‘The real heroes are in prison’
Towards the end of the conversation, the Russian secret service suddenly appears in the kitchen. Whether Maxim Osipov is not afraid of Putin’s long arm. For a moment, reactions and amusement flash across his face. Then the Russian author puts his pipe on the table and looks impassively ahead. “I’m not famous enough for that,” he says. And then shut up.
The interviewer believes that he has seen too many thrillers and films. Maxim Osipov smiles, and picks up his pipe again. “You can be afraid of anything. A heart attack, a stroke, cancer…”
The sea level is rising. Does Osipov know that Amsterdam is below sea level, and that…? He knows that. “That’s the thing that scares me the least. Besides, I would like to live here for the rest of my life. Another cup of coffee?”
An hour earlier.
Maxim Osipov opens the door of a building on one of Amsterdam’s canals. He takes the visitors through a hall to an apartment on the ground floor. There he is later in the kitchen busy with a kind of electric kettle in which he makes coffee. “This is already the second, the first I put on the gas stove.”
He walks to the table with the still bubbling substance. Fills two cups.
Amsterdam
Maxim Osipov. Born in Moscow in 1963, fled Russia in March this year. He was a doctor, publisher of medical books, and eventually also a writer.
His storybook kilometer 101 – almost all the stories he wrote are written to Putin’s ‘special operation’ – just in the bookstore. A year after his first collection The world cannot be broken appeared, with stories about a changing Russian society, about how to live there. Full of irony, accelerated. And sad, wry and humorous.
Osipov’s work, who won several literary prizes in Russia, has been translated into many languages.
How did the writer end up in Amsterdam?
“When I emigrated I had no idea where I would end up. First I flew to Armenia with my wife, son and his family. Then I ended up in Germany, in Berlin. My daughter and my grandson live in Frankfurt, so the whole family is safe. And then, thanks to my Dutch publisher, I was offered a job as a guest lecturer in Leiden.”
“I teach Russian literature there. Which I’ve never done before. And someone made this apartment available. I am very grateful for that, because Amsterdam is my favorite city abroad. Moreover, my books sell best here.”
That statement suggests that he still feels like a Russian. More than a refugee anyway. “Of course I feel like a Russian!” says Osipov. “I can’t put that aside. Russian is my language. I think, write and dream in Russian. Yes, I said emigrate, but we fled the country.”
Disgust
And he tells how at the end of February, in the first days after Russia invaded Ukraine, others in his hometown of Tarusa demonstrated on the square against this ‘special operation’. “Nobody did anything to us. The cops, whom we all knew, don’t listen very well what to do either. On the fifth day of the war, I wrote an essay that I posted on the Internet, in which I assumed the failure of the Russian army.
“One day a friend called and said it looked like they were going to change for the military. And that the borders would be closed. Then I might never see my daughter and grandson again… My wife and I were scared, but we were also filled with disgust. We don’t want to live in a fascist state.”
One of the last things Osipov saw in Russia was a text chalked on a wall. “We are not ashamed,” it read. That is something that is represented in Russian culture. Russian culture is about how shameful we are, it’s in our nature, just like fatalism. What do you do with people who don’t know what shame is?
And they were gone. (They didn’t need a visa for Armenia.)
War and peace
Perhaps Osipov is somehow ashamed of the fact that his books sell well in the Netherlands, and that he is seen as a crucial writer outside Russia. Also because he cannot prevent comments on the war with Ukraine from seeping into his writing.
“That’s just not possible. I am a contemporary writer who writes about the contemporary. Right now I’m working on a story, a sad story, about a love during the war.”
“It also comes back in my lessons. We laze Haji Murad, by Tolstoy (on the uprising in the Caucasus against the Russian Empire, ed.). That book also says something about the current situation in Russia. Like War and peace, which is scheduled for next semester. Meanwhile, the underlying war is being waged to protect something very valuable – unlike what is happening now. I always try to connect to the now in my lessons.”
