He is neither a historian nor a political scientist, and not even a specialist in Russia, but the immense translator André Markowicz believes that the image of the country and its culture has been tarnished for a long time. In this short pamphlet with a provocative title, the author takes note, on the spot, of the consequences of the February 2022 aggression against Ukraine and of all the war crimes committed by the Russian army. What if “the electroshock caused by the Ukrainian disaster managed, in Russia, to awaken consciences, and to change Russian history? he asks himself. To arrive at his prophecies, Markowicz takes us through three centuries of Russian history at top speed, from Peter the Great to Putin, the adulterated product of “the KGB apparatus and the mafia”. Believing that Putin’s regime has today become the “shame of Russia”, he urges Russians to move from Dostoyevsky to Chekhov: that is to say, to see concrete, human and everyday reality in the way of the author of The cherry orchardand to reject once and for all “the lie of the epic”.
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