Опубликовано в журнале Дружба Народов, номер 10, 2011
The Open World
One of indisputable merits which “perestroika” brought to the new independent countries is the liberty of traveling. The world has swept open for the people and literature couldn’t help react. More and more often the plots of literary works by Russian and not only authors become connected with other countries and their life experiences. It’s pieces like this that mainly constitute the corps of prose, poetry and non-fiction of this issue.
In VLADIMIR SHPAKOV’s novel “Mixed Marriage” the action jumps between Germany, Russia, Poland and Belorussia; in ELENA KRYUKOVA’s story “The Stolen Lipstick” – between Russia and the USA; SLAVA SERGEEV’s long short story “Evenings at a Khutor Near the Equator” is dedicated to India and the plot of IVAN NAUMOV’s story “San-Khong” unrolls on some small exotic island.
The poet NAUM BASOVSKIJ who now lives in Israel “is looking over the pale-blue space in all sides of the view” which absorbs Georgia, the wreck of “Titanic” in the Atlantic waters and Moscow which also is the scene of action of NATALYA POLYAKOVA’s poems; and the children’s game of cities (Moscow – St-Petersburg – Yerevan – Konstantinopol) proposed by the Armenian poet ANAIT TATEVOSYAN is nothing else than the Rout of the Fortune which intercrosses with the poem of GLEB SHULPYAKOV “An Incident in Istanbul”.
The Iranian pattern of modernization is recognized by the experts all over the world as one of the obvious examples of failure. The Turkish one on the contrary is considered to be one of the most successful. Comparison of these two models is very instructive for the post-Soviet countries and today’s Russia. This becomes the subject of reflection for the well-known Russian politologist and ethnographer EMIL PAIN in his article “Iranian or Turkish?”
Who bears the main responsibility for the modern literary Russian language? Who determines the standard? And what to do if the ideas of the standard differ? These most important problems are being investigated by the well-known linguist MAXIM KRONGOUS in his article “Who Is Responsible for the Russian Language?”