[SergeyM]

Dear All:

Thanks a lot for your interest in our literature and all the kind words. It is always a pleasure for me to learn that people from other countries do like Russian literature and authors.
Alas, it seems that in contemporary Russia people tend to seek for amusement rather than for thoughts, and classical literature is far less popular than simple criminal stories, “women’s books” and fantasy.

How come that Russian writers and readers of today focus on things other than what interested Leo Tolstoy, Pushkin, Lermontov, Bulgakov and others? I would say that the reason for that was what happened here since beginning of twentieth century. In socialist times our writers had two ways before them: to write about life getting better and better every day, and become popular, well-paid and respectable, or to write about GULAG, Russian tanks in Hungary and Prague, and diamonds, that Leonid Brejnev’s daughter was supposedly very fond of, and wind up in a prison, a madhouse, or in the West.
Then everything turned upside down, and respectable authors and writers who had their terms in prisons or asylums changed places. When that happened, we had more than enough books on how foolish our communist leaders were, how many people were killed by Lenin and Stalin, and that “New Russians” were just criminals, getting huge money by simple devices like killing competitors and cheating on partners.

Some people, who knew it all along, and others, who were able to adjust to a new, more complex image, have not suffered much. I, for example, almost stopped to read in Russian. But many others felt fooled, their own culture and history stolen from them by “democrats”, surely paid by USA… This train of thought is backed by our officials to some extent, who now seem to be trying to install new Russian patriotism… This is seen in many fields here, from history and chronology, where people such as Fomenko try to put new picture, where Russians are the most ancient people on Earth, in place of the traditional one, where we start after most European nations, and to literature, where to show foolish leaders and millions being killed for nothing stopped paying dividends…

So. We have now readers, who will not read anything without very strong emotions, readers, who will not read anything mentioning the difficult times we had a lot of, and readers, needing to read about a “new Russian idea”… Of course we have other readers. But it would seem that we are not majority here.

BTW, “Pindosland”, or “Pindostan” is how some people here call USA. “Pindosy” are Americans. It is a good style now in Russia not to like United States. They have stolen our grandeur from us, you know…

Actually, I am writing a book for more than two years now. A book on our life. Alas, I am not Dostoevsky, or even a Strugatsky brother, but as I couldn’t have found such a thing as a book about our everyday life, I have tried to make one myself. Alas, I am writing it using a pocket computer, during my trips to my office and back, so to complete it I will need a year more or so... And it is about 200 pages now.

And, about “Stalker” by Tarkovsky. I thought it a quite depressing film too. Unlike the book by Strugatskie. The book is much deeper then the film, which reflects mostly Tarkovsky’s own state of mind at the moment. (It is my own opinion, and I doubt that many Russians would be with me on it, if asked).