Correction Appended
It began inauspiciously. On a frozen afternoon in late November, as Moscow was draped with blocklong plastic billboards, banners and flags, each proclaiming a variation on a single theme — “POBEDA PUTINA — POBEDA ROSSII!” (“A Victory for Putin Is a Victory for Russia”) — a few thousand Russians converged on the city center for a rare act of political theater. It seemed, at first, like a tableau from the last days of the U.S.S.R., those heady months when glasnost swelled the streets with protesters. A handful of dissidents stood on a flatbed truck; a jumble of loudspeakers were stacked below; the crew of foreign reporters vastly outnumbered the local press; and across the way, the secret policemen with their unseen amplifiers were drowning the protest in canned laughter and Soviet waltzes. (more…)
I am thinking now that I am working for “Exile” as reporter, being in same time active participant and even architect of Russian History. Thus, the first Congress of “Other Russia” held in Moscow’s Izmailovo Hotel on September 30 was planned and executed by Garry Kasparov and me. As to the idea of participation in the comping Russian parliamentary elections it was entirely my idea. I expressed that idea two years ago, and steadily, have promoted it inside of the Other Russia coalition. Finally it was accepted by my colleagues in the coalition. On October 1st, Kasparov and me, we visited Central Electoral Commission and have handed over the list of candidates for elections of deputies of a State Duma. What I want to say, that I am reporter who is reporting on activity of Edward Limonov–who is oppositional politician. Unusual situation, isn’t it?
When Lefortovo is removed from the jurisdiction of the Federal Security Service and placed like all other penitentiary facilities under the Justice Ministry, the legend of the much-feared, high-security prison may finally draw to a close.
— To me, His Butler’s Story is one of your best books. One of the reasons I was shocked when I first read it was that somehow you managed to describe what Jenny, an ordinary American of the time, was like. I read that and looked around at the rest of American literature and nobody repeated it. I always wondered what made it so hard to Americans to describe carefully what was happening. You needed to go to a Russian…