From Nezavisimaya gazeta, Oct. 8, 2025, p. 2. Complete text:

Writer Aleksandr Prokhanov’s new novel “Lemner” features characters that to some may resemble [Russian President] Vladimir Putin (President Leonid Leonidovich Troyevidov), Yevgeny Prigozhin (Mikhail Solomonovich Lemner, nicknamed “Prigozhy”) and other heroes and antiheroes of modern Russian history and reality.

Quotes immediately appeared on the Internet, which certain literary and political players deemed almost oppositionist. We won’t cite them here, just to be on the safe side. Let’s just say that it refers to direct speech by the main antagonist.

To call what is happening a scandal, of course, would be an exaggeration. Literary scandals are impossible right now. It’s not the right time. While literary and near-literary officials may deem themselves the rulers of minds (or opinion leaders, to use the trendy term), they cannot be designated as such. And no one needs literature or writers right now. That happy and horrible time is behind us. Propaganda (which is needed) has somehow managed without “big lit” (as some specialists call big literature).

As for Prokhanov, he’s no fighter against “the regime.” He’s a writer. A loyal one. However, he’s not boring, but rather exciting. Which, of course, seems like an oxymoron, but not impossible. Prokhanov has always been a political writer. And his texts could be liked (precisely because of their liveliness) even by so-called literary liberals.

But let’s not forget that fictional characters are just that – fictional. They may resemble certain prototypes, but we are still dealing with an artistic work, which is different from a pamphlet, or a scholarly or journalistic article. The novel has many characters. For instance, there’s the so-called Pushkin army. There is a character described like this: “The laboratory flask contained a suspended naked man. It was Boris Yefimovich Shtum, an opposition politician who was killed on the Kremlin Bridge several years ago by a Chechen gunman. A brilliant orator, fearless haranguer, beloved by women, he had accused President Troyevidov of blowing up Moscow [apartment] buildings. He floated in the flask, his faded lips slightly open.*** A tiny bullet hole darkened on his forehead.”

Or let’s take the character named Ksenia Sverchok. Take a guess, if you’d like. But the direct speech of the antagonist (“Prigozhy”) must contain attacks on the authorities. Otherwise, what kind of antagonist would he be?

Here’s what Prokhanov writes on his Telegram channel:

“A controversy is brewing around ‘Lemner.’ Certain liberal smart alecks – some in Israel, some in Paris, some in Venice – are snatching snippets from the book that speak sarcastically and angrily about the novel’s main protagonist, President Troyevidov. These clever types saw the current Russian president in him. The quotations are not exactly flattering, to put it bluntly. But the point is that they are being uttered not by the author who penned this novel, but by one of the novel’s biggest villains, who is also murdered later on in the story – he is drowned in an ice hole, the ice hole of Russian history.”

These liberal witmongers are spreading the quotes across social media, trying to get the author in trouble with the government. They want to use the book as an instrument of pressure on the authorities. I won’t hazard a guess as to whether [they] will manage to turn ‘Lemner’ into the next ‘Dr. Zhivago.’ ”

Given that this is Nobel Prize week, references to “Dr. Zhivago” look particularly amusing. We have no doubt that the writer Prokhanov is more than worthy of the Nobel Prize in literature (and not only in literature). However, we are not certain whether the Nobel Prize is worthy of him. But there is no reason to accuse the esteemed author of liberalism.

You just can’t get by without big lit.