By Vestnik Kavkaza
Today in Moscow the 13th Forum of young writers in Russia and abroad will open; the forum is organized by the Foundation of Socio-Economic and Intellectual Programs together with the literary journals "Arion", "Literary Questions", "Friendship of the Peoples", "Zvezda", "Znamya", "Foreign Literature", "Kostyor", "Moscow", "Our Contemporary", "Neva", "Novi Mir", "October" and others.
Sergei Filatov, the chairman of the Union of Writers of Moscow, said: “At the beginning of the project "Young Writers of Russia" there was the hope that we will prepare a young group of writers that will make a turning point, in general, in our literature. From the period when it did not exist there was some time after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when we began to read mostly books that have come to us from our writers from abroad once exiled from the Soviet Union. But all the time we lived in anticipation of new literature. But the emergence of new literature, in general, quite frankly, has been delayed. Moreover, the disorder of a writer’s life, the lack of social protection, the lack of status of the writer in Russia today - all these problems are, in general, quite acute, and they've come out to the surface. So today there is a serious need to create a new literary community, which would include all the elements that help the development of literature and delivering the writer's work to our readers. There will be libraries, publishing houses, a book distribution system there. I believe that the basis in this case should be our literary journals”.
The forum program is very rich. In the first half of the day we have workshops. The second half of the day is a meeting with writers, public figures, specialists. 182 people were invited to the forum of young writers. They will deal with 16 master classes. There are master classes in children's literature, drama, criticism, translation, poetry and prose… As a result, everyone will choose a magazine to write for it, and collections will be issued.
Among the collections published after the forums Filatov mentioned the collection of young writers "But…" which included 30 works by young authors, books written by one author (Valery Karapetyan from St. Petersburg, with two novels and short stories under the title "In Heaven", Ilya Odegov, a young writer from Kazakhstan, with stories under the title "Any Love", and Alexei Shepelyov, with two stories under the general title "True Love"), as well as the collection of young writers of the North Caucasus called "Taste of Quince". “It was edited by Lydia Davletkireeva, a young critic, she is a doctor of philological sciences. We have called the book after one of the stories of a very talented young writer Suleiman Musayev, a Chechen writer. I think he should have, of course, a great future”.
Sergei Filatov said in an interview to VK: “We have been paying special attention to the literature and young writers of the North Caucasus in general since the beginning of the program, when we felt that this area requires extra attention. We began to hold separate symposiums of young writers of the North Caucasus. They are called "symposiums" but in fact they were master classes, creative meetings, which take place at the forums of young writers that we hold in Moscow. And there very interesting trends appeared. A very strong group of writers appeared in the Chechen Republic. Perhaps this is due to the fact that they have been through war. And the main theme of their works is war. Absolutely stunning talented writers appeared and emerged there: Suleiman Musayev, who works as a teacher of the Russian language, Lida Davletkireeva, an absolutely brilliant literary critic, she defended her dissertation on the topic of comparison of Russian and Chechen writers as they look at the last war in Chechnya. This analysis is very deep, very interesting , of course, scholarly, I must say.
Asya Umarova has manifested herself greatly, a young writer from Chechnya. A whole series of her works, which she wrote when she was five years old, during the war "War Through the Eyes of a Child" suggests itself for publication. After all, all of the sketches she had in her head have been recently put on paper. These are very interesting, sharp and very appealing works in general”.
Filatov also mentioned a strong writers group from Dagestan: “Alisa Ganieva is the leader there, she works today in Moscow for "Nezavisimaya Gazeta." She has proved herself as a writer, as a children's writer, and as a literary critic of broad expertise. A talented girl. We have already published two collected works on the North Caucasus. The first collection was "Young Writers of the North Caucasus", published a few years ago, the second volume was published this year, it was prepared by Lida Davletkireeva. It is called "Taste of Quince".
Evaluating the works of young writers from the North Caucasus, he said: “They write a lot about issues that took place in Soviet times - the deportation, the war in Chechnya, this is already in our times, repressions experienced by these nations, changes in living conditions not only in terms of cultural life, but also of everyday life in the Soviet era, changes in borders which took place and generally a lot of things happened in that period which greatly affected the lives of these people and their characters. When guys describe these processes, they do not have a deep understanding of what happened in that period of time. I wrote to them that in 1922 , when the national policy was adopted, it was a perfect document, a beautiful document, and that if our government consistently realized it, without hurrying to report about achieving certain results, probably the tragedies that occurred in that period of time would not have taken place. They gradually built up to such an extent that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was an explosion. It was an expected explosion, Dudayev is not to blame for it, no one personally. These are problems that accumulated in people with time, they caused an explosion of the situation. It seems to me that people who write about these things have to have a historical understanding of how these processes gradually accumulated and how they evolved. Both good and bad, everything should be in a piece of writing, be it poetry or prose and there possibly can be some fictional details, but the historical truth should be kept in these works. Most importantly, the reader should understand that the writer knows more than he does, when he is reading his works”.
