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Banker's spat with author reveals Russia's rifts
Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:37pm EST
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By Gleb Bryanski
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A billionaire banker has locked horns with a poverty-stricken left-wing writer in a rare public debate over social division in crisis-hit Russia, revealing growing antagonism in its ostensibly well-controlled society.
The debate, which quickly spread over the internet but has not been reported on state-controlled mainstream television, has evoked memories of pre-1917 Russia where hatred between the ruling class and the poor sparked a Communist revolution.
The row started when Pyotr Aven, the wealthy and well connected CEO of the country's largest privately owned bank Alfa, wrote a damning review of "Sankya," a novel by Zakhar Prilepin, a member of a banned radical political party.
It tells how Sasha Tishin, a disillusioned young Russian from a provincial town, joins a radical party hoping to change the political system by force, and leads an attack on a local administration headquarters.
"Most of what one needs to hate in life, from my point of view, can be found in writer Prilepin's book," Aven wrote in the Russian Pioneer glossy magazine, which targets wealthy educated Russians and has a circulation of 20,000.
The revolutionary views of the book's protagonist, he added, made him "reach for a pistol."
Tishin takes part in violent protests, fights with police, plots killings of officials in neighboring Latvia, and is subjected to brutal torture by security agents.
"Why, instead of bringing order -- planting a tree, building a house, washing socks or reading a fairytale to a child -- does one need to engage in doing nothing, then after a good booze, taking up a club and smashing everything?" Aven wrote.
After eight years of economic boom, Russia is plunging into economic crisis which is threatening to crush the fragile stability fostered by Vladimir Putin's government with the help of buoyant oil revenues, compliant state media and heavy-handed police.
Little-noticed when it was first published in paperback by niche publisher Ad Marginem two years ago, the book's sales jumped to 35,000 this year. Publication rights have been sold to Poland, France, Serbia, China and Turkey.
GHOST OF POVERTY
Prilepin opposes what he terms the "social Darwinism" which has split Russian society. Despite Russia's oil wealth, about 21 million Russians or 15 percent of the population live below the poverty line of $158 income per month.
He responded to Aven's comments by saying he had been working hard, selling over 100,000 copies of his books, while raising three children and paying taxes.
"I do not understand what else I should do to be able to buy a flat because we do not fit in the one we have," Prolepin wrote in Ogonyok magazin, which has a circulation of 70,000 and a wider readership than Russian Pioneer.
He said he had been living with his family in a tiny two-room apartment in the industrial city of Nizhny Novgorod, which was the hometown of Maxim Gorky, an early 20th-century writer. Continued...
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