“Vladimir Putin transformed this country into a monster” – L’Express

From a Russian author who appears on social networks with a sweatshirt on which is a heart in the colors of Ukraine, we can deduce two things: that she is particularly courageous; And that she no longer lives in Russia. Alissa Ganieva took the road to exile in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, certain that she could never speak freely in her country again. Originally from Daghestan, a Caucasus region, the 39 -year -old writer worked as a literary journalist in Moscow before publishing several novels with the region in which she grew up. This is not the case with Offended feelings, Which seems today in France, a fierce satire of the Russian company published in the Pays de Putin in 2018. In a provincial city, a minister collapsed by a night of rain in the street, like Loudyé. His mistress is at the abested, as well as his wife and all the notables of the city, while everyone speculates on the identity of the crow which threatened the potentat of embasing revelations. The intrigue is the pretext for a game of massacre. Ganieva dissects with devastating irony the turpitudes of a company phagocytous by corruption, nepotism, denunciations, the chief’s cult to the absurd, the instrumentalization of history, of the Church, and the denial Collective – which continues to do its work today.

Now a freelance journalist based in a country in Central Asia, the novelist returns to the genesis, the reception and the backdrop of this book which she says to herself certain that “could no longer seem in current Russia”.

L’Express: What was your intention when writing the book?

Alissa Ganieva: I was surprised, as a literary criticism, to see that a large number of Russian authors avoided dealing with contemporary political and social problems. To make it came up for them to behave as a journalist, while in the past the Russian novelists have always portrayed the problems of their time. Tolstoy was interested in wars against Japan, in the Balkans, conflicts between politicians. I wanted to reconnect with this, not without a certain anxiety because I felt that the country turned into a monster and ran to the front of a disaster.

What was the state of Russian society at the time?

From the outside, you could think that everything was not going so bad, there was a varnish of democratic institutions. In the media or on TV, freedom of expression was constrained, but literature seemed relatively preserved. Laws had been passed to fight against the so-called propaganda in favor of homosexuals, but people did not notice that their rights were threatened, and they did not want to see it. Society was exploded in different bubbles which lived according to their own interests, which mainly turned around consumerism. In the 2000s, advances took place on the economic level, people lived a little better than before, and they put these changes to Putin’s credit.

When have things deteriorated?

After 2014 and the annexation of Crimea. Then, the COVVID was a very good pretext to prohibit events in the street, such as demonstrations. Then took place the extension of Putin’s reign [NDLR : une réforme de la Constitution en 2021 lui permet de se maintenir au pouvoir jusqu’en 2038]and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has changed everything.

What were the reactions to the book?

Readers told me that I would exaggerate, that things were not so serious, that the denunciations were isolated cases, that the repressive laws were certainly absurd, but little used … But the story was too like their own lives , it was not a very comfortable reading. They did not like the satirical side of the novel, which was published in a very recognized Moscow publishing house. I do not imagine for a moment that it would be possible again to publish it today.

Didn’t you worry with the authorities when it came out?

No, in 2018 Russia claimed to be a peaceful country, open to the world. The country had welcomed the football world cup, supporters had come from around the world. The number of political prisoners was growing, but their names remained unknown. If you wrote on these subjects, you were frowned upon in the artistic community, but you could do it as long as you did not mention Putin. Some of my colleagues did it anyway and the publishing houses deleted its name systematically. On the one hand, you could write on these subjects, but on the other, people were arrested for dancing the twerk in front of the eternal flame [à Moscou]and their loved ones were worried too. But their number was still small enough so that we could not want to be careful.

In the book, you tell a visit of the country’s leader, who is therefore not appointed, and the way in which local authorities hasten to camouflage all the problems of the city, to the doctors who take the place of the patients in Hospital beds. Is that a truthful situation?

This is a story that you could observe in any Russian province city as soon as a power representative visited it. The local authorities did everything to present a facade and give the illusion that everything was fine. It is a paradox of Russia, where there are major prosperous cities like Moscow or Saint Petersburg when the rest of the country lives in deplorable conditions. There are still regions without heating, without all of it, where the toilets consist of wooden cabins. People ‘income is derisory, they just have enough to buy a few foodstuffs and cannot afford to travel or give correct education to their children. This gives an argument to those who want to adopt a paternalistic attitude towards the Russians, which they see as a submissive population, of serfs, unable to learn and to distinguish good from evil. It has always been easier to persecute people from these regions, such as Siberia. Many political prisoners, often very young, came from these small towns in the Soviet era.

