Interview for Nuvol, digital cultural magazine in Catalan, published 17 June 2026:

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Comanegra publishes Primavera a Sibèria (Spring in Siberia), the novel in which Artem Mozgovoy recreates, as a form of catharsis, the story of his first love.

By Raquel Díaz Sánchez

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Reading "Spring in Siberia" means entering a Russia that is very different from the one that usually occupies the headlines, and far from the idea we might have of the old USSR. Away from legitimizing and political narratives, Russian writer Artem Mozgovoy reconstructs a childhood marked by poverty, homophobia, and the decomposition of the Soviet world through memory, poetry, and family bonds. 

 

In this conversation, we talk about the diaries he destroyed before going into exile, writing as a means of survival, the love that helped him recognize himself, and a tenderness for his mother and grandmother, who remain the emotional center of his life. But there is also room for poetry and for the recognition of our masters. For Federico, flowers, birds, and butterflies; for you, Artem, verses, stars, and words.

 

– I have read "Spring in Siberia." Why did you want to write this story?

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"I had been writing a diary — in fact, I still keep one — since I was eleven years old. It is something I do daily, and it truly helps me live a better life. But when I was about to leave Russia, and I knew I was leaving for good, I couldn’t take them all with me. Nor did I feel like leaving them there, because they were at my parents' house. So, I destroyed them.

 

When I settled in Europe and more or less found my place, all the ghosts from those diaries kept coming back to me. In a way, little by little, I found myself rewriting them. Therefore, basically, this book is a diary rewritten in the form of a novel. Everything is real, everything is my story: it’s my family, my grandmother, my first love, my hometown. I simply created this distance between myself and the protagonist I invented, Alexei, to allow me to look at my own life more objectively. It was very natural; it just came from within me."

 

– For me, writing is also very natural. I noticed that in your book you blend, in a way, the horror of the final stage of Soviet Russia with an immense tenderness, especially regarding the relationship with your mother and grandmother.

 

"Life works that way. There are terrible things that happen and you can't do anything about it. I am a small boat in this ocean full of events, within a broad socio-political and economic context that is beyond our control. 

 

But there are also a kind of anchors that keep my boat in the harbor. It is these small things, or big things in life, that help you keep going. And for me, those were my grandmother and my mother, and the books I read as a child and a teenager. Literature, poetry, and those two figures were everything to me."

 

– Writing was a safe space for you, from what I understood while reading your work. I would like to talk to you about this kind of survival through writing, with the diaries. Is it a form of resilience?

 

"You are right to say it is a survival method, a method for coping with reality. As a child, I realized that writing was essential after a difficult day at school, at home, or on the street. First, I started reading. I felt that books, stories, and poetry were comforting and helped me get through. Then, I also felt the need to express what I had inside. For me, this was a way to rid myself of my thoughts and emotions, and of anything that had affected me, impressed me, or left a mark. 

 

So I started writing. First a diary, then poetry, then journalistic articles, then short stories... In many ways, it is a healing practice that I always recommend to everyone. When I started, I sent my writings to a Russian writer, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, and asked her: 'Do you think my stories are worth anything? Do you think I should continue?'. 

 

And she replied: 'I believe everyone should write, because it is through writing that we learn how to think. We learn about ourselves and we learn about the world.' And I think she is right. When you transform your thoughts and emotions into words, a kind of alchemy takes place."

 

– So, you move between all this – poetry, journalism, short stories, narrative... But this book is a sort of autobiography. Do you think childhood memories transformed, in some way, the way you wrote this story?

 

"Yes, that is another reason why I called it 'fiction'. Because our childhood memories, and our memories in general, are highly unreliable. Sometimes, it is so hard to understand... Did I live through this? Did it really happen? Was that person this way or that way? Because of this, I think it is very bold to call a book a 'memoir', because you are asserting that all of it is absolutely true. 

 

If you asked my father, for instance, he would have a different story to tell about my childhood. Or if you asked my grandmother or my classmates, they would all have a different version. I am aware of this. But I also want to solidify my story, and add all this political and historical context. Because right now, in Russia, as in many other countries, there is a lot of manipulation of facts and reality."

 

– In fact, I didn't know so many things about post-Soviet Russia, and they impressed me deeply... I believe the way you wrote the book also brings a responsibility toward current knowledge about Russia, doesn't it?

