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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.

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
Happen
Happens
Gas
Nothing
Indifference
Thing
Oil
Russia
West
Interested
Worst

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As a storyteller I was influenced by the Moscow underground, where it was common to be apolitical.
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In Russia only those who are loyal to the people in power can become wealthy.
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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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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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The West should be even more vocal in insisting that the Russians respect human rights.
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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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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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The Khodorkovsky case is typical of the oprichnina - the system of oppression.
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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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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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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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Everyone in Russia must awaken the citizen within himself.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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In Russia no one is surprised when an official accepts a bribe while at the same time portraying the state as some sacred entity to which the bourgeois should pay homage. This all sounds absurd. But for Russians it is completely normal.
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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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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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