Some believe that the heritage of serfdom would explain what looks like a form of collective resignation of the population. Do you agree with this thesis?

On a certain side, it can be true, but on the other, regions that have not experienced serfdom, in Siberia or in the Caucasus, are as docile as the others. Due to their family history, people know that if you express your opinion, you expose yourself to reprisals and arrests. My mother repeated me “does not speak of politics, does not go to demonstrations”, even if she shared my opinions. Her grandparents were deported to Siberia, one of them died there, his father was also imprisoned for political reasons, and this fear of political commitment is anchored in her. Many people, like his, are convinced that the system is too strong and cannot be changed. When the invasion of Ukraine took place, the majority of Russians were neither for nor against. They were content to follow what the president could say, “they know what they are doing,” they said. This fact of being ready to accept everything is worse than everything I think …

You also portray the misfortune of a history professor arrested for implying that the Nazis had been as much difficult by the freezing cold of Russia as by his soldiers during the Second World War …

A very ordinary story, even if it has a fictional character. There is a law which aims to criminalize any comparison between Hitler and Stalin or any lowering of the role of the Soviet army. For example, it is forbidden to evoke the rape of German women by Russian soldiers, as well as the agreements between Stalin and Hitler to share Europe [Le pacte germano-soviétique, en août 1939]. On television, it was explained that the purges of Stalin were not so massive, the repression not so terrible. All the negative sides of history are put under the carpet, the books that teach it today are very different from those we had in the 1990s, which were more critical of the USSR and Russia.

For the character of my book, I was also inspired by a historian who had uncovered mass execution sites of the 1930s in the north of Russia. He was arrested in 2016 and is still in prison. But, and this is how the State proceeds, he was not condemned for having spoken of massacres, but for having had an alleged inappropriate behavior towards his daughter-in-law-which was false, as evidenced by Experts, as well as her daughter-in-law herself. But when the state stops a person for political reasons, he always accuses him for another reason. This is why it is very difficult to denounce the political character of this type of arrest.

You also relate the glorification of the tsarist past through a painter who represents the powerful of the city in period attours …

Yes, because in his head, Putin prolongs the Soviet Empire on one side, re -inforce, and on the other, it is in the line of the prebolchevic era and tsarism. Putin loves Alexandre III [1845-1894]a reactionary tsar that did everything to prevent reforms and relied on the same triumvirate that we find today: the Church, the State and traditional values. Putin tries to restore this period by many aspects, this idea of ​​traditional Russia with its territories, its greatness, the myth of the adhesion of all the peoples who compose it, and the fact that external populations would ask him to intervene to come to their rescue. At that time, Russia “saved” the Bulgarians, the Serbs … We can clearly see this continuity [avec l’Ukraine]it is of course to save by killing.

Do you see the possibility of a change?

Today, not really. Russia has become a dictatorship, it is almost impossible to do anything. If you give 1 ruble to the Navalny anti -corruption foundation, you will go to prison the next day for terrorism and extremism, for several years. The number of police and soldiers per inhabitants in Russia remains one of the highest in the world. A few years ago, a window for change opened, during major demonstrations against Putin [de 2011 à 2014 essentiellement]. But we have let this chance pass and the power has been strengthened every year since.

A speech that we hear is to say that it is impossible for Russia to be a democracy because of its dimension, that it is necessary to have a strong power to maintain the unity of the country, but the Federalism could really work, if it was put in place in an honest way, not just in form. In the 1990s, no one was prepared for the fall of the Soviet Union, poverty was immense and the period remained a trauma for many Russians, which justified in their eyes wanting to reconstruct the Empire , as if it was a lost paradise. But there will end up having other opportunities for change. The new generation is more open. It is a very important period. All democratic forces must be ready.

Offended feelings, by Alissa Ganieva. Gallimard, 256 p., € 22.