I work with news, on my private Telegram channel; therefore, I have people who pay me to be informed. If people pay to have coherent news, it means t… - Nicolai Lilin

The Siberian community in which I grew up came from a much older one that had already developed a system of self-control and was opposed to any form of power. Not only socialism, they opposed the Tsar's regime and its slavery. [...] By the late 1980s, I already knew that the community was dying. When I started writing I realized that this tradition had helped them survive, but it couldn't save them.

La mia era una famiglia criminale, mio nonno rapinava le banche e mio padre i furgoni blindati ed entrambi hanno avuto una discreta esperienza carceraria. In guerra mio nonno era stato un cecchino, come quasi tutti i cacciatori siberiani; era nello stesso convoglio che aveva portato il grande Vasilij Zajcev a Stalingrado. Spesso mi dicono che ho avuto una brutta infanzia, forse è vero ma a me piaceva così. Quell'elemento mi avvicinava ai grandi, mi sentivo responsabile.

Mine was a criminal family. My grandfather robbed banks and my father armored vans. During the war my grandfather was a sniper, like almost all Siberian hunters; he was in the same convoy that took the great Vasily Zaytsev to Stalingrad. I'm often told that I had a bad childhood. Perhaps it's true, but I liked it that way. That element got me closer to the adults and I felt responsible.