The event in Moscow opened with a solemn presentation on stage of 3 flags by honor guard soldiers.
Firstly, the head of the Union of Russian Writers (URW) is Vladimir Medinsky, an assistant to President Putin. He is apparently a man of diverse talents, as he has tried his hand as a historian, diplomat (as head of the Russian delegation in several rounds of not very successful Istanbul negotiations with Ukraine), and writer: Medinsky is the author of the historical-adventure novel "The Wall." Since February of this year, when he was elected head of the URW, Medinsky has become, in a way, the main official writer of Russia. And since where Medinsky is, there are usually the next "masterpieces" of propaganda, his multifaceted activities are typically actively commented on, including by the online community.
Secondly, the atmosphere in which the current congress took place was so overtly Soviet-nostalgic even by today's standards that it was hard not to notice. To start with, the event opened with a solemn presentation on stage by honor guard soldiers (!) of three flags – Russia, the URW, and the Union of Writers of the USSR, which the organization led by Medinsky unequivocally considers itself the heir to.
However, not by ideology alone. The issue of "inheritance rights" was arguably one of the most important topics of the congress – and in an absolutely material sense, measurable in square meters and millions of rubles. As Medinsky reported to the delegates, "The Union has been returned important properties (belonging to the Union of Writers of the RSFSR and the USSR): the Central House of Literature (CDL), the House of the Rostovs, the Writers' Bookstore, Peredelkino, the building at Komsomolsky, 13, and in Koktebel, the URW received the entire complex of the Creative House – about 40 properties." The "gift" from Koktebel, located in the annexed Crimea, was brought by a man with an unconventional biography: URW member Dmitry Tabachnik, who was previously the head of the administration of the President of Ukraine (under Leonid Kuchma), and later the Deputy Prime Minister under Viktor Yanukovych, who fled Ukraine after his ousting and was stripped of citizenship of that country in 2023, which he quickly replaced with Russian citizenship.
The congress was preceded by "art preparation" in pro-Kremlin media. For instance, "Komsomolskaya Pravda" proclaimed that Vladimir Medinsky "managed to solve tasks in just six months that had not been addressed throughout the post-Soviet period." At the same time, it launched a diatribe against writers who left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine:
Where are all these yesterday's "rulers of thoughts": Ulytsky, Rubins, Dmitry Bykovs, Akunins, Glukhovskys, marked like Gorbachev's birthmark with the Cain's seal of betrayal? They are all there, in the West, cowardly closing themselves off from the fabricated "Russian threat" with their own "iron curtain." But the "fungus" remains here and occasionally releases toxic and foul miasmas to the surface – especially when it senses encroachment on its accustomed places of comfortable "feeding."
In the CDL and other similar venues, it seems that only those permitted by the Kremlin and Vladimir Medinsky will now be able to "feed." "We are starting to think about how to restore order in Peredelkino," shared the head of the URW about future plans. The delegates of the congress responded with synchronized applause.
