life and social terms, Germany and Japan proved this in their time.

Human nature needs to be given a natural outlet. As long as Putin is smart enough not to meddle in his personal life and stop the attempts of zealous deputies and figures like bikers who cling to the budget udder to interfere in the personal lives of citizens, I think he will stand. Although he was already on the Internet. The Internet is also around sex and in general around what people do in their free time. And as soon as dictatorship and censorship begin here, people will accumulate anger.

While anger is still given various outlets. Life is getting worse, people are becoming poor, but they, in general, treat this with a certain patience. After all, our well-being during the fat years seemed so impossible that we didn’t really believe in its duration. But there are things that are too much to get used to. And they understand this perfectly well. And they are more likely to intimidate by invading privacy in order to hint: let’s not escalate things now, let’s leave everything as it is, the border is open, the Internet is free, don’t force us to act, it could be worse.

Now the police are targeting teenagers, wanting to discourage those who were planning to go to the next protests. Therefore, you need to twist not a hundred, but a thousand, so that people think, yes, the risks are great. And when they so uncompromisingly sweep away these teenagers with arms and legs like matchsticks, this, of course, is cruel intimidation. But then this can lead to the opposite result; violence begets violence.

“I wanted to become a writer immediately, without putting it off until “when I grow up.” My father worked at the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company in the editorial office of broadcasting to Yugoslavia. He was both a reporter and an editor, and at the same time earned money by translating Serbian poetry into Russian. All evenings he sat in the kitchen, smoking and drumming on his Olympia. I would wait until dad left for work and grab his typewriter. As soon as he left the threshold, I inserted a blank sheet of paper into the Olympia and began hitting the keys with all my might: otherwise the letters would not be imprinted. Sometimes I missed with a swing - and my childish fingers slipped between the keys. It hurt, it even tore off the skin. But I realized that writing is inextricably linked with suffering.

- What did mom do?

- Mainly through my nutrition and upbringing. My parents studied together at the journalism department of Moscow State University, and then my mother went to TASS photo chronicle as a photo editor and archivist. True, she did not work there for long. She became pregnant, went on maternity leave, and I turned out to be a rather sickly child. Due to endless bronchitis, I almost didn’t go to the garden, and my mother, accordingly, didn’t go to work. To improve my health, I was often sent to my mother’s parents in the Kostroma region, in the city of Manturovo. Regional center for 33 thousand inhabitants, semi-rural, semi-pastoral, own house, garden of 20 acres. I not only breathed fresh air there, but all the responsibilities of a person living on earth extended to me. I collected Colorado potato beetles from potatoes and slugs from cabbage. There was a real Russian stove in the house, and we cooked food in it, baked pies - I baked it too, by the way. When I got older, I started fetching water from the well.

— Quite an unexpected immersion into traditional Russian life for a Muscovite.

— Especially considering that my father is from a professorial medical dynasty. Imagine, two completely different worlds: Mantura’s grandparents have a well and a stove, while Moscow’s grandparents have an Arbat apartment with four-meter ceilings. It belonged to my great-grandfather, a professor of medicine, a urologist who treated party bosses, even Beria, it seems. Beria abused women. Based on his hobbies, he even specially organized an all-Union competition for gymnasts and became its – and their – patron. My great-grandfather was friends with Professor Vovsi, Stalin’s personal physician, who in 1953 became the main defendant in the “Doctors’ Case” - the last chord of Stalin’s repressions. A case was then initiated against a number of medical luminaries. Both the doctors themselves and their family members were arrested. My great-grandfather would also certainly have fallen under this flywheel if he had not died of a stroke shortly before the start of the repression. Thus, our family was not exiled anywhere and everyone remained to live in their Arbat apartment. Under my great-grandfather, it seems to have been a five-room apartment, but when the daughters grew up, they divided it, and my grandmother Nina Yakovlevna already had a two-room apartment. I describe it in the novel “Twilight” - old, with high ceilings and ancient furniture made of Karelian birch.

First, my grandmother married geologist Marat Zinovievich Glukhovsky. By the way, he also appears in my stories. I have a book “Stories about the Motherland”, and one of its characters - a geologist, doctor of science, like my grandfather - while exploring the bowels of the earth, opens the gates to hell. This is my own grandfather. Due to constant expeditions, his relationship with his grandmother completely deteriorated, and she divorced him when my father was little. She married the main artist of the Krokodil magazine, Andrei Porfiryevich Krylov, the son of a painter and caricaturist who, with friends Mikhail Kupriyanov and Nikolai Sokolov, created the famous group “Kukryniksy”. This grandfather, my father’s stepfather, is like my own, I love him very much and always listened to his stories with my mouth open. He traveled all over the Union in his time - he visited Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Chukotka and Kamchatka, all the countries of the socialist camp, and flew to Cuba four times. And from each trip he brought impressions, souvenirs and sketches, which he later turned into oil paintings, and made friends all over the world. And my mom and dad and I lived in Strogino in an ordinary sixteen-story panel building, in an apartment with an area of ​​thirty-something meters, with synthetic brown carpets and standard Romanian furniture - the whole country was filled with sideboards like ours. The apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt in which we are talking now is my attempt to reconstruct the one in Arbat. When renovating it, I tried very hard to make it the same in spirit and in detail.

- Of course. I thought that you inherited it in approximately this form. There is a feeling in it of a family nest, where everything is preserved for decades.

“When remaking it, I didn’t just rely on my memory, but took my grandfather to the construction market to select colors. In this sense, the main pride is the hallway: it is exactly the same terracotta color as it was on Arbat. And the furniture here is from my great-grandfather - the sideboard, table and chairs are a hundred and fifty years old, the mirror is generally over two hundred.

I not only came to visit the Arbat apartment, but also lived there for three years when I was in elementary school. I was sent to a nearby French special school - it was our family school: my father went to it before me, and my grandmother before him, although in her time it was not a special school, but a girls’ gymnasium. It took a long time to get there from my parents, from Strogin, and from my grandparents I only had to cross the Arbat diagonally.

“It’s still a pity when a child doesn’t live with his mother.” Have you ever thought about enrolling you in a school near your place of residence?

“I was enrolled in a school in Strogin, I spent a year in grade zero, and then the teacher told my parents: “The boy has talent, don’t cripple him with our school.” I started reading and writing at two and a half years old, by the age of five I was adding and subtracting three-digit numbers in my head; their program really wasn’t very interesting to me. In general, I showed hope: my grandparents thought that I would grow up to be a great scientist and that I would receive a Nobel Prize. Eh, I feel like I’m letting them down, they won’t see my Nobel Prize as their ears! In fact, I don’t think that I have any outstanding abilities - they just worked with me a lot, developed them. My daughter Emilia is four years old, and she has also been reading and writing since she was three years old, even earlier - because we also study a lot with her. After all, it is absolutely clear that if you develop a child’s abilities, then by the age of five he will quite easily master the school curriculum of grade up to the third. The first two years it was so easy for me at school that I completely let myself go, all I did was talk in class, and in middle school I started getting C grades. It got better in seniors, but I still got two C marks on my certificate.

