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Interview

Alexander Zinoviev

Alexander Zinoviev is a scientist, a writer, a painter, and a member of the Department of Ethics at Moscow State University. The author of many books analysing contemporary society, he was for over twenty years an exile in Germany, and became a German citizen. Now he has returned to Russia. This interview is by his colleague in the Department of Ethics, Professor Alexander Razin (a contributing editor of Philosophy Now).

Professor Zinoviev, you are well known to Western readers as the author of works which criticized the former Soviet regime in Russia. Your idea of ‘Homo Sovieticus’ has entered the contemporary political and philosophical lexicon. Why did you leave the Soviet Union, and why did you recently return to Russia?

I didn’t leave the Soviet Union of my own will. I was under the danger of arrest. Because of the publication of my work, in which I criticized certain Soviet party members (a crime at that time), I was threatened with seven years in prison and five years of banishment in camps after that.

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