Almost four years ago, Russia attacked Ukraine. Because of that, many families were forced to flee Ukraine to escape the war. But at the same time, inside Russia it suddenly became dangerous to condemn the war—and even to call it a war. And those who didn’t want to fall silent were forced either to go to prison or to leave, branded in their own country as traitors, “foreign agents,” and even terrorists. (Many Belarusians went through a similar path after the 2020 protests, but that isn’t really related to the book I’m talking about.)
Russian journalist Sergey Nikolaevich also left Russia after the war began. And then he decided to interview members of the creative intelligentsia—people whom their homeland no longer considers its own—and turn those conversations into a book. That’s how Status: Free. A Portrait of the Creative Emigration came to be.
Nikolaevich focuses specifically on people in creative professions. Among the subjects of his interviews are Kirill Serebrennikov, Renata Litvinova, Chulpan Khamatova, Maxim Galkin, and others.
Based on the blurb, I expected to hear conversations with those who left about how and why they had to go, what the main trigger was, what they’re doing now, and how they’re coping morally—when they’re both enemies to their own country and hated by many Ukrainians, for whom there are no “good Russians” right now.
In practice, though, the book isn’t about that. Yes, there are crumbs of interview and questions about what we might expect from the future. Ivan Vyrypaev talks about that quite a lot, for example. But in his case the choice is off: he left long before the war and lived in Warsaw. It’s just that his productions were pulled in Russia, and now he’s banned from entering. But it wasn’t the war that made him an emigrant.
The other interviewees do reflect on the situation too, but less. And when it comes to many of the other people featured in the book, the author is mostly writing his own essays instead. Quite pompously, with lots of beautiful and clever words—telling the story of their careers and their lives in general, or even just delivering what feels like a review of some performance (as with Maxim Galkin and Chulpan Khamatova). And I wasn’t planning to read his thoughts about these people or their work—I wanted to hear these people themselves, their opinions and reflections.
So the book was a big disappointment, because it didn’t live up to my expectations at all.
And on top of that, many of the book’s subjects aren’t really “Russian” in the way the word is usually meant today. Yes, a lot of them are well-known in Russia, but they create—or created—mostly somewhere else. Like Alvis Hermanis: he’s Latvian and a citizen of the world, but what does he have to do with the Russian creative intelligentsia that left? Or Ingeborga Dapkunaite and Laima Vaikule—they weren’t Russian citizens to begin with; they simply didn’t support this madness and walked away from contracts and concerts, returning to their own countries.
A separate source of amazement is John Malkovich, who somehow ended up among the book’s subjects—I have no idea by what logic. Truly the number one “Russian” émigré intellectual. Does he even know he’s a Russian emigrant? At this rate you might as well drag Gérard Depardieu into it too—at least he has a Russian passport in gift wrapping.
So under the packaging of interviews with interesting people about the war and its consequences, what we were actually given was just the author’s book of essays. It smells a bit like a scam.
My rating: 2/5