— It’s funny, if it’s in Russian and literature.

- No, for them, of course, A's. I had no luck with physics and astronomy: I got into a clinch with the teacher. She seemed nice, and then all of a sudden she set the trouban, I didn’t even have time to understand what was happening. But in general, the teachers initially did not expect exemplary studies and exemplary behavior from me, because they remembered my dad very well. He was a hooligan, boxed, fought, and smoked in the alleys from the age of six, but at the same time he was, apparently, an absolutely charming child, because everyone loved him, despite his difficult character and a long list of sins.

- And you, too, from the first grade, ran into the gateway during recess to smoke - in the same one as dad?

- No, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t box, and in general I’m a completely different person. With friends, I came up with games two or three times, which everyone then played for several years. At first our entire class was drawn into the game, then the fashion spread to parallel classes and so on. When I read “Conduit and Schwambrania” by Lev Kassil, my friend and I came up with our own states with our own monetary system, between which there were complex diplomatic relations, wars broke out. Soon a variety of states were founded in each class - and the game went on and on! I also developed a modified version of the Cossack Robbers.

During the collapse of the Soviet Union, a wild fashion for obscurantism began. I read in the magazine “Question Mark” about bioframes—wires that were used to search for underground sources of water and answer questions—and we made these bioframes and ran around with them, looking for each other in yards, guessing codes to other people’s entrances. By the way, it worked. And then we all started writing science fiction novels. Even poor students wrote. Why, even the football players began to compose something fantastic!

— I came up with games that everyone then played for several years. In the photo - the one on the far left. Photo: From the personal archive of Dmitry Glukhovsky

— Did you start working in that genre at the age of three?

- No. As a child, I mostly wrote about politics. About Lenin - I had remixes from patriotic literature that was read to us in kindergarten and which I studied on my own. There were also journalistic essays about how in the Soviet Union everything is sprouting ears, wheat is ripening, computers are doing calculations, steamship factories are smoking, and life is steadily getting better. I don’t know where I got this from - either I re-read my dad’s materials, or I watched TV. But I became interested in science fiction only in middle school - first with Bulychev, then with the Strugatskys - and soon our endless science fiction novels began to appear in notebooks with 48 squared pages. Because more text fit into the box and it looked more solid, more mature than a ruler.

— Did they buy you a personal typewriter by that time?

— Dad switched to the electric Yatran, and gave the old mechanical one to me.

— It’s beautiful and symbolic: a typewriter passes from a writing father to a writing son. By the way, did your parents take your creativity seriously?

“During my school years, no one believed that I was really determined to become a writer. The elders, especially my father, encouraged me to study to become a financier or economist, although I have no ability for the exact sciences. But the strength of my father’s conviction was such that I still studied economics for a year. With each lesson there it became more and more boring and incomprehensible. I always sat in the front rows to make eyes at the beautiful young teacher, but even that didn’t work: my eyes stuck together and I fell asleep. And statistics in general were a complete nightmare for me! And not only are the subjects terrible, but they are also in Hebrew - I studied in Israel.

- Why there? Some special economics department?

- That's not the point. I had an example to follow - my grandfather, a journalist and traveler, who had traveled to a bunch of countries and felt like a citizen of the world. In addition, I graduated from school in 1996, when Russia began to open up to the world, everyone began to travel a lot more, and I really wanted to live and study abroad. But we couldn’t afford foreign countries like England or the USA, and a year of study at the University of Jerusalem cost $3 thousand - this was a more acceptable option. I wanted to study journalism, but there is no separate journalism department there - only a large faculty of social sciences, and it has different directions, from which I chose journalism and economics. And with journalism, everything worked out wonderfully, although the teaching was not at all the same as ours: without studying language and literature, it was very applied - work with all the mass media, psychology, areas of law related to journalism.

— And everything is in Hebrew too?

- Well, yes. I arrived a year before admission, just studied the language for six months, took preparatory courses for the other six months, and then studied along with the locals.

— Did everything turn out as you dreamed?

“According to my parents’ stories, I imagined student life as a crazy fun and wonderful time, but for me it turned out to be more of a school of life and hardening. I started studying at the age of 17, and Israelis first serve in the army for three years, are demobilized at 21-22, then travel around the world and work and go to university at 23-24. That is, everyone around me was five years older than me, much more experienced and with a completely different

mentality is average between American and Arab. I really liked it there, but I still felt like an alien.

Working in France on the EuroNews channel was much more like the student life sung by my parents. I arrived there at the age of 22, after graduating from university, I started as an editor, and at the end I switched to correspondent work. I learned what I could and should learn there in a few days, and then it was very easy. By that time, I spoke four foreign languages, and all of them came in handy, since there was an international team there. The first year and a half was terribly interesting, but I have one problem: the monotonous work gets boring for me. After working for three years at EuroNews, I returned to Russia and got a job at the Russia Today TV channel.

— Has work and life become more interesting?

- More fun. I’ve been everywhere - to the North Pole, to Chernobyl, and to a hot spot once. On the Lebanese-Israeli border, when Israel was at war with Hezbollah. I sat under mortar fire for two weeks, reporting. But this, of course, does not make me a military officer - just an isolated interesting experience. Some guys, my former colleagues, never came out of the war at all; now they are working as reporters in the Donbass. This kind of work changes a person: he becomes hardened, some feelings become dulled, and he becomes dependent on adrenaline. Israeli acquaintances who served in the army said: “You crawl around Lebanon for five days, sit in ambush with a machine gun, ready to be picked off by snipers at any moment, and then return home for two days to Tel Aviv and, as if through a dusty bag, you look at everything as if in a dream. Real life is at war, but in a peaceful city there is no sense of the reality of what is happening.”

— Was that the most dangerous business trip?

— Judging by the consequences, the most dangerous was an innocent trip to Guatemala as part of the presidential pool. When we arrived, we were treated to a cocktail at the hotel on the occasion of our arrival - and he turned out to have jaundice! Seven journalists and seven people from the presidential press service were seriously injured. Moreover, the cocktail included two different strains of hepatitis - the first had a shorter incubation period, the second had a longer incubation period, so we first got sick with one variety, and then the other. But, fortunately, food-borne hepatitis is curable, unlike those that are contracted through the blood. So I was cured, I just had to give up fatty and fried foods. And with alcohol. But it was in Guatemala - after a six-month stupor - that I managed to complete the Twilight novel. You know, almost half of the population of Guatemala are Mayan Indians, and Twilight is the story of a translator who is entrusted with the task of deciphering the diary of a Spanish conquistador sent on a secret mission into the jungle - into the very heart of the Mayan lands, in order to find and destroy all the Mayan manuscripts , one of which contains doomsday prophecies. The whole book was ready, but I was stuck with the ending for many months. And on that trip to Guatemala, it was as if the chakras opened. But I had to pay a price for it - a month and a half in a hospital bed.

