“Military literature is dead”: writers blame readers, and vice versa

“No Reader”

“There is no writer because there is no reader,” the poet and writer Andrey Loskutov assures “MK”, “now there is no that dense reader breed that lives a busy life, is looking for answers and which, in fact, calls the writer.

Today it is fashionable to grieve about many things from the Soviet past. Most of all, Loskutov regrets the generation of the 70s. It is to him that he is grateful for the calling of Bogomolov, Rasputin, Trifonov.

“They didn’t fight against censorship, they didn’t butt heads with oak, but they tried together with us to look for answers to our most important questions. We waited for them, longed for them, and they came. And then came the moment of truth.

Of course, now there are few readers and they are not eager to read now even about the Second World War, not to mention modern wars. Because the distance must pass, experts believe.

“After the end of World War II, readers also did not want to read and buy literature about past events,” playwright and writer Andrei Zhitinkin reminded MK. “The publishers then understood that it was impossible to immediately publish novels, books about the war, because they would cause a very difficult feeling. You have to wait for your brain to rewire.

I had a dialogue with Astafiev, our ingenious military prose writer – and so Astafiev told me that for a very long time it was impossible to break through normal novels because of varnishing. Any war is an ideology. He himself fought, he is a front-line soldier and honestly told me: “If you thought that when we ran into the attack and shouted “Hurrah, for Stalin!” – it is not true. We ran under a deafening checkmate, because everyone was insanely scared. And the mat is the only thing that relieved horror and tension. Moreover, a penal battalion was walking behind, and if you turned around and hesitated, you could be shot in the back by your own.”

This is how people went on the attack. Of course, it was impossible to print. And, of course, Astafiev waited a long time, he said, “I could not publish my novels for a long time.”

And here a huge field of activity for opportunists opened up. Because at some point, all Soviet writers began to receive Stalinist awards for some fake novels about the war. It is clear that someone wrote about love in the war, someone composed some myths, because a lot was invented. And it became clear only now.

“The President posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Russia to the “traitor” from Fadeev’s novel The Young Guard,” Andrey Zhitinkin gives an example, “It turned out that the image of the traitor Yevgeny Stakhovich got into this novel due to confusion in surnames and documents. Fadeev, too, it turns out, was framed. The writer was a hostage of the system. And only now justice has been restored, having removed the stigma of “traitor of a secret organization” from the family, everyone sighed freely. This is how literature works if it is an instrument of ideology.

Both Bogomolov and Nekrasov received a state award. Astafiev received it already a deep old man, a completely sick person. He said that the prize was not for him, but for the memory of boys of the same age who died there. Imagine how many people died – and only one writer was able to tell about it! Astafiev, Bogomolov and Nekrasov have a clear talent – but these are few. And how much was untrue in the cinema, and even in the theater. Therefore, we are now experiencing incredible hunger.

As it turned out, the Maly Theater, where Zhitinkin works, could not even find modern material “that would be honest” by the 75th anniversary of the Victory. As a result, the director took a neutral play by a foreigner as a basis.

“Because all the good things have already been delivered – Bogomolov, Nekrasov, and Astafiev,” Zhitinkin is indignant. – In the end, for the anniversary of the Victory, we released the play “The Big Three (Yalta-1945)” based on the play by the Swedish playwright Lukas Svensson, who worked with the archives and found a lot of interesting things from the intrigues of the behind-the-scenes life of politicians. They are played by folk artists: Stalin – Bochkarev, Churchill – Afanasiev, Roosevelt – Nosik. Each of them pulls in their own direction, and all of them, by definition, could not agree, but nevertheless agreed – then everyone needed a victory.

And immediately it hits the hall, because each side wants victory, not defeat. Everyone knows that war is hell. But what happens to the human soul? And here is a smooth bridge to today. At the Maly Theater on Victory Day, I release The Cranes Are Flying – that’s where there is absolutely no conjuncture. We took the title of our only film to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

“No Writer”

– They were at war. They honestly wrote about her, – in a conversation with MK, the documentary filmmaker and director comments on the phenomenon of the classics of military prose. Akim Salbiev. – Even today, not everything written by them has been read and filmed – these are Simonov, and Tvardovsky, Sholokhov and Fadeev, this list is large – Polevoy, Astafiev, Bykov, Bondarev, Vorobyov, Baklanov, Nosov, Kondratiev, Granin. Almost none of them are in the school curriculum. They all died, and there is no one else to tell and write about that war. However, the simple participants in the war who remained and live with us amaze the mind with their documentary stories.

Until now, our classics have not been able to tell everything, and there were objective reasons for that. The same memoirs of Marshal Zhukov lay under the heading of secrecy for decades.

– There will be no more military literature. Neither worthy nor different, – the director Salbiev categorically declares. – The last three decades with new writers will not leave a trace with their prose. And here Pushkin’s “I’ll shed tears over fiction” is definitely not about them.

All this time did not give anything either for cinema or for the theater, because literature died and “pulp fiction” remained in all areas and genres. Rare “flashes” for such a large country, rich in experience, soul and biographies – not enough. Their names are on the fingers of two hands. But they don’t write about the war. Although at the same time with the greatest front-line soldiers, with poets who could tell so much, Slutsky, Samoilov, Vanshenkin, Vinokurov, Mezhirov also lived. Many have chosen a short form of literature – poetry. Yulia Drunina could not stand this lie and hypocrisy, she took her own life. That is why the pinnacle of military prose will forever remain “The Moment of Truth”, and in the world of cinema “In August 1944” and in “The Trenches of Stalingrad” by Nekrasov as genuine and immutable.

“There are writers who can and want to write about it,” writer Oleg Roy assures MK. – Moreover – there will be even more of them – as part of the rotation, talented guys return from the front, and I can confidently assume a renaissance of “lieutenant prose” in Russia.

The problem is not with writers or readers, but with those who shape the contents of the shelves of our bookstores and libraries, the policy of most of our publishers. For some reason they are not interested in such prose. My novel Unsent Letters, written in the middle of last year, reached the reader with great difficulty.

They say beautiful and correct words from high stands, but in reality they do nothing. Why? Unfortunately, I do not have an answer to this question, but today it is very necessary – for me, for you, and for our entire country.

– This is the time. No readers, no writers. Only viewers, – the satirist writer succinctly summed up the topic Semyon Altov.

MK experts agreed on one thing. Paper media is a huge risk. For a publisher, any book (not necessarily a military one) is a startup – it is not known whether the circulation will pop up or not. Every book, even the most famous, now initially has a small circulation. Because it’s a test. And only then comes reprinting, if it is a bestseller, if the book is a success. And the publishers themselves will try to figure out what will work. But time will pass, and those writers will appear who, oddly enough, are now silent. They don’t write because their batteries aren’t charged. Something must stand up, and already, looking at the situation from the outside, the writer will be able to some extent come closer to the truth.