Rediscovering the True Russia: Boris Akunin / Author

"Direct Talk"

Our guest today is Russian author, Boris Akunin.

A beloved writer of detective fiction,

he is also a scholar of Russian history.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has grown ever more violent.

Innocent civilians have been attacked.

Russia is suspected of war crimes.

As Russians abroad begin standing up for Ukraine,

an initiative has been launched to provide support.

Its name, "True Russia."

Strongly condemning Vladimir Putin for starting the war,

the organization is collecting donations for the devastated people of Ukraine.

We spoke with Akunin, one of the founders of True Russia,

about his group's activities and about the future of his homeland.

Originally from Russia, Akunin currently lives and works abroad.

He offers his frank thoughts on a situation instigated by his home country.

It was just, I don't know, a couple of days after the war started.

But I remember I was just, the first two or three days, I was just paralyzed.

I just couldn't believe it was really happening.

Being an author of books of history,

I am trying very hard to look at this whole situation

unemotionally from a historical perspective

which is a very hard thing to do because emotions run high.

Almost all of us have relatives and friends in Ukraine.

Like, my grandfather from my maternal side, he was from Ukraine.

I had relatives.

My uncle was living in Kyiv.

I have friends there.

So relations are very close.

In March, just after the military invasion began,

prominent Russian academics and artists living in the West created True Russia.

They call on the Russian diaspora to collect donations

and to send humanitarian aid to Ukraine,

and to help bring an end to the war as soon as possible.

The practical task is to unite Russians,

Russian diaspora around the world and its effort to first

help with humanitarian issues like

helping Ukrainian refugees who are in horrible conditions and who need help.

Now, it's our priority absolutely.

Another founder of True Russia is Sergei Guriev,

an economist who is a close friend of Akunin's.

In total, we are talking about 11 and a half million refugees,

displaced people, every second child, majority of Ukrainian children.

And we wanted to help that,

and we wanted to contribute to supporting people who've been hurt,

whose lives were destroyed or devastated by Mr. Putin.

In the three months since the group's website has launched,

they have collected more than a million pounds, or 1.2 million US dollars.

True Russia has another important goal,

to make people understand that the traditional culture and historical values of Russia

are very different from those of the warmongering President Putin.

Their site has featured distinguished journalists, artists and more,

voicing their opposition to the conflict.

The true Russia wants peace between Russia and Ukraine.

My country went to war and I couldn't stop it

Well, we people belonging to Russian culture

living in the world, there are lots of us, millions of us.

Now...

Now we have to face this situation.

We are the word "Russian"

and Russia itself has become toxic to everybody.

So for the world,

Putin and Russia have become the same thing,

which is not true, and which is not fair.

So by starting this initiative,

we wanted to show to the world that true Russia is not Putin.

Meanwhile, Russians in Russia are seeing a different version of events.

Take this result from an independent pollster.

In March, just after the war began,

Vladimir Putin had an 83% approval rating.

Well, first of all, please do not believe opinion polls

when they're being conducted in dictatorship

because people do not say what they really think.

I read recently results of such an indirect

questioning and opinion polls, and it's quite interesting.

It shows that war supporters,

sincere war supporters, number around 24%.

33% are against war.

Almost half is somewhere in between, undecided.

And they make the difference.

Those undecided ones are going to make the difference in the long run.

Now, still, even with this, we have a situation

where two thirds of the population

support the regime either actively or passively by silence,

which is a huge problem.

Boris Akunin was born Grigory Chkhartishvili,

in Georgia in 1956.

He grew up in Moscow.

When I was, say, 25

in the beginning of the 1980s,

I was absolutely sure that I am going to rot in this hopeless country

where nothing interesting ever happens.

You cannot build any plans, you have no dreams.

Then this whole thing changed

and a new life opened up.

In December 1991

came the end of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party's dictatorial rule.

Russia would begin a new chapter of its history as a democracy.

I was among those people who were, you know,

this live shield around the White House

during the coup d'etat doing the... I was there.

And I remember this excitement that a new country was born.

I remember how we were all carrying these three-color flags,

how we were absolutely sure that now we are going to be a real democracy.

Chkhartishvili began using the pen name "Boris Akunin" in 1998.

He wrote a detective series about a hero who raged against a totalitarian society.

In the new democracy of Russia, it was a smash hit.

By the year 2000,

Akunin had established his reputation as a novelist.

This was exactly when an ominous figure became Russia's new president.

I remember how I was terribly angry at Boris Yeltsin

that he brought a KGB man into power.

I was absolutely sure that no one

who was formed by KGB, by special forces, can be a good president for Russia.

So I didn't like the man from the very beginning.

I... Of course, I never voted for him.

In the early 2000s, the Russian economy boomed

in large part due to demand for oil from rapidly growing countries

such as India and China.

President Putin won the support of the people.

As he did, he steadily consolidated his power,

bringing television stations to heel

and nationalizing the big oil and gas companies.

This man

used to be a very skillful tactic.

He started with independent television.

This is the first thing that he destroyed.

He started with it. He understood very well

that as long as you can control television,

you can control public opinion.

Then in 2004,

he destroyed local elections,

and of course he destroyed parliament,

making it just a total puppet theater.

It took him just several years to change

a country which had been a wild democracy, a chaotic democracy,

into authoritarian state completely where he was controlling everything.

As Putin tightened his grip on power,

in 2011, Russians held the biggest protests since the fall of the Soviet Union

against alleged electoral fraud in the Duma.

Putin had already reached his eight-year limit as president,

and then pulled the strings from the prime minister's post.

Now he wanted the presidency back.

Protesters urged him to step down.

Akunin took part in these demonstrations to rally the crowds.

I was seeing that we were losing,

that we were not having enough support,

which I didn't understand why.

Because I thought that what we were speaking for,

it was so evident, it was so good for everybody. Why not?

And I had this feeling that I stopped understanding my own country.

If we want Russia to become a free democratic country,

it has to be rebuilt from the bottom.

It has to become a sort of real federation,

United States of Russia.

So it has to exist in different, I don't know,

republics, states forever,

and each of these states has to decide by itself how it wants to live.

So this huge federation should be united only by

a monetary system, customs, security, and that's it.

So this is something which never has been really,

really tried before, and this needs to be done.

Russia's military has been in Ukraine for four months now,

and the conflict shows no signs of stopping.

How does Akunin think the war can be brought to an end?

Probably the most important thing is,

it's the mood of people inside Russia.

What they feel,

how do they see the world.

And here, it is very important

to make them feel

that they are not seen as enemies by the world.

In the long run, eventually, it will be Russians

who will put an end to it. There is no other way.

No Ukrainian army, no NATO army is going to destroy Putin.

No.

No.

His only end will be Russians themselves,

and we need to remember this very clearly and to understand it.

The Soviet Union collapsed more than three decades ago.

Now, might Russia have a chance to start a new era?

Can Russia say no to Putin's war,

and become the "True Russia" once again?

This country has brought a lot of good and a lot of bad into this world.

So everything that is bad, which is oppression,

aggression, xenophobia,

I hate this. I want to put an end to this.

But there are a lot of things that are precious about Russia

and that I love about Russia.

It is this

tradition of compassion,

empathy, this respect for culture

which is deeply rooted in Russia.

This respect for education.

And besides, there is a lot of creativity

and potential for development in Russia.

As long as you give these people a chance

just to work with their hands being untied, they do miracles.

They can achieve a lot. So

I do hope that

true Russia will show its true face to the world one day hopefully

in the near future.