In early 2024, a new prize for independent (émigré) Russian literature was founded in Switzerland. With so many authors and their books banned in Putin’s Russia, it appears a laudable initiative. Yet, the prize’s goals reflect those of official Russian cultural propaganda and entirely disregard the context of Russia’s imperialist war on Ukraine. As a result, consciously or not, the prize’s founders and experts support Russian imperialism and colonial wars of conquest.
Russian Studies: To Be Continued
In the Bolshevik vocabulary, the term ‘useful idiot’ («полезный идиот», poleznyi idiot) denotes well-meaning Westerners, who without any coercion or pecuniary reward, nevertheless, do the Kremlin’s bidding under the KGB’s watchful eye. So much to gain, importantly, at no cost to the Soviet — and now Russian — budget that is squeaking under the burden of imperial overexpansion.
Outside Russia and some Slavic countries, university departments of Russian were unheard of prior to World War II. In 1941, nazi Germany, or Moscow’s own totalitarian ally of the three previous years, attacked the Soviet Union. To better fight now the common enemy, the democratic allies of Britain and America agreed to an unsavory alliance with the totalitarian Soviet Union. Nevertheless, this coopertion evoked in the West a growing interest in matters Soviet that tended to be mislabelled as ‘Russian.’ The outbreak of the Cold War at the turn of the late 1950s, paradoxically, further fuelled this increasingly love-hate fascination, leading to the rise of area studies.
The Russian Institute at Columbia University in New York, founded in 1946, was the first research institution of this new field, and as such became a model emulated worldwide. Most of area studies research done in the West zoomed in on the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. However, apart from some marginal probing into Czechoslovak or Romanian culture and politics, area studies specialists saw themselves predominantly as sovietologists. But rarely did any sovietologist veer beyond the confines of Russian culture and language, as obtaining in the imperial metropole of Moscow and Leningrad. The KGB was careful not to allow Western researchers into the Soviet colonies in Asia, the Caucasus or even in Europe.
Hence, sovietologists, who woefully failed to predict the collapse of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union, lost no time to rebrand themselves as russianists. It was a rough ride for them in the postcommunist 1990s because the end of the East-West confrontation meant cutting the budgets of Russian departments that had proliferated across the West during the Cold War. However, in the subsequent decades, many of these departments had no qualms to take up the poisoned offer of grants that Moscow’s Russkii Mir foundation lavished on them during the initial two decades of the 21stcentury.
Growing repressions and the gradual reintroduction of totalitarianism in post-Soviet Russia did not ring any alarm bells in the West. Neither did the revival of aggressive Russian imperialism, as amply exemplified by the invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. The shock of Moscow’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was short-lived. After half a decade, all was firmly back to business as usual, no thought spared on Ukraine under continued Russian attack. Meanwhile, Russian mercenaries propped up dictators on the brink of losing power in Syria and across Africa.
Western Kremlin watchers and russianists turned a blind eye to the tell-tale signs of the accelerating resurrection of a rabidly anti-Western retrotopian cross of the tsarist Russian Empire with the Soviet Union, which Putin’s Russia is. They did not see it coming, like sovietologists had not predicted the end of the Soviet Union. For almost a decade Russia-verstehers managed to calm down the concerned Western public opinion. These useful idiots with the ear of governments in Berlin, Paris or London did much better work than any Russian agents of influence or illegals. The resulting studious disregard for the Russian menace, sweetened with a torrent of corrupt money flowing to the West from the Kremlin’s war chest, let Moscow get ready for pouncing on Ukraine in 2022.
Now, three years on, in 2025, after the genocide in Bucha, innumerous Russian war crimes, kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian children (also legally classified as an act of genocide), reaching the mark of over 1.4 million casualties and wounded on the front, with multiple Ukrainian towns literally razed to the ground, the horror of and outrage at this war have considerably paled in the West, famed for its short attention span. At present, the Western public opinion tends to be more concerned with the crisis of the cost of living, extreme weather events, the war in Gaza, or the rolling back of democracy in America and in many European countries.