— Have you ever wanted to avoid obviously dangerous trips like Chernobyl?

— On the contrary, I was eager to go to Chernobyl: I really wanted to see in person what an abandoned city, poisoned by radiation, looks like — that’s my theme. “Metro 2033,” my most famous book, “Metro 2034,” and now “Metro 2035,” which just came out, are novels about how people in Moscow survive two decades after the third world war, after nuclear bombings. In “Metro 2035” the descriptions of empty, dead Moscow are very important: everything is contaminated with radiation, there are abandoned houses around, rusty cars in endless traffic jams, empty mailboxes with tin lids flapping in the wind. But life and civilization remained only in the Moscow metro, which was built as the world's largest anti-nuclear bomb shelter. The main character does not lose hope of finding other survivors somewhere else on Earth and leading people there from the subway, from the dungeon. So God himself ordered me to study Chernobyl.

And this place really surprised me: usually it seems to be an extinct area where mutant moose roam, and it seems that it is located in the wilderness. But the nuclear power plant, just an hour's drive from Kyiv, a city where several million people live, was the first discovery. The second discovery was that nature was absolutely blooming there. Still, she becomes prettier without a person. But the city itself was strictly as it was described: a rusty Ferris wheel, empty houses, from which either looters or the owners took out absolutely all the furniture, not being afraid of radiation. The glass is dusty, a kindergarten with abandoned toys.

So reporting work has determined a lot in my life. And I also owe my marriage to work. We met Lena at Russia Today: she was my producer and helped me arrange the most interesting business trips.

— Did you believe then, hope that you would be published and your books would become bestsellers?

“I didn’t expect that I would even become a published author.” There was a dream, bright, but timid. And in my free time from studying, and then from journalism, I continued to do what I did in high school. After all, I came up with the story “Metro 2033” - about how people live in the subway after a nuclear war - when I was 15 years old, and then I slowly wrote it for many years. I really wanted someone other than my friends to read it, and when I finished the first draft at the age of 22, I sent it to all the publishers I could, but was ignored by everyone. I’m stubborn - I called them for several months afterwards: “Have you read it yet by chance? Haven’t you heard, the person who promised to look hasn’t returned from vacation?” And every time you have heart palpitations, sweat, and you press the wrong buttons on the phone because your little hands are shaking. And one day the publishing house that eventually released me said: “You know, it’s a little damp in this form, and, most importantly, the ending is unformatted. In genre novels, it doesn’t happen that the hero walks and walks towards the goal and, before reaching halfway, is killed. Write it down, change the ending, and we might consider your proposal.” But I no longer believed that anyone would agree to publish my “Metro” - I decided that no one understood me and everyone rejected me. And it was 2002, the Internet was already in full swing, people were downloading and reading books in pirated libraries, and I thought: if you can post other people’s books, then why not post your own? I made a website, posted the novel there for free and began writing on all forums dedicated to the metro and science fiction: they say, there is such a dystopian novel, please read it and tell me what you think about it. And metro drivers, engineers, track workers - people who, unlike me, knew the metro very well from the inside out, said that I describe the feelings that arise there very correctly. There were, of course, bores who nagged: “The fire can’t burn at the station because there is no ventilation, the station will be covered in smoke, and everyone will suffocate.” But I didn’t write a performance characteristics manual, but a book about the human soul. The main thing was not to make a mistake in this, and not in the description of the engineering intricacies of Metrostroy.

By the way, “Metro 2033” also has a secret, personal layer that is understandable only to me and my school friends. The journey of the main character, Artem, from VDNH to Arbatskaya, follows the route along which I traveled from home to school (we had already moved from Strogin by then). Or, for example, after some tense scenes there is an episode at the Polyanka station - two middle-aged people are sitting there, smoking a hookah, burning books to warm their hands, and having lengthy conversations. So, these are my closest friends. The names of the heroes are the same as my friends - Sergei Andreevich and Evgeniy Dmitrievich, and they talk about what really happened to my friends. One recalls that he had a green Moskvich-2141 and he drove it around Moscow at night, installing a homemade accelerator on nitrous oxide. Another is that near the Smolenskaya metro station there was a “headquarters” of prostitutes who actually hung around there in the nineties. This is how I saved my beloved comrades in the Third World War.

“Metro 2033 has a secret, personal layer that only me and my school friends understand. With the prototypes of the novel's heroes - classmates Sergei and Evgeniy. Dmitry is pictured on the left (mid-1990s). Photo: From the personal archive of Dmitry Glukhovsky

— Do you often describe real people and events in your books?

“I still try to invent and create characters - although, of course, I endow them with the features and speech of both my relatives and strangers whom I happen to overhear somewhere on the train or in a store. As for events, there are those without which writing another novel would be completely impossible. Here I have a book “The Future”, for example. The idea came to me when I was about 19 years old: what will happen to us, to humanity, when we defeat old age, aging and no longer die? After all, this society will be completely different from ours today - people probably won’t need God: who needs a soul if the body is immortal? There will be no creation in it, because while creating, people try to leave something behind. But the main thing is that the planet will be overpopulated, which means the birth rate will be limited. And now, let’s say, they will force these immortal people to choose: live endlessly, remaining forever young, or have offspring. And if any couple decides to have a child, then one of them - a man or a woman - must give up eternal youth and life, receive an injection that will age him, and die ten years later before the child reaches adolescence and can continue on his own genus. I came up with it

This story was a whole 17 years ago, but until I got married and had my own child, I simply could not take it on.

