Vladimir Sorokin, Blue Lard censorship battle
Russian novelist Vladimir Sorokin lost his copyright lawsuit against protesters who reprinted, then burned copies of his book Goluboye Salo. The pro-Putin youth movement Moving Together wants the book banned over its absurdist sex scene between clones of Stalin and Krushchev. Moving Together managed to convince Moscow police to investigate Sorokin on obscenity charges. Last month Sorokin denounced the police investigation, calling the affair "absurd, vicious and humiliating to me as a writer and humiliating to Russian literature as a whole." (Aug 2002)
In the Washington Post, David Hoffman discusses the controversy surrounding Vladimir Sorkin's Blue Lard in a good feature story about the "literary spring" in Russia. The post-Soviet "decade of revolutionary change has calmed a bit, and a writer's spring is unfolding. Every few months an author captures the country's imagination, and bookstores are jammed; tables are piled high with inexpensive paperbacks. Moreover, a new generation of popular writers has appeared, and they reflect the enormous changes that have swept the country in the last decade." A nice photo of Sorokin holding his dog accompanies the article. The Post also runs a short excerpt from Vladimir Sorokin's novel Ice. . . . Vladimir Sorokin's personal site is pretty cool even if you don't read Russian. (Jul 2002)
Longer AP story about the investigation of Vladimir Sorokin's novel Goluboye Salo, quoting responses from several Russian free speech proponents. This article proposes Blue Lard or Gay Lard as translations of the title; apparently "Goluboye" literally means "blue" but doubles as slang for "gay." Also noted: "Some Russian literary critics have complained that the quality of the books Russians write and read significantly deteriorated after the Soviet collapse in 1991. Several post-Soviet writers have won readers with works that mix literary style with profanity or graphic descriptions of sex." Sounds like progress to me. (Jul 2002)
Moscow prosecutors have charged writer Vladimir Sorokin with "spreading pornography" for depicting Stalin and Khrushchev as gay lovers in his satirical novel Goluboye Salo (translated as Blue Bacon Fat or Blue Lard in different sources). According to BBC News, "Mr Sorokin's book enraged members of Walking Together, a youth group which wears tee-shirts bearing President Putin's portrait. In June, they publicly ripped up copies of Blue Bacon Fat in central Moscow and threw them down a mock-up of a toilet bowl. . . . Since coming to power in 2000, Mr Putin has been accused of seeking to rehabilitate Stalin, at one point unveiling a bust to him as a war leader." More. (Jul 2002)