Comeback of Great Russian Literature
This growing disinterest in restive Russia, which continues to pose an existential threat to the West, opens space for an underhand return of russianists. Even better, this happens at no cost to the Kremlin’s propaganda budget. Useful idiots are back at the gates of the West’s universities. In February 2025, with much fanfare, Columbia University’s Harriman Institute (as nowadays the aforementioned Russian Institute is known) announced an initial call for the new Russian literature prize Dar (Gift).
The prize was founded in 2024 by Russian émigré writer Mikhail Shishkin, domiciled in Switzerland, alongside the country’s leading russianists. Officially, the latter prefer to be known as ‘slavists.’ This label being less monolingual and vaguer, it allows for the deniability against any accusation that they may be getting too cosy with imperialist Russia and its criminal leadership. That is as far as many Western russianists are prepared to distance themselves from warmongering and neoimperialist Moscow the better to be able to return to their academic business as it used to be prior to 2022.
What is the prize’s purpose? The initiative’s website informs that it ‘was created to support and promote authors writing in Russian, regardless of their place of residence and citizenship.’ Yet, the prize is a means to achieve a much loftier aim, namely, to make sure that ‘literature in Russian takes its rightful place in the world, being responsible to humanity, and not to dictatorships.’
The Kremlin’s biggest complaint since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine is not sanctions that hit the country’s economy but the – rather porous and inconsistent — boycott of Russian culture. After all, novels by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, together with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, amount to the most effective offensive weapon of soft power at Moscow’s disposal. The Western public swayed under the hypnotic charm of Russian culture during the Cold War and in the three postcommunist decades. And it does even now, in the context of the Kremlin’s concentrated military effort to erase Ukraine from the map, to liquidate the Ukrainians as a nation, and to obliterate Ukrainian language and culture altogether.
Defence Through Attack
What is this ‘rightful place’ for Russian language, literature and culture that the Dar prize and its founders seek? What hides behind the smoke screen of the unconvincing caveat that this aim is going to be achieved supposedly in a manner that is ‘responsible to humanity, and not to dictatorships’?
Is it not enough that democratic Europe already provides generous asylum to repressed Russian authors and supports a host of independent Russian publishers and mass media outlets? Perhaps, Russian émigrés would like to see a termination of support for Ukrainian culture and an end to the half-hearted boycott of its Russian counterpart. Is that right? Do they now expect Europeans to laud independent Russian authors and their works as ‘great Russian literature,’ again?
And in addition, should Europe forget that this hope of Russian democracy — Alexei Navalny — remained a convinced imperialist, who valiantly supported the Russian annexation of Crimea? In her 2024 address to the European Parliament, his widow Yulia Navalnaya did not mention Russian war crimes in Ukraine or explicitly condemn Russia’s war on this country. Does it mean that the Russian émigré community, at present supposedly led by Navalanaya, unabashedly espouse Russian imperialism?
Do Western grants need to cultivate and assist in the Kremlin’s influence operation that these and other Western useful idiots willingly conduct? What is that? A laughing sneer of Russia über alles straight into the gullible West’s face?
Above all, imperialism and democracy are incompatible. No empire has ever been democratic or will ever be. Self-proclaimed Russian émigré democrats must not fool themselves that somehow the Russian empire in its entirety can be democratized. First, what is known under the misnomer of the Russian Federation must be decolonized. Decolonization, however, remains an impossibility as long as not only the Russian masses remain wed to the imperial mentality, but also the empire’s elite, including the émigré faux democrats. That is why, I was surprised to see that the eminent Russian historian Andrey Zubov, who had taken a principled anti-imperialist stance in 2022, nevertheless, chose to support the Dar prize.