You know, few people tell the truth about this, you can’t rely on others: when a girl admits to her boyfriend for the first time that she’s pregnant, and he replies that he’s very happy, he’s lying. In fact, he is scared - scared of how his life will now change, of responsibility, scared of losing freedom. A child is something irrevocable that binds you and your woman forever. When young guys at the windows of the maternity hospital write with crayons “Thank you for your son!”, it’s just toadying. A father's love is not like a mother's. It comes with time. The first feeling is again fear, concern - not even for the child, for the wife. And when you are given a tiny red-faced gnome in the maternity hospital, you are terrified not to accidentally break it or drop it. Love comes later, slowly: that’s when your wife, tired for the day, falls asleep at night, and you sit all night long with your daughter, who is three days old, sleeping on your stomach. When is it the first time for you - and not for your wife! - smiles in response to your smile. It gives me chills and chills. When he rejoices at you and misses you. And the more time you spend with your child, the more you fall in love with him. And a year ago, his son, Theodore, was born. So I have a complete set. Each has its own entertainment. For example, my daughter and I played “Chuka and Gek” all winter, and I specially bought a “Polar Base” Lego set. I read to her a lot: I introduced her to the Moomins and Carlson, and now she reads on her own. I play with my son Theo and he just loves them. And he's a cow fan. It’s very amusing to show how a cow moos, in such a hoarse bass voice that it’s unclear how this baby doll makes it at all. And recently there was a joyful event: at the dacha they found a place where real black and white spotted cows graze, like in the pictures in his books. He fell into the astral plane in surprise, and then did not want to leave and was eager to get to his cows for another hour. Until you go through this, you won’t understand how you can choose a child between eternal youth and a child. So I took up the novel “The Future” after Emilia was born. I had to bare myself before the reader and talk honestly about my feelings - and it was worth it: forty-year-old men confessed to me how they cried over some pages. You need to write about what you yourself have lived, and then it will come out truthfully. Each book is a step forward, the result of the years lived.

— But your new novel, “Metro 2035,” is a continuation of your very first book, which is already ten years old.

- Yes. And the main character is the same, although he has matured - he has singed his wings and is somewhat disappointed. And the book, of course, came out more mature: I myself have become ten years older, so has our country, and all my readers. The first novel was about how a young man is looking for his place in the world, in life, trying to understand what to believe in and what not to believe, what is his purpose and mission, and at the same time protect his home metro station from a terrible threat from a radioactive surface . And in “Metro 2035” Artyom has a different dream and goal: to lead people out of the dungeon and up, to the Sun and the sky. But is there somewhere to lead and will people follow him? Of course, the events of recent years in life

The countries here influenced me a lot and made me think about a lot. And although I refused offers to write a sequel for a long time, in the end I felt that I wanted it myself.

You know, “Metro 2033” nevertheless brought me popularity, changed my life and remains my most famous novel, although it is a youthful, naive thing in many ways. When you return to the roots, you are afraid of spoiling something, disappointing readers, breaking the legend. This is definitely not worth doing for the sake of money - but many authors are tempted by money to write or film a bad sequel to a successful first thing! So, I must admit, I had jitters when I wrote “Metro 2035.” The book, however, turned out to be different: tougher, more realistic, intertwining two love lines at once - and not necessarily cloyingly romantic. And by the way, you can start reading “Metro” right away - the hero is the same, but the plot is separate, independent, so there is no need to turn to the original source. I was calm about new readers. And I was worried about the old ones: will they understand the deviation from the canons? But here I met with them - with those who had already read it. And I was surprised: how different they are - many girls, middle-aged people, whole families come. I ask: did the new book disappoint you? They told me: “We swallowed it overnight. When is the next one? I don't even know. To write the next one, I still need to live and live...

Family: wife - Elena, daughter - Emilia (4 years old), son - Theodor (1 year old)

Education: Graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Jerusalem with a degree in Journalism and International Relations

Career: Since 2002 he worked for the EuroNews channel in France, in 2005 he returned to Russia and began working as a correspondent for the Russia Today TV channel. In 2002, he posted his first novel, Metro 2033, on the Internet; it was published only in 2005. The book has now been translated into 37 languages ​​and has formed the basis of two video games. Author of the books “Twilight”, “Metro 2034”, “Stories about the Motherland”, “The Future”, etc. On June 12, 2015, Dmitry published a new novel - “Metro 2035”

Glukhovsky was the first Russian author to make his book publicly available online. He was then writing his first “Metro” and delivering it piece by piece. This was back in 2002. Today he is one of the most successful and - it happens! - independent writers of Russia.

dates

2002 - start of work on the Euronews channel in Lyon

2005 - the first book “Metro 2033” was published

2007 - made the world's first television report from the North Pole

2011 - became the father of a girl named Emilia

The World Cup is an excellent background for tough pension reform

- Dmitry, what can you say about the football championship? Are you a fan?

No. Completely indifferent to football. Because of this, of course, I always feel a little inadequate with all the euphoria that has unfolded. In addition, my grandfather, for example, is a crazy Spartak fan to the point of a heart attack. And other relatives, who are 75 years old, enthusiastically watch basketball matches. What is there to see there?!

But from everything I see, I am pleased that Russia has opened itself to the world. True, experience shows that these discoveries occur on the eve of some kind of compression and enclosure, and that later all this is remembered like some kind of midsummer night’s dream. This happened with the 1980 Olympics, which took place at the beginning of our invasion of Afghanistan - and then international isolation followed. And the Sochi Games also seemed to be an integration of friendly and open Russia into the global world - and were exactly on the threshold of 2014 with its Crimea, Donbass and our new isolation. And now everything seems to be so good, and all these crazy Mexicans and Uruguayans are having fun in the streets, and we suddenly turned out to be kind, and not uptight and embittered, and our cops are not chasing anyone. And everyone was allowed in without visas, including, apparently, “MI6 spies” - and nothing was wrong. That is, one could simply unclench the sphincter, so to speak, and nothing monstrous would happen. But the ability to learn lessons and project them into the future makes one suspect that something bad is going to happen right now. Once we finish, we celebrate, everyone leaves and then they will never come here again. All this may be the last time.

- Is this shit already prepared? After all, the annexation of Crimea was prepared much in advance.

With Crimea, everything was carried out brilliantly from a logistical point of view, including bought or intimidated local politicians. So there was a plan in advance. Donbass is a different matter. It's a mess there and no one can do anything. Neither attach nor detach. Some kind of fermentation of the masses. It is clear that people did not have a plan.

Well, what was planned to be held under the guise of a championship is already taking place - an increase in VAT and the retirement age. This decision, I think, was made a long time ago. People were simply brainwashed with some other, redundant projects in advance, in preparation for announcing a real tough decision right now. It is clear that football emotions are an excellent background for such things.

Shenderovich once again incurred anger by saying that if such a great championship were held in a more decent country, there would be more joy.

I really want to be happy for Russia, of course. But after the Sochi Games there were no normal reasons for joy. Because Crimea is the joy of Cain's victory over Abel. Hitting your brother in the back of the head with a rock and taking something away from him is a great victory, yeah. Moreover, it turned out that all the joy about our Sochi victories was in vain, because we cheated, of which I am sure.

When you understand the socio-political structure of the Russian Federation and understand what kind of mentality the people at the helm have, who they are essentially, according to their past - yes, you understand, these people could, justifying themselves in any way they wanted, resort to any scam in on any scale.

