Russian Writer Evgeny Chizhov: Writers Should Stay away from Both Authorities and Opposition

... 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 but rather as a source of new spiritual horizons — mysticism, philosophy and religion. Georgi Bovt: Soft power of the Russian word I first visited Central Asia as a young ...