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Dmitry Glukhovsky on exile, censorship and the dystopia of modern Russia
CULTURE-Q
By Mark Trevelyan
Nov 27 - For the past 20 years, writer Dmitry Glukhovsky has observed Vladimir Putin's Russia from extremes of proximity and distance.
As a young journalist, he reported from inside the Kremlin on the early years of Putin's presidency. Today, the internationally acclaimed author — best known for the "Metro" novels that were turned into a major video game franchise — is a political exile. Branded by Russia as a "foreign agent,” he was sentenced in absentia in 2023 to eight years in prison for violating censorship laws relating to the war in Ukraine.
Speaking to Reuters from outside the country , Glukhovsky talked about the collision between dystopian fiction and reality, how it feels to gradually lose touch with your homeland, and why he revisits Moscow in his dreams.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
How has being cut off from your country, and from part of the audience you're writing for, affected your work?
The tragic thing that is happening is that however closely you follow the development of the situation in the country, however extensively you talk to your friends in Russia to learn what is going on there, you will still inevitably lose the connection.
I'm dreaming a lot about Russia. I'm dreaming a lot about Moscow, even though a lot of these dreams are actually nightmares — like finding myself in Moscow and then realising that I’m wanted by the law and that I have to escape somehow.
I still think that we have to, even from exile, try and portray is going on in today's Russia, because authors and artists who remain there, they decided to fall silent, because they know that they will pay a very serious price for speaking out.
We have something very important that they do not have: freedom of speech, the freedom of creation, and the freedom of portraying, or trying to analyse and understand, the catastrophic events that are unfolding in Russia. What I'm hearing right now from my friends in Russia is that mentioning the war in Moscow and St. Petersburg is considered something of a mauvais ton . It's not socially acceptable to disturb other people with conversations about what's going on in the front line. And this is interesting, as new social norms are getting formed that actually include people voluntarily banning themselves from discussing the uncomfortable topics, even if these topics mean accurately understanding the catastrophe happening with our country.
We’ve seen echoes of your work’s dystopian themes play out in reality. “Metro 2033," for example, is about the aftermath of nuclear war — a scenario that has raised concern in recent years. In “Futu.re,” you evoke a world where humanity has invented a way to stop ageing. What did you make of the conversation between Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping about living to 150?
I don't think of myself as a prophet. I'm a journalist by education and my primary interest is world news and the Russian political and social situation, which I've been really exploring this entire time under the guise of dystopian fiction. So when it actually happens that you make the right guess, for any author that does dystopia, it’s like: “Aha! I told you!”
I think that this is a very ancient theme and a very ancient plot: A ruler who stays in power for decades wants to rule forever. And I hope that the specialists and the scientists working in the field of longevity do not make such fast progress as to allow Vladimir Putin to rule forever.
New rules came into force in September banning "foreign agents" from any role in educating minors and providing information products for minors — an edict that has resulted in bookstores labeling and sealing books and volumes by people identified as foreign agents. As somebody who has been placed in that category, how do you feel about this development?
They call whoever is of any public importance and independent opinion . The purpose of that is to isolate from the public field, from the media, and turn them into pariahs. I think that the position and the rights of the people called foreign agents deteriorate almost every month.
I'm not earning any royalties from any books or other intellectual properties sold in Russia because they are being collected and then put on a special account in Russia's central bank designed for that purpose. So they accumulate all of my earnings and they will only pay them to me once my status of foreign agent is lifted, which is not happening during my lifetime, I guess.
I'm publishing fiction books, so I'm not concerned by this new wave of restrictions , but we can be absolutely certain that new waves will come. I think the next steps will involve probably confiscating their remaining properties and then completely banning them from having any public appearance on Russian media.
You've written novels, you've created video games. Where do you see yourself going in the future, in terms of themes and formats?
I think that inevitably, as the years go by, you lose your connection to what's actually going on in your home country when you're in exile. And I think that before I've lost that understanding, I owe my country a couple more stories that I have the things that I have realized and the things that I have understood during these three years of war on Ukraine and Russia's isolation, and people's conformism and acceptance of evil and normalization of evil. So these are, I guess, the next topics I would love to explore.
Video games can be an amazingly powerful medium to explore things and themes such as authoritarian rule and dictatorship and the power of fear. And this is what the "Metro" video gaming series has been doing, right?
I'm very interested in film and theatre. I'm keeping everything secret because I'm superstitious. I don't want to speak about things before they become real. But a lot of plans. And I think that unfortunately, as traumatic and dramatic as our times are, it's from the trauma and drama of reality that we get to understand something about the nature of humans and the nature of society and the course of history. We're never able to understand these things during peaceful times. And it's very important to put these things on paper before we forget them.
The perspectives expressed in Culture Current are the subject’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Reuters News.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
