Sonechka

The Russian soul slips through our fingers. We see only the lightest grains. Those that float. The Empire, the Tsars, Communism, Utopia, Cruelty, Violence, Authoritarianism. 

The sieve of the press and journalism is not fine enough to reveal it (nor is that of History). Literature is needed. Text after text, the abyss of a sense of Dread that does not dissipate.

The finest grain of the "Russian soul" settles and, sedimented through the centuries, petrifies, becoming invisible.

« We swim on the surface of a crystal-clear lake, ignoring the sand, the earth, and the mud that imprison the waters. »

Ludmila Ulitskaya is my mother's age. What she writes belongs to a generation. It is not the past. It is today. 

Sonetchka, published over the ashes of the Soviet collapse, shows us the cruelty that props up a fundamental pillar of the "Russian soul". One that never crumbled. The "Russian woman", silent, self-sacrificing, devoted, a master of the art of disappearing. Irony and melancholy.

In the lucidity of the writing, the accusation: suffering is not a virtue. Can submission be heroism? With a large dose of cowardice, yes - says the Enlightenment thinker: pure stupidity.

Ludmila Ulitskaya, born in 1943, is one of the great dissident voices of contemporary Russian literature. A former biologist and fierce critic of authoritarianism, she writes against the national myth of moral obedience. She dismantles, without fury, the archetype of the woman-symbol. Serenely.

This is why it is important (the book, the author): It is necessary to understand Russia.