Titre : On the disadvantage of being Russian
Auteur.ice : Diana Filipova
Edit: I read
Publication date: January 8, 2025
Genre of the book: Essay
There are nationalities, names, which are more difficult to bear than others, which carry their share of ghosts, myths, torments. The Russian word is definitely part of it, whether through the impossibility for a foreigner to precisely define what this Russian soul is, or through the fear, disgust, or hatred that this word, negatively charged by its cohort of suffering and death weighs on the person who owns it.
On the disadvantage of being Russian by Diana Filippova is first and foremost the story of a quest, that of a Russia that never existed, except in novels and lands of exile, but it is also a way of responding to the following paradoxes, those of being born into the illusion of grandeur and carrying the fall in one’s body, of revolting against one’s origins and constantly bumping into them, of seeking refuge in politics and finding it in the writing. It’s the story of a Russian woman who, since her childhood, decided not to be a Russian anymore. It is the story of a French writer who reconnects with the wonders and vices of a heritage living in books as in her life.
-If the author tells us about her journey towards the path of emancipation in relation to her origins, if she describes how very quickly she was asked to position herself in relation to different current issues linked to Russia, the The appeal of this essay comes from the fact that its experience can easily be transposed to other nationalities or ethnic origins. If the word Russian has a very negative connotation in our society because it has evoked war on the European continent since 2022, we can easily imagine the difficulties encountered by many people around the world when we reduce them to a nationality, a color of skin or religion.
How to be free, how to define ourselves, by criteria that are dear to us, elements that are not imposed on us by society, these are, through the Russian example, the fundamental themes that are mentioned in From the disadvantage of being Russian, a book that we recommend.
