12-16 December 2025
by Boris Akunin
Source: Facebook
12 December 2025
12 December is Onshi Day
To the Japanese, an ‘onshi’ is a teacher you are connected to by a debt of gratitude. You are obligated to congratulate him on his birthday and express your appreciation.
I congratulate and appreciate you.
Dear Nikolai Mikhailovich, most honored sensei, Happy Birthday!
Karamzin (1766-1826) laid out the writing path I have followed; I have moved from milestone to milestone, trying not to stray.
1. Begin with romanticism and sentimentalism (Erast and poor Liza). Done
2. Entice as many trusting readers as possible with your fictional compositions. Done
3. Then up and dump on your audience—which has absolutely no interest in the past—a big fat History of the Russian State. Done
Let them curse, just so they take an interest in history. Because whoever does not know the past will never reach the future.
The only thing I decided not to learn from Karamzin-sensei was reverence for autocracy. Two hundred years have passed, after all. Today, autocracy is a shameful anachronism.
I keep recalling a legend—whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. Supposedly, on 14 December 1825, Nikolai Mikhailovich went to Senate Square to observe living history and was very upset that the young officers, all readers of his books, had drawn from them perfectly disloyal conclusions. He came down with a bad cold, got very sick, and never did recover.
But that’s what history is like. It teaches the meek one thing and the bold another.
Each of us probably has onshi of our own. Speak well of them today.
(A page from My Calendar)
Source: Facebook
13 December 2025
MY LONG TEXT AND A BRIEF READER’S COMMENT
Today, Facebook reminds me of a post of mine, written exactly 11 years ago, immediately following my last trip to Russia. In it, I attempted to analyze the past and predict the future. Evidently, this text was important to me at the time.
Now, as I reread my own arguments, I have the strange feeling that they’re lacking something.
I found the answer in one of the first reader’s comments under that text. The reader was more perspicacious than I.
But first my text; the comment later.
And so, written on 13 December 2014:
‘Now, on the latest anniversary of the 2011 December rallies, many participants in the event are recalling that time. One tries to make sense of it, another to explain it, yet another to condemn it. No one tries to vindicate themselves. I’m going to try to fill this lacuna. I’m going to try to vindicate myself, that is, speak about myself rather than others: why I acted one way and not another. And what I think about that today.
In September 2011, after the tandem arranged their own ingenious ‘castling’ and the country showed no particular interest in the maneuver, I told myself, Well, we know what comes next. The evolutionary ladder is long, and you can’t skip rungs on it. The demand for democracy in Russia has yet to mature. Evidently, the country is going to have to pass through the stage of Putin’s dictatorship-for-life; the nation’s leader’s health is better than mine, and he is obviously going to live longer.
I drew the practical conclusion. I left, in a sour but generally calm mood. The logic was obvious. The majority of my fellow citizens were prepared to put up with this political system; I wasn’t. So let the majority of my fellow citizens keep their Putin, but I declined, now that I had that opportunity. I could write my texts anywhere I liked.
On 5 December 2011, I wasn’t in Moscow. I didn’t properly understand how or why what happened on Chistye Prudy happened. I remember experiencing two powerful emotions at the time: dismay and joy. I’d been wrong. Wrong! Things were better than I’d imagined! There were lots of people who wanted to live in a normal country! They were trying to change something and not shamefully be a part of this.
I returned, and I took part—to the extent of my notions of what was right. I made no attempt to be a movement leader because that’s a horse of a different color, but I did talk with the leaders a lot, trying to convince them, to influence their decisions (not very successfully).
Those who accuse me of appeasement and spinelessness are quite right. In some French discussion, the writer Prilepin berated me: if you’d led us to the Kremlin then, I would have been the first to follow you. (True, I don’t know what Prilepin would have done in a seized Kremlin. Fire the Tsar-Cannon on Barvikha?) But I did not lead the writer Pelevin to the Kremlin. The one time I ever led anyone anywhere, with other writers, was on the ‘Writers Stroll’, the purpose of which was also definitely appeasement: to bring the police to their senses so that they would stop chasing Muscovites down the streets of their own city.
I’ve written this on my blog before and am repeating it now: I’m a velvet evolutionary, I’m an enemy of revolution, I’m a COUNTERrevolutionary. From my point of view, the idea of the whole ‘white ribbon movement’ was to put pressure on the authoritarian regime, to force it to gradually reject authoritarianism—first in oppositionist Moscow, then in the big cities with a large middle class, and after that everywhere. If it worked, I reasoned, then the transition to democracy in Russia would come about smoothly and relatively painlessly. Everyone would stay alive and well and even—except for the unmitigated thieves and scoundrels—free.
I honestly admit, I wasn’t terribly frightened by the onset of reaction in the years 2012-2013. This was an utterly predictable setback. I was certain that in the end the regime’s instinct for self-preservation would kick in and the Kremlin would start pulling back after it realized that ‘screw-tightening’ is a dead end.
