Igor Pomerantsev: The BBC, and Daniel Defoe, helped me understand democracy
The poet and veteran broadcaster Igor Pomerantsev has been living in Prague since the mid-1990s, when his station, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, moved to the Czech capital. Born in Russia but raised in Ukraine, Pomerantsev left the Soviet Union at the end of his 20s after being accused of circulating “anti-Soviet literature”. He and his family later settled in London, where he worked for the Russian section of the BBC World Service. I spoke to Igor Pomerantsev, who is today 76, at our studios in the Czech capital.
You were born in Russia but grew up in Ukraine. What were the circumstances of your departure from the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1970s?
“I really was born in Russia, in Saratov. Saratov is a city on the Volga River. My Ukrainian friends say to me that this is the only black spot in my biography.
“But, I have an alibi. My father was a military correspondent, so the family left one place for another and actually I was brought up in Ukraine.
“The circumstances of my emigration were dramatic, because I faced a bad relationship with the KGB.”
“I freely speak Ukrainian, I freely read Ukrainian, but I write in Russian.
“In a way, in modern terms, I could say that [laughs] I was a child of Russian imperialism, because of mixture of languages, mixture of inner borders in the Soviet Union.
“So it was quite logical for me to be a kind of rolling stone, although the circumstances of my emigration in 1978 were, I would say, dramatic, because I faced a bad relationship [laughs] with the KGB.”
Because you were caught possessing or circulating “anti-Soviet” literature, is that the case?
“Yes, it sounds very formal, from the law point of view, but in reality it means that as a young writer I was interested to read any kind of literature, including forbidden literature.
“So we exchanged with my friends, it wasn’t circulation, you see…”
It wasn’t some samizdat network, or something?
“It was samizdat, but samizdat you could touch with your hands, you could type, even. So the word circulation would lead us far away from reality.
“The reality was that I was a young writer and I wanted to read. I was first in detention in ’76 for a couple of books. Among them was The Gulag Archipelago and another was a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. So even Nabokov, a kind of artist of literature, was treated by the KGB as a kind of illegal element.
“So ‘circulation’ was simply my thirst for reading.
“And we left. My son was 10 months old only and we left Kyiv, because I was very actively pushed.
“And here, there is a kind of nuance. It was possibly the first time in my biography when great Russian literature helped me not to be arrested.
“Because in Kyiv if I could be accused of Ukrainian nationalism they would tear me apart: seven years of camp and five years of inner exile.
“But as I was a Russian writer there was a kind of privilege. I don’t know exactly, but I suspect that to arrest me the Kyiv KGB had to ask permission in Moscow. And it was a kind of humiliation for them to ask permission [laughs].
“So in a way I left the Soviet Union almost against my will, but still choosing between being a hero dissident and writer, I chose to be a writer.”
You left with your family for London, where you worked for the Russian section of the BBC World Service. How was that experience, working for the BBC World Service?
“Our first stop was in West Germany, but after a year in Germany I found a job in London, at the BBC, because I graduated from the English department. So I was a perfect candidate for the BBC and they immediately took me.
“How was the job? It was the discovery of the world for me: the psychology, the politics of the world.
“I remember it was the very end of ’79 and the first job of mine was a translation of a feature about Daniel Defoe.
“I was shocked because [laughs] we were in the middle of the Cold War, a propaganda war, and I’m asked to translate an absolutely neutral, and very simple, feature about Daniel Defoe.
“I did it, properly. But thanks to this feature I understood the meaning of multi-culture and polyphony of voices.
“Because I translated different people who took part in the Daniel Defoe feature and they expressed their opinions; I think there was even one child speaking about Robinson Crusoe.
“And thanks to this – from my point of view – senseless feature I understood what the polyphony of democracy is.
“Usually in the Soviet Union radio gave monologues and here I understood that the BBC was the embodiment of acoustic democracy.
“And it was a good lesson. Now, looking back, I should accept that Daniel Defoe helped me to understand what democracy is.”
And now you’ve been working in radio for 45 or so years. After the BBC World Service you joined Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and when the station moved from Munich to Prague in the mid-1990s you also moved here to Prague. Once a Ukrainian told me who told me his nation regarded the Czechs as Germans who became more Slavic with every drink they took. How have you found living among the Czechs for the last 30 years almost?
