7 -17 February 2026
by Boris Akunin
Source: Facebook
On England
I’m sick of reading comments by people who don’t live in the UK, but confidently write about how the country has been overrun by Muslims and other Asians.
They haven’t overrun anything. They just live and work here, and they usually work hard and well at that.
According to a recent study of all the ethnicities living in Britain, British Indians rank the first in income because they study and work very strenuously. Anglo Saxons rank second.
By my observations, around 90% of Britain’s healthcare workers are foreigners. They are mostly excellent doctors and very caring nurses – I’ve only ever seen their equals in Japan. I can’t even imagine what would happen to the country if Nigel Farage wins power and begins to expel the ‘foreigners’ as he has been threatening to do. Who will treat people then?
The hysteria around immigration has reached fever pitch and is actively being whipped up by right-wing demagogues.
Come on! Young, active people are coming to a rapidly ageing country, often overcoming myriad difficulties to do so. The problems start because the state has utterly failed to make proper use of this valuable resource. Of course, you can’t encourage parasitism and immorality by providing endless benefits, but you can’t throw them all out either. The Islamic extremism of which so many write feeds on xenophobia, it is a source of new recruits. We have to fight not against Islam, but against extremism and its root causes – and the Muslim community must play a leading role in this.
Immigrants should be taught the local language and customs, and to be helped to find a profession if they don’t have one. We can all learn from Israel’s invaluable experience here with absorbing new populations. And by the next generation, these people will have become British completely, just with a darker shade of skin.
London is such an amazing city owing to its multi-ethnic character and the fact that most people here have accents, everyone is used to it and no one shows any upset. An immigrant can easily feel at home here, (much more easily than, for example, in France).
I am especially irritated when Russian commentators shout about how you can’t walk the streets in London or you’ll be stabbed immediately. (Trump made some barb about this as well.)
I have seen the statistics: in the whole of 2025 across London, a city of 10 million people, there were 97 murders, while there were 1.1 murders for every 100,000 people across the UK as a whole. In Russia, the figure is almost six times higher.
Great Britain definitely does have a problem – with its traditional political elites. The Conservative Party is in ruins while the ruling Labour Party is also a sorry sight. Immigrants are certainly not part of the problem.
Source: Facebook
11 February 2026
The man who became a diamond
Today is the anniversary of a sad event. On this day in 1829, a crowd of fanatics stormed the Russian Embassy in Tehran and mutilated 38 people, including our beloved Aleksandr Griboedov.
I have always very much liked Griboedov. His fine facial features, his beautiful marriage, the sweet Griboedov waltz, the play Woe from Wit which I was fortunate enough to read before we were made to suffer it at school. I chose to read it because his unique fate had made such a strong an impression on me.
The Persians were terribly apologetic. As compensation for the murder of the envoy Griboedov, they brought Tsar Nikolai I an invaluable 88-carat diamond – the Shah Diamond – of impeccable purity.
The Tsar fell in love with this miracle of nature and agreed to forget about the terrible massacre in Tehran.
We, of course, cannot forget.
But here’s what I think: a handsome man remains handsome in death. And even after death.
What remains of Griboedov 200 years later? A great play, a good waltz and an impeccably pure diamond. Not bad is it?
(From My Calendar)
Source: Facebook
12 February 2026
The horse that wandered free
Yesterday I was reflecting on the results of the two years now I have been writing outside Russia, I realised that I have never written with such pleasure, so freely or so much. It turns out that saying goodbye to the Russian market has doubtless been a positive for me as an author.
Just look at how many children I have now. True, some of them were conceived during my marriage to Russian publishers, but they have come into the world only after my divorce.
Many people are writing books now – both those who have left Russia and those who have stayed. The publishing website BAbook is being flooded with manuscripts. A Russian is like an octopus, they shoot black ink at the critical moment.
My ink blot is on video.
Source: Facebook
13 February 2026
The Sin of Despondency
On 13 February 1984, I fell into the sin of despondency. I was only 27 years old but I had the feeling of having been buried alive.
On that day, the living corpse Konstantin Chernenko was appointed to lead the country I lived in. After the living corpses of Brezhnev and Andropov, this was the third living corpse upon which the lives of 260 million Soviet people wholly depended, including my own.
I knew that this macabre clique would be in power forever. They would outlive me. I would grow old and die locked in a petri dish spanning one-sixth of the earth’s surface, a space held in the hands of an endless succession of old men in the Kremlin, each more marasmatic than the previous. I fell into despondency, what else could I do?
But only a short while later, the petri dish shook and smashed into pieces.
Despondency is therefore a deadly sin, even when everything seems hopeless. It will only dry you out.
Today is a very good day to remind ourselves that reflection does not always help in dark times. Sometimes you just need to shrug your shoulders and tell yourself: all things will pass.
And read a short poem by Kozma Prutkov:
Всё стою на камне, - Дай-ка брошусь в море… Что пошлет судьба мне, Радость или горе? Может, озадачит… Может, не обидит… Ведь кузнечик скачет, А куда — не видит.
Standing here upon a rock, I shall throw myself into the sea… What will fate bring me? Joy or catastrophe? It might bewilder, Might not offend, For the grasshopper jumps, Never sees where its jump will end.
This is a page from My Calendar. Today is Friday, 13 February. I promise it will be better tomorrow, Valentine’s Day, so we won’t lose hope.
Source: Facebook
13 February 2026
An auction in support of political prisoners, titled ‘You’re not Alone’, is being held. A very good and completely necessary event. I would be happy if such events were held on a regular basis.