Second, there is absolutely no need to come to aid of any imperial language and its culture. Even after the successful decolonization of Europe’s maritime empires, English, French, Spanish or Portuguese remain in the function of official languages and leading idioms of culture in multiple postcolonial states across the world. This happens to the clear disadvantage of these states’ citizens whose indigenous languages of everyday communication are marginalized, alongside their participation in politics and culture. This unwelcome situation amounts to a succinct definition of cultural and linguistic imperialism that tends to persist for long decades after decolonization.
Hence, it must be emphasized that Russian is also an imperial language. Neither Paris and the French elite nor their counterparts in Britain are brazen enough to appeal for support to French and English language and culture, or for any special treatment for them, be it in postcolonial Algeria, India, Kenya or Vietnam. Furthermore, as part of the ongoing war against Ukraine, the Kremlin ramped up the funding for the promotion of Russian language and culture (certainly, as an instrument of Moscow’s propaganda) to new unprecedented heights.
No Democratization Without Decolonization
What is the dimension of this challenge of decolonization? In 2022, 108,000 book titles were published in Russia, but only 1,046 (0.97%) titles in the languages of Russia’s ethnically non-Russian peoples. At the same time, even more English language publications came off the press across the Russian Federation, namely 1,271. Yet ethnically non-Russian citizens amount to a fifth of the country’s population. From this demographic perspective alone, proportionally speaking, at least 22,000 book titles should be produced in their languages. What is more, ethnically non-Russian groups constitute most of the inhabitants across four-fifths of the Russian territory, that is, in the empire’s Asian section and in the Caucasus. Meanwhile, the Kremlin does whatever possible to suppress the use these peoples’ languages and to denigrate these idioms.
Farther afield, in most post-Soviet states, Russian remains an important language of everyday communication, and it enjoys co-official status in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. As a result, in today’s Belarus less than a tenth of the population speak their national language of Belarusian. All universities in Belarus and Kyrgyzstan use Russian as the sole language of instruction. The Kremlin frequently criticizes the postcolonial rolling back of the use of Russian in public life, be it in Central Asia or in the Baltic states. On top of that, Moscow uses the legally-enshrined enforcement of the official and national status of Ukrainian in Ukraine as a casus belli against this country.
In its first edition, the Dar prize went to the Ukrainian writer Mariia Halyna (Maria Galina) for her harrowing Russian-language diary Near the War: Odesa, February 2022 to February 2023. The author declined to accept this prize not to play into the hands of the Kremlin’s propaganda with its favorite topos on the supposedly endangered Russian literature, language and culture. Shishkin, as the jury’s president, feigns surprise, emphasizing that Halyna consented to the nomination of her book to this prize and knew well that the prize’s main aim is to promote the best contemporary Russian-language literature.
Somehow, Shishkin, so deft at composing intricate fiction, cannot see that Halyna might have done what she did to bring to the world’s attention this curious situation. It is her protest at the never-ending horror of Russia’s imperialist invasion. The prize’s useful idiots believe (really?) that they stand up to the bloodthirsty Kremlin, while in reality they merely flow with the cozy current of Moscow’s propaganda. In the justification of her decision to decline this honor, Halyna says, ‘I don’t think that being in a country that is being shelled by Russian missiles that are killing civilians, I can even in this way [of accepting the prize] support a language and culture that formally became (and remains) one of the reasons for the attack on Ukraine.’
Decolonization 101
Apart from this gentle rebuke, Halyna shares with the prize’s jury her insightful diagnosis. ‘I do not think that Russian-language literature needs support. […] Since [the] Soviet times, Russian literature, like Russian language, has been an instrument of [the Kremlin’s] soft power. […] In general, I think that the global role of Russian literature is a bit exaggerated. I do not know where all those numerous departments of Russian studies at Western universities got their funding from, and thanks to what it was more popular to be interested in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky than, say, Du Fu or Balzac.’