“You know, I travelled a lot after emigration. It was not just an interest, or curiosity; later I understood that it was a kind of neurosis.
“I needed to get used to breaking state borders, because in the Soviet Union, you can’t go abroad [laughs].
“For me every time I crossed state borders in Europe I felt very nervous. So it was a kind of vaccination for geographical freedom for me.
“I imagined a psychological map of Western Europe. I knew, for instance, that I like London, because it’s not aggressive. And I don’t feel comfort in Paris, because Paris is aggressive.
“So I came to the Czech Republic and I felt relaxed, because it’s not aggressive, at all.
“There is one more point which is very important for me. I was brought up in Czernowitz, or Chernivtsi, it’s the former Austria Empire, and I studied at a university built according to plans by Josef Hlávka, an Austrian-Czech architect.
“And I came here and I live in Kateřinská St., not far from a maternity hospital which was also designed by Josef Hlávka.
“So in a way I’m in a zone of retrospective nostalgia [laughs] for the Austrian Empire.
“And, I’ll tell you more. I projected to die in Trieste, because it’s a good projection I think: Czernowitz – Austria, Prague – Austria, and to die on the beach in a former Austrian place, Trieste.
“But unfortunately Brexit, and personally Boris Johnson [laughs], spoiled my death. I can’t now live more than 180 days in European Union countries.
“Brexit, and personally Boris Johnson, spoiled my death.”
“And imagine, I go to Trieste and I have 180 days, but that’s not enough for me to die. So I should go back somewhere, to Prague or to London; I’m British, by the way. I’d be delaying and delaying my death.
“But Prague is my place, in my retrospective nostalgia…
“In a way Czernowitz is a small place, but it is one of the literary capitals of the German-speaking world, because between the two world wars great Austrian German poets used to live there, such as Paul Celan, who later committed suicide in Paris.
“It was a kind of literary magnet for me. And 15 years, I was one of the founders, actually it was my idea to start a poetry festival in Czernowitz, to bring back poetry to Czernowitz, because it was a motherland of great poets.”
Is it the case that you’ve also been holding this festival since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine began? Is it still going on?
“Yes, it’s running. And Czernowitz is a kind of golden boy, in a way, because it was never, till now [as of 14.11.2024] – cross my fingers – been bombarded by the Russians.
“We go on, because poetry usually, in times of peace, is a kind of very small sect; it has a very small audience.
“During wars, revolutions, poetry starts playing a public role. It’s a spirit of resistance, it’s a kind of ersatz of freedom, of resistance, of independence.”
“But during wars, revolutions, poetry starts playing another role, a public role. It’s a spirit of resistance, it’s a kind of ersatz of freedom, of resistance, of independence.
“So now I think poetry in Czernowitz plays even more of a role during the war than before.”
You’re a well-known poet as well as a broadcaster and you write in Russian. Has the Russian aggression towards Ukraine impacted in some way on your attitude to the Russian language?
“It’s a complicated question. By the way, it has grounds, I am not unique.
“For instance, James Joyce. He was Irish and his relationship with English was vulnerable.
“Actually in his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man there is even a passage when his hero speaks to a cleric, who is English, and they discuss two words, very small words from everyday life, and suddenly the hero feels the cleric is an owner of the English language, and he is secondary towards the cleric.
“At the end of the novel, James Joyce goes back to the issue and his hero says, OK, but I will express my Irish soul and search for freedom in English.
“My son [Peter Pomerantsev] is a British writer. He writes in English. And once in his essay I read that he feels some burden, an imperial burden in the English language, and he feels some responsibility.
“So this feeling is characteristic and natural for sensitive writers. I don’t write detective stories or science fiction, where the language is not important.
“But for me, yes [laughs], I have a tension in my relationship with my mother tongue; Russian is my mother tongue.
“But still, look, historical precedents show us that the Nazis in Germany and great German writers co-existed, but they co-existed in different cosmoses.
“So I live in another cosmos. But when I visit Ukraine, and I’ve already run 15 festivals there and taken part as a poet, and mostly, especially in the last three years, I perform in Ukrainian.
