Stepanova: Russia experiencing a 'hijacking of history'

Maria Stepanova has fled. For many months, she has been living with her family at a dacha near Moscow.

It's a strategy that's typical of the Russian cultural scene: Both the pandemic and the harsh political climate have driven numerous cultural workers into a kind of "dacha exile."

From here, she communicates with her publishers worldwide, coordinates the work of colta.ru, one of the last independent journalistic platforms in Russia, of which she is editor-in-chief, and she writes.

She also gives numerous interviews, sometimes several per day in the run-up to the International Booker Prize awards. Although the telephone connection is poor, you can hear the birds chirping in the background.

A struggle against forgetting

Stepanova's novel In Memory of Memory has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize that honors the best foreign-language novels translated into English and published in the past year. Along with translations of French, Spanish and Danish works, Stepanova's entry is only the third time that a novel translated from Russian has made the shortlist.

The book, which the Moscow-born poet, essayist and journalist worked on for many years, caused a sensation in Russia in 2017. The literary world has hailed it the most important Russian-language text of the decade. After it was published in German in 2018, the novel has since been translated into 10 other languages.

International literary critics have poured high praise on Stepanova's multilayered, lyrical meditation on her own family history, and the nature of memory. The densely interwoven narrative strands comprise love stories, travelogues and reflections that resurrect a Russian-Jewish family's story of survival across a century.

It's a tale that is not included in the textbooks — certainly not in Russian ones.

But Stepanova's approach is highly relevant since Russian authorities are currently performing "a hijacking of history," argues the writer.

"Putin's version of history presents itself as an unbroken chain of victories," Maria Stepanova told DW. "It's an ascending greatness: from Tsarist Russia to the victorious Stalin era and finally to the radiant Putin present full of dignity and stability."

The impression is created that there was neither the revolution, nor the civil war, nor millions of victims of Stalin's terror, Stepanova continued. "And for this version of history, the power is ready to fight by any means. Among other things, laws are being passed to falsify history."

Fostering cultural dialogue

Yet Maria Stepanova is not an activist, but first and foremost a poet.

Since the early 1990s, when she studied at the Maxim Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow, Stepanova has published numerous volumes of poetry and essays.

The charismatic and eloquent writer with her signature tousled mop of black hair soon emerged as a star of the Russian literary world. Through poetry readings, public discussions or appearances at book fairs, Stepanova has remained a key influence within Russian cultural life.

In 2018, she took up a position as a guest lecturer at Humboldt University in Berlin. For Stepanova, ties to the international cultural scene are vital, especially in the current political context.

Affirming the importance of "international dialogue" for cultural life, Stepanova fears that insular "Russian culture will remain trapped in its own interior world and will gradually eat itself up." 

Russia's isolation during the Cold War resulted in "the loss of a common language," she explains. "There is a big, global conversation going on within world literature. It's very important that texts written in Russian don't fall out of that conversation."

Critic of the regime

Maria Stepanova doesn't mince words when it comes to the current political situation in Russia.

"It seems to me that the government … has found a way to continue to oppress people, to keep them obedient and fearful without resorting to concentration camps and executions," she said.

She calls out tactics such as "selective arrests," or brazen "theatrical" gestures such as airplane hijackings. "People are intimidated not because their lives are threatened tomorrow or today, but simply because they understand that what is done to one person can happen to everyone else at any time," the writer explains.

Yet the dacha exile is also hopeful as the pandemic finally begins to subside, at least in Europe. 

"There's no point in crying," she told DW. "My inner feeling tells me that a new era has dawned since the pandemic. It's like the last century. The 20th century de facto began in 1914 with the First World War. It is the same now. Something new is beginning."

 

This article was translated from German.