On this basis, Halyna reflects on the prize’s key notion of ‘rightful place’ for Russian literature. ‘Perhaps, when all the funding flows from Russia are finally cut off, Russian literature will eventually take its rightful place among other world literatures, no more, no less. And even that — only after it is cleansed of the crimes of the state.’ She decries that fact that most Russian people of literature both in Russia and abroad remain silent about the war and Russian crimes. Halyna empathizes with these shy literati but her sympathy has a limit. ‘I understand them. But that’s all.’ As a result, she predicts ‘Russian literature […] pays a terrible price for Russian aggression: due to its general conformism, it […] has almost come to naught, lost [its] integrity.’ But the Ukrainian writer also offers to Russian colleagues some solace and advice in one. ‘I […] would like Russian literature, even in the diaspora, to move a little out of the media space. Because I see [what is happening as an unwelcome contribution] to the construction of the so-called Great Russian literature.’ It is quite a good hint for the Russian émigré community on how to proceed with decolonization in the domain of Russian culture.
Finally, Halyna announces her decolonial creed. ‘[I] do not support [the] Russian language in Ukraine. Because it is the Russian language of some regions that has made them vulnerable to Russian aggression. […] I do not want such a fate for Kyiv, where I grew up, and for Odessa, where I now live. […] [T]he rejection of [the] Moscow language I believe [is] the smallest price [to be paid] for freedom. The highest is life, and many have already paid [with] it.’
For whom is then this Dar prize? Undoubtedly, it is a gift for the Kremlin and its program of imperial reconquista. Commenting on the situation with Mariia Halyna’s diary, Ukrainian poet and translator Halyna Petrosanyak notices that Shishkin and the prize’s founders and jury ‘fail to recognize Russian colonialism — even though colonialism is currently one of the most prominent topics in Western discourse.’
To my eye, nowadays, there is only a single Russian writer of international renown who clearly recognizes that Russia is an empire in dire need of decolonization to cease being a danger to itself, Europe and the world. His name is Sergei Lebedev. In his brave 2024 speech delivered in Amsterdam, the author stated, ‘I dream of the day when this monopoly [of ethnic Russians and their Russian language] will be actively challenged. And here you will have a Tatar intellectual or an Udmurt intellectual talking about his or her views on the Russian imperial complex as a cultural and political problem. I can assure you that this would be a hard experience, because Russia’s nations are being diminished by Putin’s regime and at the same time used in a traditional colonial way as a source of manpower for aggression against Ukraine, thus creating complicity and hampering future attempts at emancipation.’
Hence, the effort and expense expanded on the Dar prize would be better spent on the recognition and promotion of the best literature created in Russia’s official languages that are recognized at the level of the country’s autonomous (ethnic, national) republics. Such languages number at least 38. The least we can do is to enumerate their names here, namely, Abaza, Adyghe (Circassian), Aghul, Altai, Avar, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Buryat, Chechen, Chuvash, Crimean Tatar, Dargwa, Erzya, Ingush, Kabardian, Kalmyk, Karachay-Balkar, Karelian, Khakas, Komi-Zyrian, Kumyk, Lak, Lezgin, Eastern Mari, Western Mari, Moksha, Nogai, Ossetian, Rutul, Sakha (Yakut), Tabasaran, Tat, Tatar, Tsakhur, Tuvan, Udmurt and Ukrainian. What is more, at the level of autonomous oblasts, 15 more languages received a degree of official recognition, that is, Chukchi, Dolgan, Even, Evenki, Finnish, Kazakh, Khanty, Komi-Permyak, Mansi, Nenets, Selkup, Veps, Yiddish, Northern Yukhagir and Southern Yukhagir.
All the idioms taken together add up to 53. These languages indicate the number of colonized nations that still suffer captivity in today’s Russian empire. That is the scale of decolonizing challenge, which awaits the Russians, including the Russian émigré community. But as long as most Russians at home and abroad remain convinced imperialists or unconscious ones (aka useful idiots), nothing will change, prolonging centuries-long injustices and tragedies that these colonized peoples have suffered at Russians’ hands. We all can see how the Russkii mir — or ‘Russian world and peace’ — looks like, watching tonight’s news devoted to yet further Russian attacks and atrocities in Ukraine.
