LUDMILA ULITSKAYA
Ludmila Ulitskaya is a writer and the author of several novels, short-story collections and plays. Born in Soviet Russia, Ulitskaya began her career as a geneticist at Moscow’s Institute of Genetics before she was fired for the possession of samizdat – copies of literature banned by the Soviet state. Only in her 40s did Ulitskaya turn to writing, and she has since become a leading figure in contemporary Russian literature, receiving numerous international awards, as well as a nomination for the international Man Booker Prize. Her most recent published work, Just the Plague, was written in 1988, but is only now being published. It fictionalises a little-known episode of Soviet history: a brief outbreak of a plague in 1930s Moscow. In this observant and tense short work, Ulitskaya explores the chilling efficiency of totalitarianism, and the thin line between the threat posed by an epidemic and the state.
Interview by Nadia BeardPortrait by Basso Cannarsa
Nadia Beard You wrote your latest novel, Just the Plague, in 1988, but it’s only now being published. What prevented you from publishing it earlier? And what were your motivations for publishing the story now?
Ludmila Ulitskaya The story was told to me a while back by my friend Natalya Rapoport – it was the story of her father. During a conversation, she told me the whole story related to the plague and how her father, a pathologist, had been involved in this dramatic tale. At that time I was an aspiring writer, and Natalya was a chemist and had nothing to do with writing. We decided to write this story together as a script. We worked together for a while, but then I refused to collaborate. Some disagreements arose and we parted for the rest of our lives. I know that she emigrated. Last year, when the coronavirus epidemic began, I remembered about the script and published it, citing a source. She also wrote something about it, but I confess I haven’t read it. I’d forgotten about this project, as well as many other parts of my work from that time. But when the coronavirus pandemic began I remembered it and it seemed appropriate to dust it off.
NB Your first literary works came out in the 1990s, which makes Just the Plague, written in 1988, one of your earliest published works. How do you think it fits into the rest of your oeuvre? Do you consider it your earliest work or your latest work?
LU Before Just the Plague, there were children’s books and stories, but it marked the beginning of my literary work. At that time, I wrote plays and scripts, having just worked in theatre for three years. I didn’t think this script will have any significant presence; in any case, there was no director who wanted to stage it, either in the 1980s or now. Actually, this is the reason why I stopped writing scripts and plays; I’m not very good at getting my plays and scripts into theatres and films. Fortunately, I changed to prose.
NB You switched from genetics to writing – not a common career trajectory. Why did you do it? Over the course of your career, where can you see the influence of your genetics background on your writing?
LU From my school years I knew that I’d study biology. My mother was a biochemist, and as a child, when she took me to her laboratory, I was delighted by glass tubes for chemicals, instruments, and an operating room where they did experiments on animals. After graduating from the Biological Faculty at the Moscow State University’s Department of Genetics, I spent two years working at the Institute of General Genetics of the Academy of Sciences. But my career as a biologist ended very sadly; I was fired from my job because I was found in possession of samizdat. The history of samizdat is a very interesting page in the history of Russian-Soviet life. In those years, there were a great number of books on history, philosophy and religious issues, and books of a political nature published in the West, and some interesting books that had survived from pre-revolutionary times that were banned in the USSR. There was even an article in the criminal code for the possession and distribution of these books, according to which the offender could be given a prison term of three, five or even seven years. I was lucky and was only fired from my job, but I know several people who received prison terms in those years for having banned literature. For the next nine years I didn’t work anywhere. These were important years of my life – I read a lot, started writing a little and, most importantly, gave birth to two sons. In the early 1980s I went to work again, this time not in my old profession but a new one: I went to work in theatre and for three years was the head of the literary department of the Jewish Chamber Musical Theatre. It wasn’t just a job; it was an education. After all, I’d never had a liberal-arts education, and these were years of enormous reading both in the history of the theatre and in drama. Gradually I began to write plays myself, and then I became the author of short stories, novellas, novels. I like doing what I’ve never done and learning as I go. At the same time – and this is very important – I never had the feeling that I’d completely changed my profession: both when I was a geneticist, and now having become a writer, at the centre of my interests lies the same thing: people, with all their growth, sorrows, joys, life and death. I must admit that in recent years, it’s the topic of departure – death – that has interested me more and more. Probably, I’m getting closer…
NB In Just the Plague, the source of people’s fear is split between the plague and the organs of state security. In your view, which is more harmful?
