Maya, the heroine of Svetlana Satchkova’s The Undead: A Novel of Modern Russia, is an aspiring Russian filmmaker. And after fits and starts she finally gets a break when the producer Belov greenlights her project. Maya’s film is an art-house horror flick about a resurrected Lenin who seeks to take control of Moscow with an army of zombies at his back. Maya has no political intent with the movie. To her, it’s just a horror film. She’s also naive to what Russia has become. All art is politically infused. The artist’s intent is meaningless. Maya is eventually denounced to the authorities, who, in turn, see zombie Lenin as a political satire of Putin’s Russia. To her shock and distress, Maya’s life is quickly turned upside down. The plot of The Undead unfortunately has a long tradition. Think of Lydia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna or Milan Kundera's The Joke. It’s when ordinary, innocent people get sucked into the oppressive machine of the state. The Eurasian Knot spoke to Satchkova about The Undead, her English debut, and how Maya’s fate speaks not just to the realities of artists and art in Russia, but also, to art in other authoritarian states past and present. It’s a tale of shifting political sands, the meaning of collaboration, and how the system grinds up even the most unassuming people.
Guest:
Svetlana Satchkova is a Russian-born journalist and novelist. She’s the author of three novels in Russian. Her latest novel is The Undead: A Novel of Modern Russia, her English-language debut, published by Melville House.
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