It often happens that dogmatic statements, such as “society no longer has any moral authorities”, are easily shot down by opinion poll findings. These demonstrate: there are authorities, and first among them is Boris Akunin. But in the own words of the famous creator of Fandorin, “Akunin is far kinder than me”, so we have invited to take a look at the current lay of the land the writer, translator and literary critic Grigory Chkhartishvili.

— Grigory Shalvovich, your fame as a writer has made you a household name. Are you OK with the fact that recently you have been more often sought out as a public figure rather than as a writer?

— No. Especially as this is not just fame but also a hefty dose of hostility. Come to think of it, though, hostility is probably good for me. It is normally voiced by all manner of unsavoury characters, and I do not find it unpleasant to see them writhe like that. It means I am on the right track.

—Where do you think this track is supposed to take you?

—Me, to a feeling of inner harmony. It is worth some measure of trouble.

—The famous crime novelist (Dashiell) Hammett failed to perform to the best of his ability because he sidetracked into politics. Are you apprehensive of something like this happening to you?

—I feel I have successfully cleared that hurdle. Last winter and spring I had to repeat something like two hundred times that I do not fancy myself another (Václav) Havel. Gradually they came to believe me.

—Is there somebody you “fancy” as a role model?

—I would like to write better than I do. I have no other ambitions. And one thing more: as I have already mentioned, I want to be at peace with myself. Before, I thought this would only require refraining from certain steps. Now I see this is not enough. You also have to do things that require doing.

—What recent events do you think are of the most importance to society and the future of the nation?

—The fact that the Russia that appeals to putinists and the Russia that appeals to people like me no longer pretends to be one country.

—Is it not a threat of a breakup of the country, a revolution that is used to frighten people not only by authorities but by some of the opposition, too?

—No. Because putinists and we are separated by the bulk of the populace. The future of the nation hinges on whose side it will take — in their minds and hearts. Our advantage is that we understand this and work to this effect, whilst putinists neither understand it nor know how to talk to people face to face. That is why I think the current establishment is not long for this world.

—An offence against their dignity that brought people out onto the streets has obviously fallen short of fuelling sustained rallying. Do we need it? What behaviour, ideas, people can rekindle it?

— Well, fuel for opposition will be provided by Putin and his sidekicks; this is no cause for concern. They will not let us calm down and relax; they will keep adding fuel to the dying fire. For example, they will soon start proceedings in the case of May, 6, the nitwits. This will stir up a real hornet's nest.

But for all that, unless there is a recession or unless the authorities do something totally suicidal, the protest will remain mostly ethical and aesthetic in its nature. The first forms of self-organization will sprout up by and by. The election of Opposition Coordination Council, whatever its faults, is a first step in this direction.

— What would you have the Coordination Council do? What tasks should it address first of all? Your involvement in it?

—I am not running because I do not want to give politics priority in my professional life and believe it is wrong to sit on the council as a “Sunday councilman”. But I do want the opposition to take this first step in self-organization. It will be surely followed by others. What I find most interesting in the idea of election is a test drive of direct electronic democracy. Let us put it through its paces.

—Growing discontent, does it mean political protest against the establishment epitomized by Putin or against his personality, which does not agree with people who have grown up in an environment of relative freedom?

—I feel that Putin's main problem is that he's had it. Even far greater leaders such as (Winston) Churchill or (Charles) de Gaulle started to make people sick at some point. For the simple reason that they were hangovers from the past, and people wanted a new beginning.

—So what do we do with those who vote for the president sincerely: they do not want a new beginning? After all, this majority is depriving Russia of her last historical chances in a hurry. What to do?

—We need to talk to the majority, persuade them. And not so much with words as with examples of upright behaviour. The majority are apolitical (until a crisis breaks out), but far from deaf or dumb.

—Yeltsin was an autocrat by nature. And Putin is what?

—This personality type was described way back by Schiller: when somebody receives a prize they have done nothing to earn, they develop a mystical feeling of being the chosen one. Putin, I think, is one of those. Hence his shortcomings.

—Again, what to do?

—What to do? Pension him off. Let him write memoirs about how great he was and about “the ungrateful rabble”.

—100 thousand who came out to protest versus a million who queued for many hours to see the Belt of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What does it take to be a leader capable of uniting people who are poles apart?

—A fair win in a fair election.

—In other words, win over the majority, but the current majority is for Putin. Don't we run the risk of exchanging an awl for a bar of soap [Russian saying = six of one and half a dozen of the other]? Is it possible, do you think to reduce this risk somehow?

— Well, first of all, soap is better than an awl. Cleaner. And you can't use it for killing. And a guarantee of civilized behaviour is a developed civil society. Which is essentially what we are all working towards now.

—How could such an intelligent and highly experienced person as the patriarch get egg on his face in the Pussy Rio affair? Or was he set up as the fall guy to limit his political ambitions?

—I do not subscribe to the conspiracy theory. And I do not believe the patriarch to be intelligent. A lot of his behaviour indicates the opposite. Now, in front of our noses he is virtually selling the RPTs (Russian Orthodox Church (ROC)) down the river. If the defamation (I would say self-vilification) of the church continues unabated, this institution will never recover from that.

—What we see so far is that a lot of young people rise to defend it; they do not turn the other cheek, but seek to give a thrashing to anyone who they see going against their Orthodox Christian grain. Is it possible to check the emerging religious militancy?