 

"Yes, absolutely. Every public action, every gesture, requires you to be responsible. In any case, this is my experience, my version, my Russia, my family, my story. And I take full responsibility for what I say and the way I present it. Only time, I suppose, will show which version endures and who will be proven right. 

 

It is necessary to tell a story, for example, when it comes to the rights of LGBTQ+ people, because we do not have a single openly queer person in the public sphere in Russia. And the image transmitted by the official Russian state media portrays us in a horrific way: we are presented as criminals, as monsters, as rapists. 

 

I could not remain silent. I could not fail to respond to this. And I have, obviously, a position of privilege: I am abroad and I can write, so I give my response. Thus, when I speak to you or to another journalist in the West, or perhaps someday in the future in Russia, these versions, these pages, will be evidence, they will be a counterargument to everything the Russian media says."

 

– Yes, I understand that this is your way of seeking justice, a counter-narrative.

In the book you explain that your first love changed you. How did it do that?

 

"Many people in oppressive regimes, like the Russian one, never have the opportunity to make their intimacy public, or they never take it. They spend their whole lives living a lie: they get married, they have children, they make a career, and all the while their authentic self remains buried somewhere. I am sure they are very miserable, but they often make others miserable too, because they envy and attack those who are free. 

 

And so, as I wrote, my first boyfriend didn’t change me, he didn’t make me a different person, but he made it possible for us to show each other who we truly were. As I wrote, we refused to hide. We didn't go around flaunting our love, we didn't kiss in public (that was out of the question), we didn't hold hands, but it was obvious enough that we were together. And because of that, ordinary people, usually young men, would catch us in the streets and attack us. 

 

In one of the most difficult moments of my life, when we were fifteen or sixteen years old, we were surrounded by a gang in the middle of the street, and there was no one who could come to help us. They asked us, 'Are you a faggot?'. And you know that if you say yes, they could kill you, but if you say no, then that kills you in a way too, because you deny yourself and you lie. 

 

When the Soviet Union collapsed and before Vladimir Putin, those fifteen years... formed a period when most people believed they were in a liberal, democratic, and free country. But for people like me and my partner, it was clear that this was only an illusion of democracy, because we never fully enjoyed it; we knew from a very young age, by virtue of being openly who we were, that all of it was a comedy, a game, a lie."

 

 

– Your literature presupposes a way of saying "this reality was also mine, and this reality was also the reality of other people," but in an intimate way. Did you want to politicize this love, this desire, this gay identity?

 

"Well, it’s not that I want to politicize it; it’s that it is already politicized. Moreover, it is criminalized. When what you do and what you are becomes against the law and you are, according to Constitution, a criminal, they have already politicized you. I was just living my own small individual story without ever thinking that this whole topic would become such a huge issue, a debate, and such an important political cornerstone. You might think: 'It’s just my life and I have control over it, or I try to.' 

 

But what is really happening? Why has my mother been in her shop for thirty years and still can't manage to buy a place of her own? How can it be that every time I go out on the street, someone attacks me? There is a larger context; you are just a small drop in this ocean. 

 

The anti-LGBTQ+ law of 2011 was first regional and then national, and was meant, they said, to protect children form information advocating the denial of traditional values. Then, in 2022, when the war started, they made a law that protects everyone from criminals like us. And then, only after the invasion of Ukraine, did a blindfold suddenly fall from many people's eyes, and the Russians said: 'Oh, we live in a terrible, dictatorial regime, we must get out of here, we must flee.' 

 

If they had done their job earlier, and if they had been honest with themselves before and had understood the political, social, and economic context better and more clearly, then maybe we could have prevented it. Maybe we wouldn't have reached this extreme. Maybe people could have protested and not supported Putin in the initial phase."

 

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– Russia associates the LGBTQ+ community with criminality, but does the same happen with other minorities? Perhaps immigrants or women, for example?

 

"Of course, yes, absolutely. It always comes as a package. They attack the LGBTQ+ community because we are an easy target, but it is just a representative of a different, more liberal, more Western, more democratic way of living. And this entire way of living – which includes women's rights, minority rights, human rights in general, better living conditions, freedom of expression, freedom of the media, freedom of religious choice... this whole lifestyle is a danger to the Russian government. 

 

The laws they have introduced since then are atrocious in every aspect. For example, about ten years ago they introduced a law that allows a husband to beat his wife. Consequently, a woman cannot complain if she is beaten by her husband. 