LU I’m confident that modern state security agencies are much less bloodthirsty than they were in Stalin’s or even late Soviet times. It seems to me that today’s employees of these organisations aren’t under such total captivity of ideology as their predecessors were during the time of the NKVD [the predecessor of the KGB]. They also want to live like human beings, not under conditions of martial communism, as their predecessors did. This isn’t to say that their teeth have completely worn down, but they have become much more scant and more selective. Those who are caught in their teeth don’t have fun, but today we know almost by name those who have found themselves under repressions on “political charges”. Memorial, a human-rights organisation recently labelled as a “foreign agent” by the Russian government, numbers such political prisoners at around 300. The historian Yuri Dmitriev, who was engaged in compiling lists of people shot by state security bodies in the 1930s in Karelia, has been imprisoned. This means that, in addition to the coronavirus pandemic, another disease has not yet ended: the vindictiveness and cruelty of the authorities, who don’t want to hear about their past crimes, nor of those we see today. In fact, there’s a very important facet to your question: a pandemic is a natural phenomenon and it’s very difficult to fight. Now, the pressure of state-security bodies on the population is a social occurrence. I don’t mean to say that it’s easier to deal with it, but one just needs to be aware that where there’s a cruel and inhuman government, the fight against the pandemic is unlikely to be better organised.
NB One of the most disquieting aspects in the book is the role totalitarianism had to play in containing the plague: it was precisely thanks to the infrastructure of totalitarianism – the secret police, the black vans primed to whisk unsuspecting citizens off to interrogations, the surveillance – that the plague was contained so quickly. Uncomfortably, you can see how the infrastructure of authoritarianism can be advantageous in dealing with a crisis like a pandemic. Where have you seen the greatest weaknesses in authoritarian governments like Russia as they’ve tried to handle the coronavirus pandemic?
LU I’m sorry to say this is exactly the case: a totalitarian government, if it wants to, can cope with a pandemic more quickly than any “soft” democracy. But the question is also whether the totalitarian government actually wants to fight the pandemic, especially in this kind of situation when the most sensitive people to the pandemic are the more elderly; that is, people who largely live off social benefits. In essence, this is the problem of the wonderful future, when the retirement age for people who live a long time lasts decades, and paying their pensions becomes an additional burden for the state. So far, this hasn’t threatened us. Vaccinations and personal-protective equipment are more common in educated segments of society, but there are also such “Covid dissidents” who don’t want to be vaccinated. This is the real picture and it’s not easy.
NB I’m interested to know what you think of contemporary Russian literature.
LU The more issues a society has, the brighter its literature, I think. It’s about the average. Geniuses in the world succeed regardless of the kind of power installed. Perhaps more difficult times are more likely to stimulate creativity than a peaceful, less active period. But I repeat, a genius is a gift to the world, and no one knows when and by what laws they are flung into the world. True, there are times such as these and Russia endured them very acutely in the 1930s, when the authorities deliberately and consistently trampled everyone who pulled themselves up above the standard level of living. The list of writers and scientists killed at the hands of the authorities is a very long one. We will never be able to count just how many ingenious people could not fully realise themselves. I’ve read relatively few contemporary authors and can’t be considered an expert in contemporary Russian literature. Of the modern authors whose books I liked, I can name Vladimir Sharov, who has unfortunately passed away, Guzel Yakhina and Sergei Lebedev.
NB Authoritarianism in Russia is only deepening, and with it, censorship of culture and the arts. How did growing up in the Soviet Union, where cultural production was highly controlled, prepare you for the cultural landscape of today’s Russia?
LU Personally, I don’t feel censorship. Theft is widespread, yes. We were able to bypass controlled cultural life back in the 1960s. In the days of my youth, samizdat flourished. Not all books could be bought, but in the end they managed to reach us. The cultural landscape today is quite diverse. In Soviet times, leaders were much more sensitive to what they called the “anti-Soviet”. To top it off, power evoked great disgust, and when you’re younger, such things are experienced more keenly. As Joseph Brodsky put it, “The thief is sweeter to me than the bloodsucker.” Today, as far as I see it, ideology worries the leaders of the state much less; they are much more concerned with personal income. I assure you that the scandal with the recently discovered luxury villa, attributed to Putin, is far from the only possession of today’s masters of the country. This wouldn’t stir in me any anger or irritation if only they cared about the welfare of the people and didn’t keep a significant part of the country below the poverty line. As for culture, well, unfortunately culture doesn’t grow where there’s no money. ◉