In Soviet times, the party and the KGB opposed and competed with each other. And now there is the omnipotence of the special services, which, in principle, is always a harbinger of the last times. When the Praetorians - and these are actually the special services - began to come to power in Rome, these were already the last, sunset times for Rome. People who are engaged in security, entrenchment, searching for threats, people who are professionally suspicious - they cannot, are not capable of leading the country forward.

- But Putin communicates with young people and talks about the future.

Political strategists are trying to invent an image of the future for Putin, but they cannot. Simply because he's not talking about that at all. It is about protection and conservation, about neutralizing threats. This is what he does very well. And the political field around him has been completely cleared. The oligarchs are all under control. He who is not brought under control has hanged himself; he who has not hanged himself is sitting in Switzerland, and he has lost his teeth. The politicians either cooperate, or are shot, or leave the clearing, realizing that there is nothing to catch. And in principle, this is not even a dictatorship; it is a rather mild authoritarian regime in comparison with Pinochet. We don’t even need to be whipped with rods - we ourselves try to be quieter.

Medvedev is sabotaging

- According to a recent survey, 51% of Russians hope that Putin will be president in 2024.

Well, listen, Putin is a symbolic figure. People are ill-informed and deceived by television. Medvedev is responsible for all the failures and tightening of the screws - people do not understand that no decisions, especially related to living standards and taxes, can be made without Putin delving into the issue. Without his veto or approval. He is a very informed person. But he has the wrong priorities, in my opinion. People live in a world of myth, not seeing cause-and-effect relationships. And this division into the right king and the abusive boyars is our eternal monstrous naivety.

No matter who you talk to, you will hear: “Putin is handsome.” I can even judge by my own family. Grandfathers and grandmothers blame Medvedev for all troubles. They think that he is the one doing the sabotage on his own.

This whole Putin story is an eternal missed opportunity. Although his decision with Crimea was a well-thought-out multi-move - in order to get past the emerging economic crisis and at the same time not allow Ukraine into NATO. Coupled with the television pus that has overwhelmed us here, everything worked. We swallowed the halving of the ruble and the standard of living without falling out of love with Putin and learning to eat ersatz cheese. But! Taking Crimea and losing Ukraine forever was, of course, a monstrous failure. Because we kind of grabbed Crimea and forgot, but for them it’s a huge bleeding wound. Which causes both pain and suffering. We alienated the Ukrainians, perhaps forever. This is total idiocy. We took a useless, unnecessary piece of land and lost the fraternal people with whom we are connected by a thousand years of common history. Not just friendship, as with Venezuela, but mutual penetration at the level of families, cultures, everyday life, history.

What Russian hasn't dreamed of marrying a Ukrainian girl? And what Ukrainian didn’t work in Russia when he was young? And whoever has not traveled to Odessa has no heart. These were generally the people closest to us. All our graters were at the level of “Muscovites”, “Khokhlovs” and jokes about lard - the most innocent story. And what is this all for?

Everything is clear to me with Ksenia Sobchak

You once wrote that we never became Europeans due to imperial pride and complexes. But seriously?

Our story is completely different. For Europeans, civil revolutions and the process of crystallization of a citizen who demands respect, who believes that he has rights, occurred 200 years ago. Except that the Germans then went into collective insanity. In our country, revolution has a different etymology. And instead of civil society, a new serfdom emerged. We once again found ourselves in slavery to the privileged class. This is repeated and repeated. Only the privileged class has changed - criminals and demagogues have come to power. But we never became citizens.

But still, people who are now 20 and 30 years old are not the same 20-year-olds who were in the Soviet Union. So it is a question of the emergence of an unharmed generation. But our government is trying to fool the current generation of young people. All people involved in youth politics should burn in hell!

-Have you watched the film Sobchak about Sobchak?

Watched. A very boring movie. There is one good hero there - Putin. He is reliable and wonderful - that’s why he is the successor, and not because he understood that our politics is based on the games of the special services and crime. Everything is now completely clear with Ksenia Anatolyevna. We understand everything, thank you.

- You once asked Voinovich to draw a utopia for Russia in 2100. He then laughed it off. Can you do it yourself?

Free, prosperous, with healthy capitalism and a measure of social responsibility. The main problem is to keep such a gigantic country like Russia from collapsing in the future. Now this is being resolved with the help of the FSB. We have a case for every boss. As long as you are our man, do whatever you want, kill people, go to the sauna with prostitutes, take bribes. But you know that daddy is saving up. Instead, we need federalism, an independent judiciary and competition between government bodies. And most importantly, its changeability. Forced change of power after 4 or maximum 8 years. That's the whole point in the grand scheme of things. And this whole story “If not Putin, then who?” - this is how some remember how Stalin was quickly forgotten and thrown out of the mausoleum - he did not justify the trust. So it would be nice for us to develop a little, like an ordinary country. Poland could be a good example for us.

Medvedev even tried to take us to some other place to look. True, he spoke more than he did, but the rhetoric was better - there was no trench in which one was supposed to sit. And without Putin, neither famine nor locusts happened. And the mood was better. But Dimon cheated us. Putin came and changed everything in his own way, as in the joke about a husband and a lover. And instead of a utopia, I think we will slowly smolder and rot.

- But he said that there would be an economic breakthrough and everything would be fine.

It doesn't matter what Putin said. The only thing that matters is what Putin does, because his words are in every case at odds with his actions. Putin is a man whose power is based on the disorientation of everyone - both “partners” and the population of the Russian Federation. He very often tells lies. While he is mystifying, he is unpredictable. As soon as it became transparent, that’s it, it opened up for the strike.

Honesty does not require heroism

It so happens that in our country literature is given great importance. When you write, do you think about artistic value or is a book just a consumer product?

Noooo. You can’t treat a book like a product. For me this is the only way of self-realization. In general, I don’t do anything else - I write books and dabble a little in journalism. And if I start to waste my time and cliché, stop trying to surpass myself yesterday, to summarize what I understand, then I will become nonsense. It's a matter of proving to yourself what you're worth. That's why I try to write a different book every time. It's boring to repeat yourself.

Well, I was lucky, I accidentally discovered the formula for success and at the age of 27 I already had large circulations and translations.

- What will be your next book?

There will be two very different ones. One is about artificial intelligence. And the second is such magical realism on Russian soil. Everyone says: you’re a cosmopolitan, you lived there and lived there, and your dad is from Arbat, from a medical dynasty. It’s clear that I was a city boy, but at the same time, there is a powerful Russian component in me, right at the core. As a child, I spent a lot of time in the summer in a real village house with a well, a canopy, a washbasin, with cucumbers in greenhouses, with beetles and slugs in cabbage. I spent all the holidays there. There is a completely different attitude towards life and death. In a big city we are completely isolated from death. We don't see funeral processions. In our country, the dead are fussily carried out of the entrance in zipped bags. And there is a cemetery within the city limits, and the coffin on a ZIL with lowered red sides is driving through the entire city. Your dead relatives don’t seem to disappear there. They appear to you in dreams, give you everyday advice, and something else. Because of this, there is no feeling of irreversibility and finality of existence.

