Max Lawton (Slavic Dept. Ph.D. Candidate) translated Vladimir Sorokin’s essay “Vladimir Putin Sits Atop a Crumbling Pyramid of Power” for the Guardian (Feb. 27, 2022). Lawton’s translations of Sorokin’s novels Telluria and Their Four Hearts will be published this year.
“The perversity of the Pyramid of Power lies in the fact that he who sits at its peak broadcasts his psychosomatic condition to the country’s entire population. The ideology of Putinism is quite eclectic; in it, respect for the Soviet lies side by side with feudal ethics, Lenin sharing a bed with Tsarist Russia and Russian Orthodox Christianity.”
Photo: Max Lawton and Vladimir Sorokin