(p. A4) Hundreds of Russians packed an auditorium in central London on a recent warm evening to listen as Boris Akunin, the author of a wildly popular detective series, told them that when it came to the Ukraine war, “I believe that the actions of the Russian Army are criminal.”
Mr. Akunin’s series, set in late czarist times, made him rich and famous, but outspoken statements like that one have made him more infamous of late back home in Russia. The Kremlin recently labeled the author — who went into self-imposed exile in London a decade ago — a “terrorist” and effectively banned his works.
When President Vladimir V. Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Mr. Akunin wrote on Facebook, “Russia is ruled by a psychologically deranged dictator and worst of all, it obediently follows his paranoia.” At that time, he began contemplating how cultural figures fleeing abroad might still reach their domestic audience and perhaps help to spur change at home. Being cut off from his own readers lent the project special urgency.
“I have to say, the amount of work and writing I’ve been doing over these two terrible years, never in my life have I written so much,” he told the audience members, who laughed when he said that a writing binge trumped a drinking binge. “It is a form of escapism.”
. . .
Born Grigory Chkhartishvili in Georgia, he grew up in Moscow, where his mother’s family were ardent Communists. As a boy, he once complained to his grandmother that he disliked porridge, and she told him: “You don’t have to like porridge, you have to eat it. You have to like Lenin and the Communist Party.”
. . .
Mr. Akunin’s lecture, on May 9 [2024], coincided with the release of the latest volume, “The Destruction and Resurrection of the Empire,” about the Lenin and Stalin years. His basic thesis is that Russia has considered centralized empire-building to be something sacred since the 15th century. The Ukraine war is Mr. Putin’s striving to do it again, he said.
. . .
In May [2024], he introduced an online platform where writers, filmmakers, theater directors, musicians and other artists could stream their work, charging viewers a small fee. He also expanded the website for selling his books to include many other authors banned in Russia. After he refused to stop selling “Heritage,” a new novel by the best-selling author Vladimir Sorokin, also living in exile, the site was blocked in Russia in late June.
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(Note: ellipses, and bracketed years, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 14, 2024, and has the title “From Exile in London, a Crime Novelist Works to Transform Russia.”)