- Will it be straight Marquez-Marquez?

I don't know yet. But Cortazar, Marquez and Borges are my tribute.

- You will be forty in a year. Maybe it's time to change your life strategy?

Horrible, yes. But I had a life strategy from the very beginning. Taking over the Universe. Through stories, gain power over minds. Power in the vulgar sense - over human resources and financial flows - does not interest me at all. She spoils people, but I don’t want to spoil myself, in principle I like myself and have built everything so that I don’t depend on anyone.

I was offered to join the Human Rights Council under the President, and I was invited to join the Cultural Council. They invited me to meetings like “Putin and Writers.” And I didn't go anywhere. Because when they try to feed you, it is always temptation and temptation. It’s not that I’m some kind of desperate oppositionist, I don’t carry out subversive activities, but it’s very important for me to maintain freedom of thought and judgment. Once you start feeding from someone's hand, you can no longer bite it. This is clearly evident from the different writers we have. This is about the role of literature in our lives. Literature, with total propaganda in the big media, remains the last space of freedom where an honest discussion on important topics is possible.

- By the way, you could be a good politician.

No, no, no. I can't and I don't want to. It would break me. I can't stand so many compromises. Either they will kill you, really break your back, or you yourself will make it worse and be reborn into something else. For what? I believe that maintaining a certain level of honesty in judgment in our times does not require much heroism. When everyone lies wildly, and you simply call black black and white white - it seems like some kind of courage and originality. Although you haven't done anything incredible.

Being Navalny - yes, it requires heroism. I wouldn't want it that way. I have always been interested not so much in the detailed structure of power, which I am quite squeamish about, but in the degeneration of a person from the people who has come to power. Violence, lies, manipulation - and a person decays through permissiveness and impunity. I have several books about this.

P.S. At the very end of the interview, Glukhovsky asked: “So, can you publish all this directly in the newspaper?” Well, let's publish it.

The material was published "Interlocutor" No. 26-2018 under the heading “Criminals and demagogues have come to power. But we never became citizens.”

The main character of "Text" Ilya is a half-educated philologist. Why did you give your protagonist such a distinctly literary education?

Who is less prepared for reality than a philologist? Is there any education more disorienting in Russian life than literary and linguistic education? Where are the Russian classics - and where is our life today? It’s interesting to imprison such a person for seven years for something he did not commit, brought up in the humanistic tradition, in the idea that crime and punishment are always united. Moreover, on the simplest and most popular charge, two hundred and twenty-eighth (Article 228 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Illegal acquisition, storage, transportation, production, processing of narcotic drugs.” - Note ed.). And let him apply the literature of the Silver Age, let him apply the Romano-Germanic group to the zone and life after the zone. From the furnace into ice water. Is this how the steel was hardened? And such a man comes out - Russia: half thinking in a hairdryer, half in Babel's language.

- A significant part of the novel - correspondence in instant messengers and by mail - is framed as ordinary dialogues. You deliberately did not highlight it graphically - as modern Western writers often do?

- On paper, emoticons look poor, emoji look bastard. They don't take root. For what? To make readers who grew up on smartphones feel more confident in picking up paper? Come on. It’s much more interesting to peel them off and give them a simple dialogue: will it work?

In connection with the “Text”, many remember the “little man” of Russian literature and the sensitive killers of Dostoevsky. How important is this tradition, dating back to Samson Vyrin and Rodion Raskolnikov, for you?

I never considered myself a Russian writer: I wanted to be a citizen of the world, grew up reading Western prose, and received our classics with fish oil at school, like everyone else. But Europeans and Asians read my books in translation and say - typical Russian literature, a continuation of traditions. Maybe it's in the blood somewhere. Antibodies that are formed from this kind of our life. As he said: “The Germans do things - we... [make] tragic.”

- Your novel is written in dry, crisp language somewhat akin to Limonov. Can we say that the cabbage soup cooling in Ilya’s Lobny kitchen was poured from the same pan that is on Eddie’s New York stove?

I read Limonov at school as soon as he was released from us: my parents were friends with his first Russian publisher. Porn is good for him - that’s why he read it. Better than politics. He's basically a counterfeiter. Should they be inspired? No, thanks. I am Babel, Platonov. By those who forged Newspeak. You need to be inspired by the unattainable. The present time also requires Newspeak: to fit our present into our eternal. Anglicisms and memes are crossed with camp slang and early Soviet prose. Who else should you entrust this to if not a philologist?

- “Text”, among other things, is a novel about technology addiction. How do you build your own relationship with electronics? Do you sketch on your phone or use a notebook?

Well, of course, I’m completely addicted. I have two phones, I stick to them like Macedonian. A carousel of Facebook, mail and Instagram, always waiting for messages. I manage my own social networks and have created accounts for myself everywhere. When no one writes to the colonel, I read the news. The focus of attention was reduced to one minute. I forgot how to write on paper. My hand gets tired of the pen by the end of the sentence, the letters dance, but I can touch typewriting and without looking I type messages on my iPhone without looking up from the steering wheel. All the time I try to photograph happiness or at least delight. Instead of memories, I keep albums from my iPhone in my head. Refused erudition in favor of Wikipedia. Typical representative.

Glukhovsky’s first novel (2005): earthlings who survived a nuclear war huddle in the Moscow metro. Translated into 37 languages, total circulation - 1,000,000 copies.

Continuation of the post-apocalyptic saga. The most popular Russian book of 2009, surpassing Akunin, Ulitskaya and Minaev in circulation.

Collection (2010) of short, “realistic” prose by Glukhovsky - about vodka with nanorobots, corruption and the search for a national idea.

In Europe of the 25th century, a vaccine against aging is being invented: humanity can afford it if it refuses to bear children. Initially, “The Future” (2013) was published on VKontakte.

The finale (2015) of the underground cycle, which grew out of Glukhovsky’s work on the computer game “Metro: Last Light”. Winner of the Ozon.ru Online Awards in the Best Fiction Book category.

Fresh (2017) novel by Glukhovsky, favored by the country's leading literary critics.

Your book is marked by today: the novel is highlighted by Trump, the National Guard and other signs of the times. How universal is the story you tell about arbitrariness and humiliation? Are these inescapable features of Russian life?

I needed a text about today. Urban novel. It seemed to me that everything I read from Russian was completely out of date. I wanted to make a box of nails like this: to hammer a nail into each of today’s main topics.

Some of today's topics are eternal topics. The lack of rights of an ordinary person before the system. A system of government and management built on deception and intimidation. The ability of power to involve and magnetize the most unscrupulous. And its ability to leper the idealists who find itself in it, to infect them with cynicism and hypocrisy.