—You know, it gets darkest before dawn. All the raving mad starting to come out of the woodwork is a sure sign that their days are numbered. Normal people, who are always in the majority, see these creepy faces and draw conclusions for themselves. We will have no religious militancy. This is just “mud bubbles”. A splash of mud, and they are gone.

—Opposition: are they people of a certain sort or is opposition shaped by the establishment?

—Opposition is very varied. My best hopes of a bright future are pinned not on political activists and not at all on movers and shakers but on the middle class.

—But don't you think that it is the middle class that may be reluctant to abandon the status quo, may circle the wagons to preserve the inglorious “stability”?

—The most natural and comfortable environment for the middle class is democracy. The higher the proportion of the middle class, the stronger the nation's thirst for democracy, the rule of law. The stumbling block of authoritarianism is that it exists “by fiat”, and these variable rules are extremely uncomfortable for the middle class and small business.

—Putin's website lists in the Personal Control section Siberian tiger, beluga, snow leopard, and polar bear. Does this choice of large animals give an idea of the person's character, and if yes, then what would be the choice for a similar website of, say, Navalny, assuming that he is the future leader of the opposition.

—Putin does like animals. Good for him. If he also liked people, he would be invaluable. And Navalny should take the hedgehog as his totem animal, which you can neither swallow nor eat.

—Can Navalny grow into a high-profile leader?

—He can, I think. He is a person with a high drive. And a fine fellow all around. Insouciant courage is a charming combination.

— What is the agenda of the opposition leaders?

—Each probably wants to become Russia's president and rebuild it in his image. Otherwise, why go into politics?

—With everyone wanting to be president, there is precious little chance the leaders will find common ground; the opposition is thus looking at a scenario of total collapse. Is it true that politics is nothing but ambition and competition?

—After all, we were talking about political leaders rather than politics, right? Politics is a natural ambition of different social groups to arrange the life of the nation to suit their needs. At the end of the day, opposition leaders will undoubtedly engage in fierce infighting, but it won't become a pitched battle until after the victory over the common enemy — authoritarianism, which does not allow a normal election to be held in the country.

—Every organism has its period of growth. Society is a kind of organism. At what stage of its growth, in terms of a human life, is our society now?

—About 19 to 20 years of age. There is still a lot of folly in the head, you want to kick a football around and sometimes you even want to play soldiers, but you are already of age and understand that it is time to take control of your life.

—The responsible part of society understands this — but what about the other part?

—Understand, not understand — what's the difference? You can't stop adulthood from happening. Those who are “adults” and understand everything are gradually becoming more numerous.

—Massive politicization of society is in progress. This process — is it a bow to fashion, which rules mass culture society, or the emergence of civic consciousness after all? And from where did it come so quickly?

—Quickly? Hardly. I thought it had taken forever. I thought, not in my lifetime. Society is coming of age, as we discussed just now. “Stop running my life without being asked. I want to be the one making important decisions in my life”. Something along these lines.

—Having brought to light the mechanisms of wealth accumulation, the litigation between Abramovich and Berezovskyhas humiliated this country in front of the whole world. What can be done to improve the nation's reputation besmirched in so many ways?

—What we need is a total regeneration of society. What we did in August 1991. And all at once, the world started to look at Russia with hope. Which we dashed.

—This means that the regeneration was not total — where else would we get what we have now. And do we need it, total regeneration? Is it a long way from total to totalitarian?

—Why play on words? After all, it's all clear. “Total societal regeneration” is a radically new vector of development for the country. In our case, this will mean reformulating public policy from supporting the camarilla to serve the interests of the public at large. “Government for the people” — this is something Russian history has not yet seen.

—Only recently the internet was called the engine of progress, and now it has also proved to be a driver of revolutions. How do you explain, apart from the speed of communication, the fact that the internet user is more susceptible to propaganda than a real-life person?

—More than the televiewer? I don't think so. If for no other reason than because the internet, unlike television, offers a multitude of opinion makers of many colours.

—Literature moves online. How will this affect its content?

—It will be better. More diverse. There will be more writers. There will be new text media — with multimedia and interactive content and God knows what else. The chain “author” — “publisher” — “wholesaler” — “retailer” — “reader” may drop three links in the middle. This will bring the writer and the reader very close to each other. Today I finish a book, and tomorrow whoever is interested is already reading it and sharing their impressions with me. Not bad, hey?

—What, if any, of that feedback are you prepared to take on board? To what extent are you personally in need of multimedia and interactivity? Everybody knows that you are keen on genre experiments, but are you willing to change together with reading and writing paradigms under the impact of the internet?

—I change all the time anyway. Under the impact of anything and everything. But this in no way means that I intend to bend over backwards to follow the marketplace against my nature. I will always do only what I personally find interesting. In pulp fiction, I would be willing to take market trends into account. In literary fiction, like my last novel, I would never do that.

—You mentioned a number of times that you do not think of yourself as a writer. After the publication of “Aristonomia”, have you changed your attitude to yourself?

—Yes, now I am also a writer, not just a hack. What this means is just that for the first time I have written a book for myself rather than for the public. A hack must be good — otherwise his books will not sell. And a writer can be bad, sales not being his primary concern.

—What did you want to prove to yourself and understand for yourself in writing that book?

—Not prove but attempt to explain. Give answers to the questions that seem the most important to me.

What to live for? How to live? And more to the point: how should people of my subspecies live? What is Russia? Who is right here? Who is to blame? Why has what has happened happened?

I have lots of questions to myself and the world at large. So it is possible that “Aristonomia”, part one, will have a sequel.

Olga TIMOFEYEVA