 

Another example: my mother, who belongs to a racial minority (she is an Altay woman, a native Siberian), has been the victim of prejudice, segregation, and racism without even realizing it."

 

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– But, in fact, in the book, when you are crying over your first love and your mother comes, embraces you, and says: "Is it because you are both men?" She is aware of this discrimination.

 

"I am sure that, deep down, they are aware of it. They simply do not have the freedom to speak out. They don't believe it will do any good, because who is there to listen? We are not even getting close to social movements like #metoo, #blacklivesmatter. We don't even talk about it. So people don't have these words, they don't have these terms. 

 

Imagine, in the Russian language, there is not a single word for a gay person that is not derogatory. Here in the West, you can go to university and study the history of feminism, or the history of gay rights, but there is nothing like that in countries like Russia. 

 

In Iran, there was a movement thanks to which young women started taking off their veils. The movement was suppressed, but they tried, and that was the beginning. And that is how it could have began in Russia as well."

 

 

– How do you see Russia right now? Do you look at it with hope? Do you think that somehow, in the future, something might change? Perhaps after the war?

 

"Now it is already too late. The opportunity for a different and better country was in the nineties. We lost it, they lost it, because, as I explained before, somehow everyone was blinded by the promises of capitalism and lived in an illusion, ignoring the suffering of too many people. There is no possibility of revolution; there is no opposition. People like me had a shred of hope until Navalny was killed. 

 

I believe the war will keep expanding. Putin's ambition — and he states it very clearly — is to restore the Soviet order, which means occupying, colonizing again, all these countries surrounding Russia: the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia), Poland, Moldova, and then the countries of Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan), Armenia, Georgia. This is the Russian sphere of influence, and they want to rule it, they want to control it. 

 

I also believe that Europe is not responding with enough strength to the aggression in Ukraine. Five years and the war is still going on. Why? The last time I was in Russia was just before the war. I knew it was going to happen, so I went to visit my parents, and I haven't been back since, and I cannot go back."

 

 

– How do you endure the nostalgia?

 

"For me, Russia has always been a violent, dangerous, and criminal state. Since I was fifteen years old, since I started the relationship with my first love, the public reaction to it, the way the school reacted, and the way the State reacted... everything made me understand very early on that this was not my country and that I would have to leave. Consequently, I have been abroad for almost twenty years and I have made my peace with it. I accepted the fact that the world is my home, Europe is my home, I do not believe in a happy Russian future, and as a result, I made a clean cut. I made peace with the fact that I will always be a foreigner, I will always be an immigrant, I will always be moving from place to place. 

 

How do I sustain myself? I read classical Russian literature, old Russian books, particularly the books of the first Russian immigrants, meaning the generations that came after the Socialist Revolution, like Nabokov, Bunin, Tsvetaeva... Reading those stories, their novels, and their biographies is a great help, because I learn from their experience how to build my life. Joseph Brodsky is my mentor, my master, even though he died before I was born. 

 

On the other hand, the hardest part for me is the fact that I am separated from my mother, and this is something really driven deep into my chest, and I don’t know how to resolve it, it scares me a lot, and it keeps getting worse... She is still there, she still works in the same shop, and the shop is doing worse and worse and she has less and less money. Furthermore, financial transactions are now not allowed between Russia and Europe. Social networks are blocked and we lose the opportunity to be in touch. 

 

This scares me a lot, because my mother is the most important person in my life. Now I am trying to find ways to bring her here to Europe, consulting lawyers and going to the administration in Belgium. This is the hardest part for me; it is not being separated from Russia, but from my mother."

 

 

– How do you cope with this fear and this guilt of having made a life for yourself?

 

"I suffer for my mother and I suffer for what her life will be like if we can't see each other, if we can't talk, if I can't send her money, if I can't help her, so I really hope to bring her here one day; then my home will definitively be here, because right now it feels divided. 

 

I feel at home here because I have my partner, I have my writing, I have my friends (most of my friends are not Russian), and I feel free and much, much happier. If I ever manage to move my mother to Belgium, my home will be here one hundred percent."

 

– I wish you all the best for this goal, without a doubt, because even in the book one could see that she is a very special kind of person.

 

"Yes... you would love her, she is so kind, and funny, and as I said, very strong and remarkable: she is a small, small, strong woman."

