Volume 47, Number 14 · September 21, 2000
A Scandal in Moscow
By Viktor Erofeyev
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were contemporaries, but never cared to meet. Turgenev and Dostoevsky hated each other with a passion. Much of Russian literature is the story of arguments between writers with wounded egos. All too often the Russian writer is childishly certain that the truth belongs to him alone. Perhaps for this reason the sixty-seventh International PEN Congress this past May was one of the most absurd events in the entire history of the PEN movement. A huge lie lay behind it. Although Russians are sometimes called master liars, in this case the Russian writers were too clumsy in trying to cover up their disagreements over the war in Chechnya, and the lie came to the surface right under the eyes of their surprised foreign colleagues.
Feature, 2318 words
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