21-25 January 2026
by Boris Akunin
Source: Facebook
21 January 2026
THE CHILDHOOD DISEASE OF LEFTISM IN LIBERALISM
No one likes centrists. Because we don’t run hot or cold, we run warm, and therefore they banish us from their lips.
I’ve long grown used to being a timid penguin for the revolutionaries and a ‘terrorist and extremist’ for the Putinites. I’m also used to ‘liberal’ being a curse word for the majority. But I like being warm and I have absolutely no desire to be on anyone’s lips. Banish me from them, please.
I’m a liberal in the most original, primitive sense: not people for the state, but the state for people; respect for the individual; freedom of choice; helping the weak and curbing the strong; and, following Marcus Aurelius, ‘make thyself neither tyrant nor slave of any man’.
I well know that many people adhere to the opposite system of views: the interests of the collective over personal interests; security more important than freedom; society should be divided into ‘adults’ and ‘children’. I have no claims against this credo, I just don’t agree with it.
But I do have claims against like-minded people who seemingly share my values but compromise and sabotage them with all kinds of distortions and excesses.
You’ve already guessed that I’m talking about the excesses of leftist liberalism, which—in my view, rightly so—are considered to be one of the reasons for the ubiquitous retaliation by rightist archaicism.
Naturally, I have my own list of liberal ‘givesomeoneenoughrope’, but I want to check it against your opinions.
Please write me what irritates you most in liberal radicalism (a rather oxymoronic phrase). Point by point. I’ll check it against my own conduct book.
But here is why I need this. I want to compile for myself a ‘Program of Mature Liberalism’ that will correspond to my notions of good and evil in contemporary conditions. Not a hot program and not a cold program but a warm program. It seems to me that such a code for rehabilitating decrepit liberalism is absolutely essential, otherwise all the decent countries will soon become indecent, one after the other, in America’s wake.
Source: Facebook
22 January 2026
TVDZ
I have a subscription to the digital Times. Every day they send a summary of the previous day’s main events. Today it looks like this.
A caption under a blue eye explains that this is the Picture of the Day: on Borneo—hurrah!—they released three orangutans into the jungle. Very sweet and ecological.
But readers understood everything, and, like me, smiled.
In the same newspaper a few days ago, when Trump threatened plague, war, and tariffs, I read a very calm article that used the abbreviation TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out). I would translate that into Russian as TVZД (Trump Always Backs Out).
All the Europeans had to do was show a drop of firmness and TACO pulled back. There’s not going to be any Anschluss or tariffs.
I hope Europe will learn a lesson from this.
If the world order is multipolar, then it’s multipolar. It’s time for a third superpower to emerge—a reformed European union. A bulwark of relative common sense would appear in the world.
As before, the chances of this are not great, considering Europe’s internal crises, but now they’re slightly better.
(Let me quickly reply to the commentators who are going to start writing here about how Muslim radicals have seized England, France, and so on. No, they haven’t.) And they won’t. But the ultra-rightists madly spinning this kind of malarkey might.
Source: Facebook
22 January 2026
Ego-Prose has come out as an e-book. These are (a few of) the book’s heroes.
Audiobook coming soon.
Source: Facebook
23 January 2026
MAIN QUESTIONS – 8
Here is one of the most nettlesome philosophical issues.
YOU’RE WALKING ACROSS A BRIDGE. YOU SEE YOUR ENEMY DROWNING IN THE RIVER. WHAT DO YOU DO?
1. Throw a life preserver.
2. Throw a rock.
3. On your way with you and let God decide.
If you’re of the same frame of thought as I am, you imagine it’s Vladimir Putin drowning. If you’re from the opposing camp, then it’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, or a Foreign Agent, or someone else you hate. (If you’re from the opposing camp, you probably hate all sorts of people.)
You can just put in a number. And you can vote on my Telegram, Eto Boris Akunin. (Only, if you’re in Russia, don’t write anything bloodthirsty about Putin in the comments or you’ll wind up an extremist, too.)
As usual, I’m talking about my own decision.
I imagined very graphically Putin floundering in the river (I’m a writer, I can do that) and suddenly I realized that in the first moment I’d be glad but in the second I’d swear and throw him the damn preserver. Because not throwing a life preserver to a drowning man, no matter who he is, is just impossible.
Without question, it means that my own emotional comfort is more precious to me than the public good. (And actually, I’ve already tortured myself over this in my story ‘The Devil’s Lawyer’).
[NB – This is No. 8 in a series of ‘Main Questions’ that Boris Akunin has been occasionally publishing on his Facebook page to which he invites his readers to respond – ed.]
Source: Facebook
24 January 2026
One day, ‘Tired with all these, from these would I be gone’, I’ll write a book about beautiful people. For instance, I really like the chemist Antoine Lavoisier. He was an incredibly beautiful man. From him I learned how I should approach my Work.
In his youth, while investigating the topic of streetlamps, Lavoisier sat in total darkness for a month and a half in order to better understand the function of optic nerves in conditions of zero illumination. Recalling this, I scuba-dove for my story ‘Water Planet’ (brrr, I really didn’t like that), climbed through biblical caves for ‘Red Rooster’, and flew over the Alps in a hot-air balloon for a novel I never wrote.
When the revolutionary tribunal sentenced A. L. to the guillotine, he asked for a postponement in order to finish writing an article, but was denied. The chairman allegedly wrote on the petition: ‘The republic needs neither scholars nor chemists. Let justice be carried out’. (Naturally, a republic like that couldn’t last long.)
People say that A. L. even turned his execution into a scientific experiment—to clarify how long a head separated from its body could retain consciousness. He promised he would blink—and his head blinked for 30 seconds. If this isn’t a legend, then Voilà une belle mort!
In the painting by David, the scientist is alive and well. To one side is some kind of chemical flask; to the other, his wife, his comrade in his scientific research. Marie-Anne Pierrette married the chemist when she was very young—not for love but to save herself from a marriage to an elderly, beastly-looking grandee. Love came to her later.
But how could anyone not love such a man?
Source: Facebook
25 January 2026
TATIANA DAY
This is personal. And it’s not about Tatiana, although I’ve been fortunate to have known several outstanding bearers of that name, but about the fact that 25 January is the founding day of my alma mater, Moscow University.
On 25 January, Elizaveta Petrovna issued a decree. In that era, she had a rather touching tradition, when promulgating any kind of novelty, of explaining to her subjects why it was being introduced. For example, the hitherto unknown and difficult-to-pronounce curiosity ‘uni-ver-si-ty’—why was it needed? ‘Just as any good emerges from enlightened reason, and in the opposite case every sort of evil takes root, then consequently there is an essential need to make an effort in this regard’—that’s why.
Thank you to all universities for the enlightenment of reason and the eradication of evil. Wishing all students easy studies.
And also, since this is St. Tatiana Day, wishing you miraculous deliverance from fierce attacks. Because Tatiana of Rome was thrown into a pit to a hungry lion, and the beast didn’t touch her but lay down at her feet.
Everything’s going to be fine. Fear not, weep not. The ball won’t drown in the stream.
(Depicted in the picture from My Calendar is the young Anton Chekhov during the time of his studies at Moscow University. Drawn by his brother Nikolai.)
Source: Facebook
Translated by Marian Schwartz