In December of the previous year, when Khodorkovsky, the girls from Pussy Riot, and the Greenpeacers were released, I told people I knew with a proud look: There, you see, and you were so despondent. It had finally reached the slow-witted Putin that this was the only way he was going to age peacefully. Now he was going to be strutting at the Olympics in front of the whole world and basking in universal attention. He didn’t sink 50 billion into it for nothing. Then he would show mercy: in February he’d release the ‘Bolotnaya’s’, sentencing them to time served. After that would come elections to the Moscow City Duma, in which the democrats, more than likely, would triumph. And little by little, we’d start moving. Step by step, onward and upward.
But Yanukovych got thrown out in Kyiv, and the Russian ruler had a panic attack. He started trying to recoup his losses, constantly raising the stakes, and infected the whole country with his paranoia. The age-old plot about the role of the individual in history. If the individual is crappy, it’s crappy for the country.
Three months before, also in September, I had left again—in a much heavier mood than in 2011.
With the awareness I’d done it all wrong. I’d believed in something I shouldn’t have. I’d taken what I desired for what was real. White ribbons are only good for weddings…
Of course, I can console myself with the fact that in fall 2011 I did explain everything correctly to myself. There’s no skipping rungs on this ladder. The majority of Russians right now couldn’t care less about democracy. There is going to be a dictatorship-for-life. True, the life span of this lifelong pleasure is predicted to be substantially shorter than in 2011, but even that doesn’t appease me. Because three years ago there was a hypothetical chance of evolution, whereas now that’s over. Now there’s only hardcore.
It’s too late to call for caution. The doors are shut, basically.
All that’s left is to guess what the next stop is going to be. There’s a branching off ahead toward three stations, and the train could turn onto any of them.
The stations are Lubyanka, Biryulevo, and Revolution Square.
From my point of view, this is like choosing among drawing-and-quartering, burning at the stake, or the firing squad. Given that choice, I naturally prefer the firing squad.
True, theoretically there is also the emergency switch. But only theoretically’.
[By ‘Biryulevo’ I apparently meant a nationalist sabbath—the kind of riots they once had in Biryulevo, I don’t remember now].
And a reader’s laconic comment under all this:
‘There’s also the Airport station’.
Most of the people on my friend-feed did eventually take that route.
Source: Facebook
16 December 2025
Today it is two years since the day my books were banned in Russia.
I’ve reread the text I published at the time and wouldn’t change anything today.
I’m repeating it without cuts. And adding a postscript.
15 December 2023:
‘Dear Russian readers, It looks like you and I are going our separate ways.
When the war began, many tried to convince me to stop publishing books in the aggressor country. My position was this: I’m not going to part with my readers of my own will; I distinguish between Russia the bad state and Russia the good country. Meanwhile, in the public sphere I’m going to say and write what I think is right.
That is what I’ve done.
I had no intention of commenting on the provocation set up by Putin’s con men. Fooling a writer is no great achievement. If there’s one thing that rabble can do, it’s deceive.
In a conversation with clowns pretending to be Ukrainians I said the same thing I say and write publicly:
— I consider the Putin regime criminal.
— I consider the war it unleashed criminal.
— I consider the actions of the Russian army criminal.
— Putin’s defeat will be Russia’s victory.
— Russia will not be free unless it ‘de-Muscovizes’, that is, transforms itself into a genuine federation.
— Ukraine has the right to answer blow for blow.
— I have helped, am helping, and will help Ukrainians.
(As to me allegedly agreeing with the thesis that ‘a good Russian is a dead Russian’, that’s hogwash, of course. As usual for this rabble, they cherry-picked, fudged, and rearranged what I said. To hell with them.)
Today, though, AST publishers, which has published most of my books in Russia, announced that it is ‘halting’ the publication and distribution of my books. And this I can no longer ignore, inasmuch as the matter affects not the niche audience of FSB conmen but my many Russian readers.
Evidently, ‘My Calendar,’ which has been printed, will not be coming out in Russia. The 10 volumes of my ‘History of the Russian State,’ devoted to the Lenin-Stalin period, evidently will not be coming out in Russia. My fictional novel ‘Moscow-Xinjiang,’ which accompanies the 10 volumes, is written and evidently will not be coming out in Russia.
This just means these books will be published somewhere that is free. And you’ll be able to buy them in electronic form on my author website BAbook. Thank you, Putinoids, for the publicity.
Dear Russian readers, If we are saying goodbye, then it’s only for a while—as long as you remain under the dictatorship’s power.
Until we meet again! Very soon, I hope.
Sincerely yours
Grigory Chkhartishvili (Boris Akunin)’.
P.S.
15 December 2025:
Any meeting of mine with Russian readers is unlikely to come soon, but nothing in the rest has changed. White is still white, black black. The good people are even better, the bad even worse.
All my books have been successfully published and new ones written. Life on earth is tough but interesting.
Source: Facebook
Translated by Marian Schwartz