Shouldn’t Putin even read those books? “I don’t think Putin has read many Russian classics. I don’t think he reads at all. And if he read them, he would not understand them.” A smile appears on Osipov’s face.
“In my opinion, no problem can be solved by reading books.” Now gloom lies over the face of the fatalist Maxim Osipov. “But I really like teaching, you know. I also make it personal. What is it, apart from the design of the text, that it appeals to us? What is it that makes us cry, or make us happy, or sad? preparation, to show that, Russian literature is ideally suited. And I believe the students also appreciate what I’m doing, don’t want anyone but one student to be stuck with it. More coffee?”
Traitor
When he is back with two foaming heads, he even has to think about whether he is seen in Russia as a traitor to the fatherland.
“The real heroes, the people who really rebelled, are in prison,” he says. “As a cardiologist, I still have contact with a number of patients from the hospital in Taroesa from a distance. A woman asked me when she could see me again. I said, “When the war is over and Putin is gone.” “Well,” she said, “I have a great deal of respect for Vladimir Vladimirovich.” “I don’t,” I said. She: ‘I would never betray my country.’ Me: ‘I don’t see it that way, we disagree.’”
He fumbles with his pack of pipe tobacco. “’You made it possible for Putin to act like this now, you didn’t oppose him.’ You hear that. What good would it have been if Maxim Osipov had ended up in prison? No idea…”
Osipov picks up his pipe, looks outside.
Femke Halsema
Another hypothetical question. Would he ever leave for Russia again? “I miss my friends who are still here, I miss my home, and I really miss visiting my parents’ graves. So yes. But I don’t see it happening in the near future, and I don’t think I could live there anymore.”
A bleak prospect. But luckily there is still Amsterdam. “I spoke to your mayor, Femke. She came to my lecture in De Balie. ‘I read your first book, and I bought your second. Would you please sign it for me?’ I was noticed, because I always looked at politicians and administrators as strange, deviant beings. “I marvel at your city,” I told her. “I didn’t build her,” she said. I found that very funny. And everyone speaks English, and the people are nice. Very direct, but nice. And I like the relationship between order and freedom. Yes, this really is my favorite city.”
Maxim Osipov: Kilometer 101. Translated by Yolanda Bloemen and Seijo Epema. Van Oorschot Publishers, € 25, 369 pp.
Magazine for refugee Russian writers
Publisher Van Oorschot will publish a magazine in which refugee Russian authors will publish in their mother tongue. The magazine that will be published in the spring of 2023 will be titled The Fifth Waveand will also be in English.
Acquiring editor Frederieke Doppenberg of Van Oorschot came up with the idea when she spoke to a German agent at the Turin book fair in May. He thought it was a shame that refugee Russian writers can no longer publish in their own language and in their own country.
Back in Amsterdam, Doppenberg suggested to her publishing house to set up an exil publishing house. “We have a close relationship with Russian literature, our Russian Library. Amsterdam also has a history with exil literature, many books by refugee German writers were published here just before the Second World War. Colleagues were enthusiastic and also recognized the importance of such a publishing house. We met Maxim Osipov, and he was very enthusiastic about this plan.”
The intention is that the magazine will look like the famous English magazine Granta. So a paper edition, but with a small edition. According to Doppenberg, in order to reach as many readers as possible, the magazine should be offered digitally.
Writers who gave their commitment and gave are poets Yuliy Gugolev (Moscow), Dmitry Vedenyapin (Paris), Mikhail Aizenberg (Moscow) and Maria Stepanova (Berlin). Alexander Stessin (New York) and Alexander Delfinov (Berlin) are two writers whose prose will appear. Maxim Osipov (Amsterdam), Lev Rubinstein (Moscow) and Vasily Antipov (Frankfurt) will write essays.
The name of the magazine refers to the fifth wave of refugees that Russia has known since the 1917 revolution.