“Fortunately my Ukrainian is good enough, but still the war bites everybody, and it’s very painful, because reading my poems in Ukrainian translation I feel like I don’t enjoy it as much as I could reading in my mother tongue.
“But still it’s a gesture of solidarity with Ukraine, with the Ukrainian language, and I’m so happy that in my childhood I studied Ukrainian – I never avoided lessons of Ukrainian – and I read hundreds of adventure books mostly [laughs] in Ukrainian.
“I mastered Ukrainian, so in my attitude I was absolutely open, there was not a touch of Russian imperial attitude towards Ukraine or Ukrainian culture or the Ukrainian language.”
The poor Ukrainian people look destined to lose a significant part of their territory. It’s hard to imagine from today’s perspective that that wouldn’t happen. But looking to the future, do you think that other countries have a real reason to fear Russian expansionism?
“Look, the question is deeper, more profound. There are cultures where death is prevailing.
“Russia is a champion in killing themselves and others. First of all I speak about the Gulag, where we’re speaking about millions of victims – not outside, but inside.
“Plus, and I think almost nobody mentions it, in Russia there was a civil war, after the so-called revolution, approximately between 1918 and 1921, 1922, 1923 – it’s not exact, you can’t put a dot.
“Russia is a champion in killing themselves and others.”
“And it’s a unique war for Europe as well. A civil war where nine million people died, most of them civilians. It’s a kind of public, open suicide.
“So what I’m speaking about, there are cultures where death is prevailing. For instance, Aztec culture: it was based on blood and sacrifices of people.
“So if we speak about this from the metaphysical point of view, Russia loves death, though of course there are people who hate it.
“And by the way the war between Russia and Ukraine is a war between death and thirst for life, and Ukrainians have showed that they love life.
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“One of Solzhenitsyn’s novels is Cancer Ward and in a way it’s a metaphor [laughs]. And what is the logic of cancer? To live it needs expansion, to extend, to take newer and newer territories.
“So answering metaphysically [laugh] your political question, I would say that the cancer is eager to extend.”
To end on a lighter note, you mentioned your son Peter Pomerantsev. Your own father was a journalist, you of course also a journalist and Peter is very successful, especially with his books in recent years. Is it gratifying for you to see him doing so well in the family business?
“You know [laughs], there was a tradition in the Middle Ages of giving a profession in a family, and taking a profession in a family, possessing the profession.
“It was quite logical and it was rational. Now in the modern world we don’t have it, but in a way genetically [laughs] still, not often but sometimes, it works.
"The war between Russia and Ukraine is a war between death and thirst for life, and Ukrainians have showed that they love life."
“Yes, my son Peter, he is a British writer; his mother tongue is English.
“He writes non-fiction and I think he took a lesson from me that poetry is hopeless, that if you write poems you are doomed to a very narrow circle of readers.
“Although he’s artistically sensitive and in his non-fiction there are strong elements of fiction: the history of the family, for instance, his memoirs about schools in England and in Munich.
“But still [laughs] he chose something much more practical than poetry.
“And in all of our conversations, by Messenger, I remind him, Peter, please at sometimes read poems – otherwise your language in your non-fiction would be from veneer, half-dead.
“So we have professional relationship and in a way my wife, Lina, and I are the first readers of his drafts of his books. And [laughs] he appreciates our remarks and comments.”
Just curious, do you speak English or Russian together?
“His Russian is very good. Very good. He worked in Moscow for a long period of time in entertainment television, so his Russian is good.
“He told me a story. In Moscow he got a wild taxi and the driver spoke to him and in the end the driver said, Oh, you are not ours.
“And Peter thought, God, he thinks that I’m a spy. But the driver said, You are from Yaroslavl [laughs].
“Yaroslavl, you know, is not far from Moscow. So yes, my medieval family [laughs] functions simultaneously archaic and very modern.
“I write vers libr, without rhyme, and until now it’s a rare phenomenon in Russian literature, in Russia poetry.
“I am presently 76, but paradoxically [laughs] I am treated as avant- gardist, and I know why – because I work in an archaic literature.”
