I can see Russia from Putrajaya
|Native Sabahan Erna is (not) Malay but loves Malay literature. Her hobbies: cats/gaming/blogging at ernamerin.com/Tweeting at @ernamh.|
JUNE 20 — The more I read the news, the more I wonder why we’re devolving into Russia. Both the Russia of today and the Russia when they threw playwrights and novelists into gulags.
Just this month, Russian president Vladmir Putin signed an anti-protest law that raised the maximum fines for protest-related offences to punitive levels. Think from 5,000 rubles (RM486) to 300,000 (RM29,187) for participants and up to 600,000 rubles for officials.
Didn’t our Parliament (Barisan MPs, ahem) get a so-called peaceful assembly law approved despite the complaints from civil society and opposition lawmakers?
Russia had come a long way from the dark times when freedom of expression was brutally crushed under Stalin. Then, even writing plays or novels critical of the government could get you sent to Siberia. It could also cause one a living death for a creative — not be allowed to work at all. Yet I wonder now if those days are coming back.
My personal literary hero is Russian. Mikail Bulgakov, the author of the novel “The Master and Margarita” never lived to see it published. It is considered one of the best satirical works of the 20th century and I personally consider it the biggest literary influence on my thinking and writing.
Why was a work of satire, featuring an apologetic Jesus Christ, a somewhat redeemed Pontius Pilate, a talking, walking Cat, witches and demons considered dangerous? The problem was that the state decided that it had to have control over what material was to be published, including literature.
The communist party went so far as to have specific themes dictated to writers to “stimulate social construction”, all towards furthering the ideological ends of the state.
Is this much different from the way our government dictates to our mainstream papers what to publish/what not to publish, and even going so far as to instruct media blackouts?
When “The Master and Margarita” was published, one line stood out from the novel and became a rallying cry in Russia: “Manuscripts don’t burn.” Writers whose works were considered dangerous often memorised their works so the police could find nothing to seize, relying on memory to preserve their stories.
No matter what happened to a written version of a work, its essence remained within the author hence the saying.
“Manuscripts don’t burn” applies not only to the integrity of art, but to the nature of the human spirit. You can’t force a nation not to think; you can’t create obedient drones all subscribing to a single doctrine.
Of course I am alluding to the recent harassment of Borders staff over Irshad Manji’s banned book. What good comes out of banning books and attempting to shut out different viewpoints?
As someone once told me, “Never seek guidance from those whose best interests lie in NOT telling you the truth.”
It seems I can find more truth in fiction than our tightly-controlled mainstream media. Truth needs no guardians; it will win out no matter how much it is suppressed and it is there if we make the effort to find it.
The search for truth is one that everyone deserves to undertake without heavy handed “moral guardianship.”
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.