But there is also something fresh. The disintegration of truth. The collapse of the coordinate system in which there is good and evil. The rotting of Christian ethics based on humility. The possession of the church by demons of power. A triumph of strength. Who rules us today, who is the main newsmaker in politics and business, and now also in art and spirituality? Prosecutor's office. Investigative Committee. FSB. Security forces. People endowed with power and, apart from power, do not believe in anything.

Although, maybe this is eternal, but it just seems new. It’s just that each generation has to wade through the lies on its own, debunk the myths on its own. To make an attempt on those who protect these myths, because through them they protect their power.

A significant role in the novel is played by the “people's” Article 228, which the innocent protagonist is accused of and under which almost 150 thousand people are imprisoned in the country. Are you close to the idea of ​​drug legalization - partial or complete?

I am for the legalization of soft drugs, prostitution and gambling. All kinds of human vices are covered by the special services anyway. It’s just that instead of normal taxes, which we could finally use to pay for the tiles on Tverskaya, the margin goes to the construction of private castles in Crimea.

In an interview, you said that your most famous series “Metro” is, not least of all, the exposure of the soviet, a person of the Soviet formation who does not want to come to the surface. Do you see in modern Russia other - primarily typologically - figures who strive, figuratively speaking, to leave the ring road?

It seems to me that the entire generation of thirty-year-olds is different. Twenty-year-olds are basically aliens. Everyone who does their own thing is different. They would like to go into the future, but they will not be allowed into the future. The government is aging, graying, balding. The authorities want to go back to the Soviet Union, to the days of their youth. The future scares her: like any pensioner, the president does not want to adapt to a changing world, he demands that the world return to its usual state, and is offended when the world refuses. Why then are there many Stalinists among young people, you ask? Stalin for them is a symbol of empire. The image of the empire is compensation for age complexes. They want to feel respected. In today's Russia this is impossible. In America, teenagers, dreaming of superpowers that would make their peers respect them and fear bullies, jerk off to superheroes, and in our country, to Stalin. Stalin is the Russian Spider-Man.

The political upheavals of the 2010s affected the majority of Russian writers: some became prominent oppositionists, others formed their own combat units, and still others preferred to be above the fray. What place do you occupy in this socio-literary disposition?

Politics corrupts. Power is the breath of Satan. Writers who go to power to offer it their ability to persuade people for money are selling their souls. Writers who think that they can talk to the authorities themselves, educate them with their moral teachings - and for this purpose get closer to them - are idiots. As soon as they open their mouth there, they will immediately be given bread there and receive communion. Look at the directors who became deputies: they are all empty-eyed. What kind of power do deputies seem to have? And take your soul out and put it down. No, getting into politics is a bad idea. A writer in Russia must simply tell the truth, call a spade a spade. There is no one else.

Among the Russian prose writers who influenced you are those with very different views: Babel and Bulgakov, Platonov and Shalamov. Is it important to you what political position the author takes? Can you like a book written from a position that is not close to you?

It's a little different here. It is important whether the author is sincere. If a person is a convinced communist, a real one, of an idealistic kind, it is interesting to listen and read. If you are a devout Imperial, we’ll listen too. And if you’re just an opportunist and a counterfeiter who doesn’t believe what he says, a crook, a propagandist—I’m disgusted. Here one cannot admire the power of talent - hypocrisy obscures everything.

After the release of your new novel, they began to write about you - with some hesitation - as a serious author who had “overcome” his early genre works. Do you believe in this supposedly irresolvable dichotomy - “entertainment fiction” versus “serious literature”?

Well, “Text” is actually not fundamentally different from “Future” or “Metro 2035”. Those who simply disdain science fiction are dumbfounded. Who came up with genres anyway? They are wildly cramped. I want to mix them up, disrupt them, I don’t want to make any fateful choices once and for all: either you’re in science fiction, or in a thriller, or in “real literature.” Why can't you write a thriller like serious prose? Who said that science fiction should entertain and distract? Why should modern prose be plotless and boring? Literature, in fact, can give complete freedom - literature has a zero budget, you don’t have to ask the Ministry of Culture for money for a book, you don’t have to approve the plot from producers, you don’t have to worry about ratings. We must use this! But no. Writers are afraid of publishers, publishers are afraid of readers. A reader, if he falls in love with a writer for a particular book, then only asks for more. You can't surprise him - he might get indigestion. Publishers think so. I decided to test it on my own skin.

In the early 2000s, you were one of the pioneers of online samizdat: Metro 2033 was read primarily on the Internet. How do you assess the prospects for online literature today? Can the “new samizdat” seriously compete with more traditional publishing institutions?

Maybe, of course. It only suffers from a lack of editing. Editing and marketing are the only two useful functions of a publishing house. It’s awkward to sell yourself, but you can’t raise your hand to rule.

In March last year, you confirmed that the film adaptation of “Metro” would be made in Hollywood: the producers of “The Social Network” and “Sin City” were attached to the project. What's happening to the painting now?

Now they are looking for a director. They showed it to Darabont, he liked everything, read the book, played the game, but couldn’t come up with the director’s take and gave up.

Another international project in which you participated was the creation of a libretto for the opera “The Three Astronauts” based on the story by Umberto Eco. Is it finished? When will it be available to hear?

The libretto is finished, but the music is not ready yet. The work of the composers dragged on, and while they were waiting, both authors of the original work died - and Eugenio Carmi. I managed to meet Carmi, I was at his family dinner in Milan, but Eco, whose fan I had always been, ended up in the hospital then - and it didn’t work out. Now the creators of the opera need to sort things out with his heirs and agents. I want to believe in the best, in general.

Your readers noted the transition to conventionally “realistic” writing back in the collection “Stories about the Motherland.” Would you like to return to a small form in the future? What is generally more sensitive to rapidly changing times - a short story written on occasion or a weighty, fundamental novel?

I liked writing stories. The novel, of course, is a cast iron thing, heavy, cast, a cannonball, it can tear off your head. More time is put into the novel. And the story is a pellet. But if you choose them correctly in a collection, using a mosaic, you can also achieve good stopping power. And then, the story is always a miniature work, an artistic cutting of a grain of rice. There is no room for unnecessary things; it must contain a whole world with living people in its few pages. Before Metro 2033, I wrote stories - in my first year, in my second. Such, in the spirit of Cortazar. They're hanging out online somewhere. So maybe there will be stories again. And novels: magical realism on Russian soil and polar horror. And plays. And film scripts. Everything will happen. Please fasten your seat belts.

It is known that your great-grandfather was friends with Stalin’s personal doctor, and you, having trained as an international journalist in Israel, worked for Russia Today, were part of the Kremlin pool, and then once - the opposition. Why such a turn?

