Artem Mozgovoy: "I wish I hadn't been born in Siberia, I wish I were French, British, or Catalan"

BarcelonaThe last time the Russian writer Artem Mozgovoy (Kemerovo, 1985) left his mother's house, he destroyed all his childhood and youth diaries. "I didn't want to leave them and I couldn't take them with me. It was very sad, because all those notebooks contained my loves and heartbreaks, the good and bad things I had experienced up to then," explains Mozgovoy. Paradoxically, that gesture would give birth some time later to his first novel, Spring in Siberia, which was originally published in English in 2023 and has now arrived in bookstores in Catalan from Comanegra with a translation by Jordi Martín Lloret. Once settled in another country, when he already felt "safe, a new man", Mozgovoy began to dig into his memory.

The writer reconnected with his icy childhood in Siberia, walking to school every day for more than half an hour in 30-degree-below-zero temperatures and spending hours at home, in solitude, waiting for his parents to return from the factory. "It came out naturally: I rewrote the diaries in the form of a novel, because I felt I was telling it to someone else, to an invisible reader," he says. The novel accompanies his alter ego, Alexei, who was born in the year the Soviet Union began to die. The boy grows up in Taiga, where his parents are mobilized by the Russian government. "It was a conscious political plan to uproot entire populations. During the years of communism, hundreds of thousands of people were torn from their lands and replanted in places where they had no connection. When you cut these ties with the land, culture, and language, you turn citizens into subjects, and thus they are much easier to govern," reflects Mozgovoy.

In his case and that of the book's protagonist, he is the son of a woman from the Altai region. She belongs to a nomadic tribe connected with the Uighur population of China. "They have not only lost their language and culture, but also their understanding of themselves. They perceive themselves as Russians, even though it is written on their faces that they come from other cultures. They are peoples who were colonized two centuries ago and are still unaware of it," laments Mozgovoy, who is working on a new book about this history. Despite the parents' displacement, the protagonist feels he belongs to the Taiga and, at the same time, this fact fills him with contradictions. "I wish I hadn't been born in Siberia, I wish I were French, or British, or Catalan. But even if I don't want to, my roots are there," he emphasizes.

The book is full of memories linked to the icy winters of those lands, to ski lessons at school, and to inhospitable and breathtaking landscapes. "I cannot spend the winter without snow and without cold. When the year ends, I feel that everything must be put on hold, because that is what happens there. Little by little, life slows down, freezes, and turns white so that renewal is possible in the spring," reflects the author. In the novel, Alexei feels like a stranger at school and cannot share this feeling with anyone, because his parents work all day at the factory and he spends his hours at home, "in silence with books and thoughts".

A "cruel and hypocritical" system

Mozgovoy says he feels "lucky" to have lived for a time under communism and also to have experienced living under capitalism. "All of this has shaped my understanding of capital and how humans relate to it. I have no illusions about anything, neither communism nor capitalism. The former attacks your body, the latter attacks your soul," he points out. In the novel, he reflects the collective misery of the communist system and how the transition was experienced with an hope that was quickly cut short. "I look at Putin's government and I see that the administration of the communist regime is still there. I don't have many good things to say about them. It's a cruel and hypocritical system, based on lies," the writer states.

One of the main axes of Spring in Siberia is the protagonist's sexual awakening, the realization of his homosexuality, and the love story with a classmate, Andrei. "It was a traumatic and beautiful experience. We discovered love when we were teenagers and had to face its consequences. Two boys being together in a very homophobic country was a dangerous scenario. We immediately suffered for it," explains Mozgovoy. His departure from the country, in fact, is largely linked to the prohibition of homosexuality in Russia. Since 2004, the writer had tried to leave the country unsuccessfully. For a few years, he worked as a journalist "trying to make peace with Russia," at the same time that politically the law against homosexuality began to be applied.

"In 2011, they decreed the national law. The atmosphere was becoming increasingly toxic and violent," recalls the writer. That year also saw the large anti-government demonstrations in Moscow. "On national television, during prime time, they spoke of false crimes committed by homosexuals. Everything kept getting worse," he says. As an attempt to oppose it, the first Gay Pride was organized in Russia in the spring of 2011. "I remember men and women dressed elegantly, with nothing extravagant, walking through Moscow with signs demanding respect. I was at my mother's house, in Siberia, watching the broadcast. When I saw the blood in the streets, I knew I had to leave the country," he explains. Based in Belgium, 2021 was the last time he set foot on Russian territory. "I would love to go back and see my mother, but I've done many illegal things that prevent me from doing so: from speaking out against Putin's government to giving money and being a volunteer in the war in Ukraine," concludes the writer.