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The West should be even more vocal in insisting that the Russians respect human rights.

Vladimir Sorokin

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Vladimir Sorokin
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: August 7
Librettist
Painter
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Visual Artist
Writer
Vladimir Georgiyevich Sorokin
Respect
Rights
Human
Humans
Even
Insisting
Russians
Vocal
West

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My television teaches me that everything was wonderful in the Soviet Union. According to the programs I watch, the KGB and apparatchiks were angels, and the Stalin era was so festive that the heroes of the day must still be celebrated today.
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In Russia whenever you encounter a minor official, he lets you know that he is above you and that you depend on him. It is reflected in the superpower mentality that nourishes the Kremlin. An empire always demands sacrifices from its people.
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I'm not a prophet or a teacher, I just ask questions. I don't think a writer should be a teacher, but should know how to pose the questions and explain the problems.
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In Russia only those who are loyal to the people in power can become wealthy.
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In Russia there are special people who are permitted to do anything. They are the sacrificial priests of power. Anyone who is not a member of this group has no clout with the state.
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The citizen lives in each of us. In the days of Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, I was constantly trying to suppress the responsible citizen in me. I told myself that I was, after all, an artist.
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Orthodox churches, autocracy and national traditions are supposed to form a new national ideology in Russia. This would mean that Russia would be overtaken by its past, and our past would be our future.
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The Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov once said: In a Democracy, portraits of a nation's leader should never exceed the size of a postage stamp. That won't happen so quickly in Russia.
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I ask myself whether Russia is moving in the direction of democracy. I don't believe it is! Bit by bit, Russia is slipping back into an authoritarian empire.
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As a child I perceived violence as a sort of natural law. In the totalitarian Soviet Union, oppression held everything together. It was the sinister energy of our country.
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The bureaucracy has grown such powerful roots in Russia, and corruption is so widespread, that people from opposition have no interest in changing anything.
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In Russia one can be as pure as can be and still lose everything in a flash and end up in prison.
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Germans, Frenchmen and Englishmen can say of themselves: I am the state. I cannot say that. In Russia only the people in the Kremlin can say that. All other citizens are nothing more than human material with which they can do all kinds of things.
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The Khodorkovsky case is typical of the oprichnina - the system of oppression.
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I have Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to thank that a Russian writer can not only write anything he wants, but also publish it.
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Everyone in Russia must awaken the citizen within himself.
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The word people is unpleasant to me. The phrase Soviet people was drummed into us from childhood on. I love concrete people, enlightened people who live conscious lives and do not simply sit there and vegetate. To love the people you have to be the general secretary of the Communist Party or an absolute dictator.
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Putin likes to quote a sentence from Czar Alexander III, who said that Russian has only two allies - the army and the navy. As a citizen, this makes me sit up and take notice. This is a concept of self-imposed isolation, a defense strategy that sees Russia surrounded by enemies.
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The worst thing that can happen to Russia is indifference in the West - that is, if it were interested in nothing but oil and gas.
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Nothing has changed in Russia since Ivan the Terrible when it comes to the divide between the people and the state. The state demands a sacred willingness to make sacrifices from the people.
Vladimir Sorokin