Well, this is not my turn, but Putin’s. You may have forgotten, but in the 2000s we were going to become a civilized European state, we were striving for the future, not the past. And RT was initially created to show the West that everything is fine with freedom of speech. So, in all the years of working on the channel, I didn’t have to bend my heart in any particular way: it was enough to remain unbiased, to balance pro-Kremlin information with anti-Kremlin information. In the pool, the most interesting thing was to debunk the magic: there is nothing special about the Kremlin inhabitants. You can probably put anyone on the throne - and the gears will continue to turn. They were afraid that after Stalin’s death everything would collapse, but nothing collapsed, and life was much better under Khrushchev. What can we say about the leaders of the new Russia. As for my opposition... Today I stand on the same rails on which I stood ten years ago, in fact. But the platform drove off in an unknown direction. During this time, we turned into an authoritarian police state, we were banned from social and political life, we were strangling the Internet, we were put on a strict collar, we fed or physically eliminated all the opposition, the TV went crazy and sprayed poison, we fell out with both the CIS and the West. We went to Europe and came to Kolyma. It's time to stop pretending.

Dmitry Glukhovsky. Photo: Alena Pozevalova, www.om1.ru

Are you trying not to leave a trace? Or is it already useless because Big Brother has already counted everyone? How is Big Data changing us? Should you be afraid of search engines, social networks and your own smartphones?

It seems to me that resistance is futile. If the intelligence services become seriously interested in someone, there is no way to hide yourself from them. Phones are hacked, computers are hacked, any gadget can be wiretapped, you can spy on a person through a webcam, you can know what porn he watches, with whom he is cheating on whom, and find out all his business details. People are worried that it is now more difficult for them to be hypocrites, but this only leads to the fact that they stop hiding their real essence. When collecting incriminating evidence cannot be avoided, you need to admit your human weaknesses, and this will make you invulnerable. Do you think you're the only one watching porn? Yes, all the girls are watching it today. Do you think you're the only one with a mistress? Yes, monogamy has disappeared from the world in general. But this does not mean that love has disappeared. It's just time for us to stop pretending to be someone else, it's time to become ourselves. At all times, the state and the church have tried to take control of our personal life, limit it with many prohibitions, and declare any form of sexual behavior, except those directly aimed at procreation, as perversion. Make people feel guilty. Whoever is at fault is obedient, he does not argue with the authorities, he either plays along with it, or sits quietly and does not blather. This alone is the whole meaning of the so-called struggle for morality. In general, I am convinced that the more fiercely a politician or religious figure fights for morality, the more vicious he is. If you want to remain under their thumb, sit in the closet, be afraid of exposure, which is still inevitable in the world of social networks and big data. Be yourself and be free.

- Do you consider Snowden to be the last romantic of the Earth?

Is Snowden a romantic? Don't know. But he did a great and necessary job, in the interests of civil society throughout the world. It is tragic, of course, that in the end he ended up in our clawed paws, from which everything he recites sounds much less convincing. But this is not as sad as being Assange and cuckooing in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Do you know Pavel Durov? They say that his Telegram is the most inaccessible for the special services, to whom Durov, after taking away VKontakte, refuses to reciprocate.

I happened to communicate with him in person once. “Vkontakte” was taken away from him because Durov is a joker, an unpredictable player, who also has ambitions and his own ideology that are too big for a manager. Such a person cannot be left in control of the most powerful media in the country, which is VK. Next is a matter of technology. As for Telegram, I have heard different opinions about its reliability. I think that if you really want to, the correspondence of a specific person can be hacked. In any case, it is more reliable than any Russian messenger and than the Belarusian Viber, about which knowledgeable people told me that it has servers in Lubyanka.

Despite total transparency and a facial recognition system, people are prohibited from gathering on the street. What are they afraid of?

The authorities are effective in their concern for stopping threats. Threat yourself first. First, the parliamentary opposition was castrated, and now the LDPR, A Just Russia and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation are simply subdepartments of the party in power, fat, sleepy cats. Then the oligarchs were flogged and sworn in. The governors' teeth were pulled out. All that remains is to clear the street - the embodiment of a nightmare since the Maidan. For this reason, they invented a multitude of senseless pioneers, from the “Young Guard” to “Nashi”, and drove there idle people and young opportunists. Then they started feeding football fans and bikers, Cossacks and just some thugs, they came up with the Russian Guard and gave it the right to shoot at the crowd, at women and at minors, they adopted a host of repressive laws, staged show trials and launched an attack on the Internet. People in power are afraid of only one thing: losing it. There aren't any idiots in our country who think that we have real elections? Well, the politicians we supposedly elect know their value very well. Despite all the royal army - the riot police and the National Guard, the incessant propaganda on TV, the battalions of political strategists who are hired to help the authorities fool the people and keep them in line - these people feel great self-doubt and do not believe in the sincerity of eighty-six percent .

- Do you think the election result is definitely predetermined? Or can everything suddenly go wrong?

Putin will be elected, Navalny will not be allowed in, the communists and Zhirinovites will stand on all fours in their usual ritual of submission, Putin will be elected by detached Tajiks and Caucasian state employees with a result of 75%. Putin will be in power until he dies of old age. We will turn into a cozy Central Asian monarchy. This is true stability.

That is, everything is the same as before, but with new technologies? Should we then expect that our president will start, for example, a YouTube channel before the elections?

Why does a person who has already created several channels on central television need YouTube? For schoolchildren, he is still a grandfather. TV viewers will vote for Putin.

But the TV seems to have already died, rolled into asphalt by the Internet, and a normal person should be happy about this.

TV has never died; it is more alive than all living things. We fell in love with Crimea through TV, changed our minds about condemning the authorities for theft, and through it we have been fighting with Ukraine for three years. TV can do something that the Internet has never learned to do: forge mythology, create entire imaginary worlds and resettle the peoples of the Russian Federation into them. And the people can understand: we have such a terrible history and such a sad reality that God himself ordered us to escape from them into the myth of a great empire rising from its knees.

Well, bloggers who have eclipsed writers in the hearts of those in power - we started with this - isn’t this fundamentally new?

All these channels are already several years old, actually. It was the presidential administration that just noticed them - because some schoolboy was noticed at the rally on March 26th. And now we urgently need to tame the shkolota, because suddenly she will overthrow the king. Let's find school Mamontov and school Solovyov, bribe them, like adults Solovyov and Mamontov, with money and the feeling of being chosen, massage their sense of their own greatness - and let Sasha Spielberg and Ivangay put on T-shirts with patriotic prints and do “ku” twice. Then, of course, the schoolboys will follow them and renounce the devil and will no longer think of hanging around at rallies. And rightly so - there is no need to tempt the Russian Guard.