Russian Writer Evgeny Chizhov: Writers Should Stay away from Both Authorities and Opposition
... stem from? I would not say that I am any exception. A Russian-speaking writer from Central Asia — now that would be quite a rarity. I belong to that last generation of Soviet people who had a rather strong interest in Central Asia, or rather in the East in general. I personally became interested in the region even before university, during my final years at school, that is, in the early 1980s. The last generation of Soviet youth were greatly influenced by Western counterculture: English-language music and the Beat literature. This counterculture was largely oriented towards the East, as distinct from the traditional, self-centred Western culture. It turned to the East not so much as a source of creativity ...