“I spent 27 years of socialism, I don’t want to live in a fascist country”

The form en la que is strange Maxim Osipov (Moscú, 1963) concludes the report with the story of the latest anthology, After Eternitywhich at the beginning of the year brings us from the hands of the always reliable editorial Libros del Asteroide. In the last few lines, we saw a toast in a beer garden in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, where, amid the shock of beer glasses, “If I took out the cake, there’s nothing to do but palm it”.

You are referring to “aquel”. Stalin. Many people are celebrating the 69th anniversary of the Soviet dictator’s death on March 5, 2022. You can imagine why they want to continue in the same way. All in all, I’m sure it ties them with San Martín, which is tenth on this side of the continent. Toda statement not only of intentions, but also of desire, but also: of burning desire.

Maxim Osipov, like many other dissidents of the political rumble noted by the Kremlin, He left Russia a few days after his country invaded Ukraine. He used to live in Tarus, a town with less than 10,000 inhabitants located 140 kilometers above Moscow, where even after his life as a writer he practiced as a cardiologist. From his home, he lives between Frankfurt and Amsterdam. “I spent 27 years of socialism, I don’t want to live in a fascist country.”

At the start of an interview he conducts about video games with El Cultural, the Moscow writer asks his fruity dinner the first question he asks when smoking a pipe. There will be smoke from the edge of the window as you ponder each answer. Humor was still in the air as Osipov explained passages of his new book, about Ukraine and, ay, Russia.

P. The first story, “Después de Eternidad”, which gives the book its title, tells the story of a village in the far north that was founded to take advantage of the mining recursions in the area, and when these disappear, the inhabitants are forcibly evacuated – what is the situation of villages like this? Eternity? Are they the great forgotten people of Russia?

R. The most surprising thing about this story is that it contains something of fiction, of course, but the most incredible part is the absolute truth. While working as a cardiologist in Tarus, you find a patient from Khalmer-Yu, a ghost mining town located far to the north. It was a hellish place, very cold. But people lived there, they had their schools, their theaters… In the mid-1990s, the government decided to close the town because it was very expensive to maintain and the mines disappeared.

»They tried to evacuate people in a civilized way, building apartments in Vorkuta, the big city they were looking for. But some got away with the money intended for this project. What eventually happened was that the military used force in trains on many of the residents of Khalmer-Yu. The last one was even more impressive: Putin sent to test a new type of bomber aircraft and chose the largest Khalmer-Yu building for it. The same guy was on the plane that bombed the city. There was something strongly symbolic about this anecdote, so I decided to elevate it to the realm of fiction.

P. En el segundo relato, “Piezas sobre un plano”, llama la atención la relación de Matvéi, el protagonista, con su padre a punto de fallecer. ¿Qué relación cree que tienen las nuevas (o ya no tan nuevas) generaciones rusas con sus padres y el legado histórico reciente de su país?

R. En lo personal tuve mucha suerte en este sentido. Mi relación con mi padre fue siempre muy buena, así que la historia de Matvéi no tiene nada que ver con mi situación personal. Por supuesto, en Rusia todavía se nota la herencia estalinista y soviética. Imagino que ocurre algo similar en España, pero a menor escala. Seguro que allí tenéis algún familiar que mira con nostalgia el franquismo. Algo así pasa en Rusia. No es nada fácil superar esa clase de legado.

P. Matvéi acaba enamorado de Roma en un momento de deriva personal. Contrasta la descripción que hace usted de esta ciudad con la que realiza, por ejemplo, de Eternidad en el anterior relato. ¿Qué visión tiene como ruso de Europa y el Mediterráneo? 

R. Bueno, Europa es muy diversa. Yo soy un hombre que se siente más cómodo en un clima del norte. Italia es demasiado para mí, siento que estoy en África. Cuando era joven estábamos encerrados en el territorio de la Unión Soviética. Para nosotros “viajar a Europa” era ir a los países bálticos, y luego teníamos otras regiones similares en el clima y el carácter de la gente a los países occidentales: los armenios son muy parecidos a los españoles, Georgia es nuestra Italia… Durante mucho tiempo el oeste era un gran desconocido para nosotros. Es ahora cuando estoy empezando a conocer la Europa occidental, y me encanta.

“EE. UU. y Rusia están alejándose de Europa, pero ambos tienen raíces europeas. Es como si se rebelaran contra sus abuelos”

P. ¿Considera Rusia un país europeo, que bebe de la misma tradición que, por ejemplo, Italia?

R. Creo que la cultura rusa sí que es una parte muy importante de la cultura europea. Pero el país en sí se acerca cada vez más a China en detrimento de Europa. Hace aproximadamente un año publicamos un artículo en la revista que dirijo, 5th wave, sobre la forma en la que tanto Putin como Trump se están alejando de Europa y sus ideales. Es curioso, porque ambas culturas, la estadounidense y la rusa, tienen sus raíces en Europa. Es como si se rebelaran contra los principios de sus abuelos.