I put in as a lot my latest publication of The Adventures of Erast Fandorin, all 15 signed tomes. The starting price is several times cheaper than buying it online.
Do take part. Do help.
Source: Facebook
15 February 2026
Hurray! The entire Family Album series has been reissued in print, two years after the Russian editions were confiscated.
These books are especially important to me, and I’m very happy that they are available again.
Source: Facebook
16 February 2026
These are Aleksei Navalny’s answers to 13 questions from ‘Autograph’ (Автограф), a questionnaire for political prisoners. They were written in prison, in the four months before his death.
1. How would you define yourself? Who are you?
From the prison administration, I constantly hear the disgruntled phrase: “I see you’re in a good mood today…” So, perhaps like this: I am a political prisoner who misses his family, his work, and his colleagues very much, but who still manages to stay in a good mood. And of course, I am also a reader. I spend the better part of the day with a book in my hands.
2. What do you believe in?
In God and in science. I believe that we live in a non-deterministic universe and that we possess free will. I believe that we are not alone in this universe. I believe that our deeds and our actions will be judged. I believe in true love. I believe that Russia will be happy and free. And I do not believe in death.
3. When facing crucial decisions, do you rely on reason or intuition?
There is no contradiction here; it’s a false dichotomy. Evolution has shaped us so that we don’t spend a long time reflecting if we see a snake in our bed. Nor do we make snap decisions about how to build a house that snakes can’t slither into.
There’s a wonderful book about this, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. I highly recommend it.
4. What is most important in life for you?
To be useful to society and to remain a good person.
5. What brings you the greatest joy?
Simple family moments. Like when we’re driving somewhere together. Someone starts fooling around and singing, and everyone starts to sing along. And no one can stop until we’ve sung a whole bunch of songs. And everyone is filled with love and happiness.
6. What saddens you the most?
The unwillingness of so many people to think, the inability to understand basic cause-and-effect relationships. Every time someone tells me something like, “Corruption doesn’t affect my life,” or “Even if those ones have had their fill of stealing, the new ones will just start stealing all over again,” I think: how did it happen that hundreds of millions of years of evolution gave this person an extraordinary brain, yet they don’t use it?
7. What, in your opinion, brings the greatest of evils to individuals and to humanity?
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” A phrase attributed to many people, although no one knows exactly who actually said it (I checked). It is astonishingly accurate. The hypocrisy of neutrality, of being “apolitical,” of stepping aside, all of which mask laziness, cowardice, and moral corruption, is the main reason why a small group of well-organized wrongdoers has dominated millions throughout human history.
8. And what brings the greatest good?
Taking part in the battle of good against neutrality.
9. Which art form affects you most strongly?
I love literature and consider myself knowledgeable about it. I love cinema, music, and architecture, though I don’t know that much about them. As for the remaining art forms, I’ll diplomatically say that I respect them.
But literature affects me most strongly. After all, it works through your own imagination. What could be more powerful than that?
10. Do you have a favourite quote or maxim? If so, which?
I don’t just have a favourite maxim. I have a favourite maxim that contains the word ‘maxim’: Act only in accordance with that maxim which could be a universal law.
This is one of the formulations of Kant’s moral law.
It is very similar to the famous ‘Golden Rule’ from the Bible (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you). The biblical version is gentler; the Kantian one, it seems to me, is more demanding in its responsibility – and it’s the one I choose.
Following either of these rules is very difficult, but it is something one must strive for.
11. Which book that you’ve read has been the most important to you?
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Reading it at the age of 10 or 11, I realized that books are not always only boring and educational, but there are also those you can’t put down, and that make you laugh on every page. And I began to read. I always feel sorry for people who don’t read books – most likely they were unlucky in childhood and the right book never fell into their hands.
12. Is there a person, either past or present, whom you consider a role model?
There have been, and still are, so many good people – brave, great, kind, intelligent – that choosing just one would be a disservice to oneself.
13. What is Russia for you today?
It is a place where I understand everyone and feel at home. It is a country where people speak my language and where my people live.
I am capable of separating the country from the government, so even in these turbulent times, I love Russia no less than I always have.
Source: Facebook
17 February 2026
At my favourite antique market in Shoreditch, you sometimes come across items that leave you completely baffled as to how they could possibly have ended up in London.
I’ve already told the story of how I once bought the famous German leaflet “Russian soldier, surrender!” there (followed by the classic line about the commissar’s face asking to be hit with a brick). I puzzled over it for a long time and came up with a hypothesis. Perhaps some Red Army soldier surrendered carrying that pass and, later in emigration, carefully preserved his ‘ticket to a new life’ until his death.
This time, the task proved even harder. Look at the bottom right corner. You see a bust of Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, ceremonial head of state of the USSR. How did this secondary leader end up in England? Who would have thought to drag an irrelevant nobody out of the USSR?
Moreover, the bust is dated 1923, when Kalinin was only a candidate member of the Politburo. If anyone were to be brought over, it would have been Lenin, Trotsky, or at least Zinoviev. But who on earth cares about this scoundrel?
The seller said that he bought the bust at a garage sale. He had no idea who it is.
The only explanation I can think of is that in the 1920s some delegation of the British proletariat travelled to the USSR, and there they were all given ideological souvenirs. Some junior member of the delegation received the junior leader. And then it collected dust in a cupboard for a hundred years, until later generations decided to de-clutter.
What do you think of that theory?
Source: Facebook
Translated by Oscar Seecharan and Annabel Pedgley
