{"id":606642,"date":"2024-05-01T15:35:25","date_gmt":"2024-05-01T19:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=606642"},"modified":"2025-06-25T10:46:53","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T14:46:53","slug":"review-spring-2024-dmitry-bykov-satirizing-putin-606642","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/review-spring-2024-dmitry-bykov-satirizing-putin-606642\/","title":{"rendered":"Dmitry Bykov: Satirizing Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The dissident Russian writer is a visiting scholar at Rochester.<\/h2>\n

Russian poet, journalist, professor, and literary critic Dmitry Bykov is no stranger to the power of words. His satirical poems and sharp\u00a0<\/span>political commentaries\u2014often aimed squarely at Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2014did not amuse their subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Russian officials hardly know my novels,\u201d says Bykov, who arrived in January as the Humanities Center<\/a>\u2019s Scholar in Exile. \u201cBut some lines from Citizen Poet<\/i> were well-known among Russian elites,\u201d he says of actor Mikhail Efremov\u2019s performance of his satirical verses. \u201cThey used to visit our performances and my lectures, which was fashionable in late 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n

The center created the Scholar in Exile<\/a> program last year with funding from its own resources as well as from the School of Arts & Sciences<\/a>. The idea behind the program is twofold\u2014to demonstrate a commitment to global academic freedom and to bring prominent and endangered scholars into the campus community where they can work directly with students.<\/p>\n

Despite his many hats, Bykov sees himself as a poet first\u2014in Russia, a vocation likened to \u201ca prophet, a pillar of civic disobedience, the best kind of lover, whomever we\u2019d like him to be,\u201d as Bykov told the\u00a0Los Angeles Review of Books <\/i><\/a>in 2016. <\/i>Known for his wit and charm, he was so popular that people would line up to pay admission to his public lectures on literature.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet, as a radio and television personality and one of Russia\u2019s most outspoken public intellectuals, Bykov hit a sore spot. Running afoul of the Kremlin is what ultimately drew him out of Russia and to the United States.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bykov\u2019s woes came to a head in April 2019 during a domestic flight to the western Russian city of Ufa. En route to a public lecture, he suddenly fell violently ill, eventually losing consciousness, and slipping into a coma.\u00a0Five days later, he awoke in the intensive care unit of a specialized neurological clinic in Moscow with no doubt in his mind that he had been poisoned.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are typical bureaucrats and feel danger only if you participate in some organized activities,\u201d he says of the Russian government. Back in 2012, Bykov had been a member of the now-defunct Russian Opposition Coordination Council that had tried to plan strategies for opposing Putin\u2019s regime. Clearly that membership had been deemed organized enough. Subsequently, he was banned from appearing on radio or television, fired from universities and two editorial offices, including the newspaper Kommersant<\/i>, well known for its liberal, independent views.<\/p>\n

The council\u2019s roster\u2014which also included Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who died in prison in February in what Bykov describes as a murder\u2014soon became a checklist for Kremlin-directed secret operatives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe poisoners followed the list systematically,\u201d says Bykov, an admirer of Navalny who calls his role as a regime critic \u201cquite modest\u201d in comparison.<\/p>\n

Writing frequently about Russian and Soviet historic and contemporary figures and themes, Bykov is a well-known biographer of Russian stalwarts, such as authors Boris Pasternak,\u00a0Bulat Okudzhava,\u00a0and\u00a0Maxim Gorky. In 2005, he wrote How Putin Became President of the USA: New Russian Fairy Tales<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While his work has garnered a variety of Russian literary prizes, including the National Bestseller Prize, three Big Book awards, and the Strugatsky International Literature Prize, some of the titles alone have placed him directly in the Kremlin\u2019s crosshairs. In early 2022, right before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin declared him a foreign agent and many Russian booksellers pulled his works\u2014some 90 total, including novels, literary biographies, essays, and poetry collections\u2014off their shelves.<\/p>\n

Before his move to the United States in 2022, Bykov had held temporary visiting positions at American universities, including at UCLA and Princeton University. In 2022\u201323, he was a visiting critic at Cornell University\u2019s Institute for European Studies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bykov is now at Rochester as a visiting assistant professor in Russian<\/a> through the 2024\u201325 academic year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe is a huge figure in Russian culture, and it\u2019s something of a miracle that he\u2019s here in Rochester,\u201d says John Givens, a professor of Russian.<\/p>\n

This spring, Bykov is teaching courses in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, including Hard Labor, Exile, Prison: The Culture of Incarceration in Russia, and Nikolai Gogol and the Creation of Ukrainian Literature.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not every day that a student can take a class from someone who was poisoned by Vladimir Putin for using his status as a celebrated writer and the public performance of his writings as weapons,\u201d says Givens. \u201cThis is a powerful message to students\u2014the ability of art to speak truth to power, and the power of the individual to stand up to tyranny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most recently, Bykov wrote a literary biography about Ukraine\u2019s president Volodymyr Zelensky, VZ: Portrait Against the Background of the Nation <\/i>(Freedom Letters, 2023).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the fall, he will teach two courses: Russian Folklore: Ballads, Romances, Tales, Proverbs, Anecdotes and Poetics of Horror: Gothic, Thriller, and Suspense Stories. He also plans several public lectures.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Bykov is certain that one day he\u2019ll return to Russia, ideally splitting his time between the US and his homeland. Putin, he says, won\u2019t last. \u201cHe has no ideas for a new Russia.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once Putin is deposed\u2014whether by his inner circle, rebellion, or military defeat\u2014Bykov predicts brief turmoil, \u201cfollowed by a period of peaceful and fruitful development, and psychological recovery.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And that, he says, he can\u2019t wait to be part of.<\/p>\n

\n

This story was originally published in the spring 2024 issue of <\/em>Rochester Review, the magazine of the University of Rochester<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Russian poet, journalist, and literary critic is teaching and lecturing at Rochester as part of the Humanities Center’s Scholar in Exile program. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":942,"featured_media":616562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41112],"tags":[22172,19242,25132,1086,16072],"class_list":["post-606642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-magazine","tag-department-of-modern-languages-and-cultures","tag-global-engagement","tag-humanities-center","tag-languages","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDmitry Bykov: Satirizing Putin<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Russian poet, journalist, and literary critic Dmitry Bykov is teaching and lecturing at the University of Rochester.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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