P. ¿Qué piensa de la relación entre Trump y Putin? ¿Se han precipitado ambos países en una deriva similar?

R. Son países muy diversos, pero la deriva general que encabezan sus líderes… Rusia es un país fascista, de eso no cabe duda. Y Trump está llevando a su país por un camino similar. Desde luego, ambos personajes tienen muy buena sintonía.

P. En varios de sus relatos se adivina un estado de corrupción total que ha permanecido en Rusia, sin que la supuesta llegada de la democracia en los 90 cambiara nada. ¿Lo que se vive en su país hoy es simplemente una prolongación de lo que se ha vivido durante décadas, o, por el contrario, sí que ha notado un cambio en la vida social y política?

R. La cuestión es que yo no escribo de forma voluntaria sobre la corrupción porque para mí, gestos como sobornar a un policía es algo perfectamente natural que como ruso he interiorizado. Son cosas que he vivido desde que era pequeño y que continúan a día de hoy. Es lo que pasa cuando construyes un edificio sobre mierda: los cimientos se tambalean y encima huelen mal. Pero bueno, uno se acostumbra y ya no nota el olor.

P. No seré el primero que le diga que ve planeando sobre usted la figura de Chéjov (médico, dramaturgo, escritor de relatos…) también percibo cierta herencia del autor de Tío Vania en la forma y los temas de sus textos. En este sentido, resulta llamativo su relato “El cine en casa” en el que cita continuamente piezas teatrales de Chéjov y nos encontramos con un grupo de actores, un médico y un tono muy “chejoviano” ¿Hay algo de homenaje a su figura en este texto?

R. No, no eres el primero [ríe]. So I guess there is something from Chéj in me. In this text, I’m just wondering if it seems good to me, because I don’t usually write comic stories about love. I would like to represent people from the theater at the extravaganza during the party, which is also an event that leads to comical situations. It’s not a very serious text, I write it for fun. Quizás Chéjov hacía lo mismo.

“In five years Russia will change a lot, in 200 years nothing will change.”

P. The character of the doctor is indeed very common in his relations. Has your profession defined the way you write and perceive reality?

R. It’s hard to decide because I’ve been a doctor for 40 years. I imagine that once I’ve defined a form, it helps me understand and care about the world. But I believe that it has shaped my style of work the most, which I do by editing and translating scientific texts for further use. Medical literature needs to be clear and concise, and I believe it has shaped me to write just as well for all the years I’ve been doing this work.

P. In another of his stories, “Luxembourg,” we see his hero turn to a querero justified by the vandalism that left his fathers tomb feared by criminals. What is the most important thing to hear about, injustice or the form in which justice is delivered in your country?

R. Tell me, I’ll tell you an anecdote to answer you. When I marched from Russia in 2022, I settled in Frankfurt and then spent some time in Berlin at the invitation of a circle of intellectuals. There he asked the direction of the place to the police. That is deliverance! It was my first time doing something like this! In Russia, politics worries us, we fear it. This happened to us even before the Soviet Union. It has been gathering in our subconscious ever since tsarism. They warmed me up in Germany! I didn’t need help because I had Google Maps, but it allowed me to ask the police for advice because that was something revolutionary for me.

P. Svetlana Alexijevic states that these texts are an inexorable diagnosis of Russian life. Are you one of those patients in Russia who refuse to follow your doctor’s advice?

R. For some reason, in Russia we keep noticing the same mistakes. In my text, I am very ready to conclude that in five years Russia has changed a lot, but in 200 years it has not changed at all.

“In Russia they always say that Ukrainians are our human beings and that’s how we treat them?”

P. The last pages of his book, where the Ukrainian war soon breaks out in the daily lives of the characters, are despicable. How do I live in the first days?

R. Let’s visit our home in Tarus as we enter the beginning of the war. We were informed by an independent news feed on YouTube, as the official information was not reliable. We went to the street to protest, but there were few people there, even though Tarusa doesn’t have many residents. In red, there is a photo circulating in which I appear with a sign that was at the protest, which says: “Caine, where is your brother Abel?“In Russia, they always say that Ukrainians are our human beings and that’s how we treat them?

» On the sixth day we decide to march. I said to myself: “I have spent 27 years of socialism, I refuse to live the rest of my days in a fascist country”. Hija encouraged us to go to Germany where she lived. Hello, I resisted because I did not understand what we live in the Soviet Unionbut we will achieve it to our satisfaction.

P. Do you think Trump will stop the war as he has promised on various occasions?

R. I don’t create it. Putin wants to know that there is a war and Trump has this stupid obsession with the Nobel Prize, he doesn’t care anymore. I remember my birthday four years ago, who always asks me, “Did you bring me a present?”. They all did not know that it was not good to expect such a class of things. Trump is doing the same. He is at the emotional and intellectual level of a four-year-old child. How can I tell someone how to solve something so complicated?