A BILLIONAIRE banker has locked horns with a poor left-wing writer in a rare public debate over social division in crisis-hit Russia, revealing growing antagonism within its ostensibly controlled society.
The debate, which quickly spread over the internet but has not been reported on state-controlled mainstream television, has evoked memories of pre-1917 Russia, where hatred between the ruling class and the poor sparked a Communist revolution.
The
row started when Pyotr Aven, CEO of the country's largest privately owned bank Alfa, wrote a damning review of Sankya, a novel by Zakhar Prilepin, a member of a banned radical political party.
It tells how Sasha Tishin, a disillusioned young Russian from a provincial town, joins a radical party and leads an attack on a local administration headquarters. "Most of what one needs to hate in life, from my point of view, can be found in writer Prilepin's book," Aven wrote in the Russian Pioneer glossy magazine, which targets wealthy educated Russians and has a circulation of 20,000. He said the revolutionary views of the book's protagonist made him "reach for a pistol".
Tishin takes part in violent protests, fights with police, plots the killing of officials in Latvia, and is subjected to brutal torture by security agents.
"Why, instead of bringing order – planting a tree, building a house, washing socks or reading a fairytale to a child – does one need to engage in do nothing, then after a good booze, taking up a club and smashing everything?" Aven wrote.
After eight boom years, Russia is plunging into an economic crisis that threatens to shatter the fragile stability fostered by Vladimir Putin with the help of buoyant oil revenues, compliant state media and heavy-handed police.
Little noticed when it was first published by niche publisher Ad Marginem two years ago, the book's sales jumped to 35,000 this year. Rights have been sold to Poland, France, Serbia, China and Turkey.
Prilepin opposes the "social Darwinism" that has split Russia. About 21 million Russians, 15% of the population, live below the poverty line of £105 per month. He responded to Aven's comments by saying he had been working hard, selling over 100,000 copies of his books, while raising three children and paying taxes.
"I do not understand what else I should do to be able to buy a flat because we do not fit in the one we have," Prilepin wrote in Ogonyok magazine, which has a circulation of 70,000. He said his family had been living in a tiny apartment in Nizhny Novgorod, hometown of early 20th-century writer Maxim Gorky.
"The ghost of poverty is still lurking in front of me, it has not gone so far away that I cannot sense its sickening smell," wrote Prilepin. He said he and his family had sometimes been forced to eat fried cabbage for months to survive.
Some book reviewers have likened Prilepin to Gorky, who was often called "a thunderbird of the Revolution" for books like 1907's The Mother, about a factory worker who becomes a revolutionary. "Russia is on the brink of the social revolution and such a revolution is badly needed," a skinny, clean-shaven Prilepin said in a Moscow café.
With Russia's rich-poor divide brought into focus by the oil bonanza, there is widespread hatred of billionaires such as Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club, and market reformers like Aven, who was part of Russia's first reformist government in 1991-2 and, this year, was 29th in Forbes magazine's list of richest Russians.
Prilepin served in police special forces, fought in Chechnya, and then worked as a crime reporter before becoming a writer. "The difference between me and Aven is basic – in case of a crisis, he and his family can leave this country," Prilepin wrote in the Russian Life magazine, referring to Aven's properties abroad.
Aven, bespectacled and fast-talking, said the reaction to his book review took him by surprise. "It was like a letter from a world which is totally unknown. I can understand that reaction perfectly well – the outrageous behaviour of the rich showing off their wealth."
