Zakhar Prilepin - Sankya

Zakhar Prilepin

SANKYA

Glagoslav Publications

SANKYA

by Zakhar Prilepin

First published in Russian as

Foreword by Alexey Navalny

Translated by Mariya Gusev and Jeff Parker
with Alina Ryabovolova

2006, Zakhar Prilepin

Represented by www.nibbe-wiedling.com

2014, Glagoslav Publications, United Kingdom

Glagoslav Publications Ltd
88-90 Hatton Garden
EC1N 8PN London
United Kingdom

www.glagoslav.com

ISBN: 978-1-78384-018-2 (Epub)

ISBN: 978-1-78384-019-9 (Mobi)

A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.

This book is in copyright. No part of this publication may be
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of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form
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on the subsequent purchaser.

CONTENTS

I didnt read Zakhar Prilepins novel Sankya until later, when those who Prilepin writes about were released from Russian prisons and those whose arrival he foretells were jailed.

In the Russian literary tradition, the foresight of the writer is very important, and Prilepins foresight would make Tolstoy and Dostoevsky burn with envy.

Consider the story of the Primorsky Partisans, a group of young people from a small town in the Far East who waged a real war against the government and could only be put down by a large-scale military operation. It is hard to believe that Prilepins book this book foretold such events with such precision.

Prilepin has not merely turned inside out the consciousness of the entire post-Perestroika generation of politicized young Russians and laid it bare, but he also, in large part, predicted the patterns of development of radical political groups and the governments strategy in combatting them.

This very post-Perestroika generation will play a huge role in the history of Russia, not least because there are so many of them this is the last wave of the Soviet baby boom, and following on its heels is a demographic abyss. And it is very important that they be understood easier said than done even for those of us whose native language is Russian.

Prilepins works provide innumerable insights on this count. Probably only a provincial writer with such an insane biography (a former special forces police officer who served in the Russian military in the rebellious Chechen Republic and who became one of the leaders and instigators of a banned radical political party and, at the same time, one of the most famous and successful authors in the country today) could understand whats going on in the minds of people stuck between eras. They do not remember the Soviet Union and the planned economy, nor do they see capitalism as offering equal opportunities for all. For them, capitalism means the former head of the local party organisation is today the citys chief entrepreneur and the richest man in town.

Even in Moscow, the Russian political process with its so-called systemic opposition and its Putin-approved lawful methods of political competition is perceived as total hypocrisy and political prostitution, but in the regions described in Sankya it manifests itself as an unbearable daily existence preventing anyone with even a modicum of human dignity from becoming involved.

There have been several attempts to turn the novel into a movie, but every time the government successfully foils these attempts by banning the films financing. Thugs, a brilliant play by Kirill Serebrennikov based on Sankya, has faithfully conveyed the spirit of the book, enjoyed huge public success, and been awarded the Golden Mask Russian theatre prize of 2012. The tickets arent easy to get, and it is quite amusing to watch the standing ovations the performance receives from representatives of the Moscow establishment, who should one would expect be squirming in their seats, threatened by the action unfolding on stage, by the unnerving predictions of the book, and by the cheering audience, clearly sympathetic to the perishing young revolutionaries.

For me personally, Zakhar Prilepin is not just a biographer of Russia but also an active politician with influence over the hearts and minds of young Russians. In fact, he and I got to know each other while starting a political movement together and I can assure you that this guy really knows what he is talking about. If you want to feel the real raw nerve of modern Russian life, what you need isnt Anna Karenina what you need is Sankya.

Alexey Navalny

Moscow, September 2013

They were denied the stage.

Sasha looked down, his eyes tired of red flags and grey military coats.

Red fluttered around them, brushing their faces, sometimes stirring the odour of musty fabric.

Grey stood behind the barrier. All identical conscripts short, grimy, weakly gripping billy clubs. The police had heavy faces, burgundy from annoyance. The indispensable officer glared defiantly at the crowd. His insolent hands on the top rung of the fence separating them, the guardians of the law and of the whole city, from the protestors.

Around them stood some mustachioed lieutenant colonels, lavish bellies under their military coats. And somewhere there should also be the most important and officious of them all, the full colonel.

Sasha always tried to spot this one, the rallys chief security officer. Sometimes he was a lean man with ascetic cheeks, squeamishly bossing around the porky lieutenant colonels. Sometimes he was like the lieutenant colonels, a bigger, heavier version yet at the same time more agile, more spry, with a smile on his face and good teeth. There was also a third type absolutely tiny, mushroom-like, moving rapidly behind the rows of police on his quick little feet

Sasha hadnt seen him yet, this full colonel, stars on his shoulders.

A little farther away, behind the fencing, cars buzzed and squeaked, heavy metro doors clanged shut, dusty down-and-outs gathered bottles and surveyed their rims in a businesslike manner. A Caucasian man sipped lemonade and watched the protest from behind the backs of the policemen. Sasha accidentally met his eyes. The Caucasian man turned and walked away.

Sasha noticed some buses bearing the coat of arms with a fanged beast. The curtains in the bus windows trembled. People were sitting in those buses, waiting for an opportunity to step out, to run out, clutching rubber mallets in tough fists, looking angrily for somebody to hit, and to hit them with flourish, to knock them down and knock them out.

You see this, yes? Venka asked Sasha. Venka had not slept. He was hungover, his eyes swollen like overcooked dumplings.

Sasha nodded.

Their hope hadnt panned out. The OMON unit was here.

Venka smiled as if there werent a bunch of camouflaged demons awaiting their cue but rather a brigade of clowns handing out balloons.

Sasha wandered into the crowd gathered behind the fence.

Fenced them in like lepers

The fence was composed of two-metre sections along which the conscripts stood at equal intervals.

Venka followed Sasha. Their crew gathered at the other end of the plaza, and they could already make out Yanas voice as she lined up the formation of boys and girls.

Sasha studied the unwell and poor as he brushed up against them. Almost all of them were deeply and irritatingly old.

Some sort of despair showed in their demeanour, as if they had gathered their last reserves of strength to get here and now wished only to die. The portraits that they carried in their hands and clutched to their chests depicted their leaders as younger than most of the people here. The face of young Lenin, smiling softly, an enlarged photo familiar to Sasha from his first grammar book. Then the calm face of Lenins successor, held up by trembling elderly hands. The successor wore a military cap and the epaulettetes of a generalissimo.