 

 

– Let's talk for a second about the masters you mentioned. "Spring in Siberia" has many lyrical moments; you write in a very poetic way. Poetry occupies a special place in your narrative, doesn't it?

 

"Sometimes, it is not easy to understand poetry, sometimes it is difficult to read it and difficult to apply it to our lives; yet, for me, poems have always been the most useful, the most powerful expressions of the human experience, ever since I was a child. Somehow, without realizing it, I started using poems as a form of prayer, to calm myself down. I still do it; for example, if I go to the dentist and I know I will be very uncomfortable or in pain, I start reciting all the poems I have in my head, and I forget about the fear. Or if I can't sleep at night, for example, I still read poems, just like when I was a child. 

 

That is why I value poets and poetry so much as a higher culture, a higher art, because I believe it is more than simple literature: it is truly a kind of spiritual guide and a great help, because it comforts your heart and soul."

 

 

– Who are your reference points?

 

"I am a great reader, an admirer of Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, W.H. Auden, the French writers Jean Cocteau and Arthur Rimbaud, Federico García Lorca..."

 

 

– Lorca?

 

"I wrote a few poems dedicated to Lorca, and I went on a pilgrimage to his places in Spain; I found his addresses and went there on foot, I walked from one village to another and visited his family home, and even the house of Salvador Dalí where they both spent time together when they were young. He is very important to me, even though sometimes I try to read his poems and I don't understand anything. What is he trying to say? 

 

But I feel a kind of magic, especially by learning them by heart. If someone really wants to understand a poem, I believe that is the best way. When you learn it by heart, even if it is a short piece, and then you keep repeating it, suddenly... my God, suddenly you understand. It’s as if they take the blindfold off your eyes and you see exactly what he is trying to say. Poetry is a harmonious part of the human experience and of my life."

 

 

– In fact, language is a very important part of literature: in your book, you express that you do not like speaking the same language that Lenin or Stalin spoke. With your reference points, you feel more understood, right? They speak differently from the Soviet leaders.

 

"Absolutely, yes. Language is a very flexible mechanism. In fact, it surprised me greatly when I realized I was forgetting Russian: you can forget your mother tongue. I never would have thought it possible. But after living several years abroad and not speaking Russian regularly, returning to Russia—when I could still go back in the past—I realized I had forgotten words. Now, my only Russian is the Russian I read (and I choose what I read, of course), so I feel that it is changing too. When I speak with my mother, she notices it too. When you learn new languages, of course, they affect the mother tongue. Especially when you write poetry, everything comes together, all the words and all the languages. And I can see it in other contemporary poets, how more and more writers combine different languages they know within the same poem. 

 

So I don’t believe, or I hope, that my Russian language is still the language of Lenin and Stalin and the Soviet writers, because I have been separated from it for a long time. I think I have cleaned it up a bit and I keep cleaning it. Another interesting thing that has happened is that now I have many friends from Ukraine, with whom I speak in Russian, because most Ukrainians speak Russian as a first or second language, and I notice, once again, that our language is different, and I find myself speaking the way they do. It is interesting to see how language, like a living or human being, changes with time."

 

– That is very beautiful. Now you write in English, right? And you said you wrote some poems about Lorca. I would love to read them, because I truly appreciate the poet.

 

"I can send you the poem later, but I think I remember it. I can recite it, although it is a bit sad."

 

– I would love that.

 

*

 

POEM: TO FEDERICO

 

How good that you died young, my brother,

Without seeing your mountains losing their hats,

and your rivers losing their blood.

 

How good you didn’t live to see your land

With its skirt above its head,

Raped by the machines, abandoned, dead.

 

How good that you died young, my friend,

Long before the flesh of your skies was cut in slices

By those silver knives that target, land

In the airport that dares to bare your name.

 

Fly, fly away, my friend, away!

 

How good that you died young, my little hero,

Without seeing all your sailors and your seas

Turned into the sacks of cold, cold sand.

 

How good that your end

Came before you saw your dear wild children

Pour their eyes into the coloured glass.

 

How good you didn’t last

to hear their voiceless songs,

to see their heartless dances.

 

Fences, fences, your land is now made of fences,

Rusty wire, emptied jars,

Pulled down shutters and those cars,

cars, hot and hollow cars.

How good you didn’t last…

 

How good that you had died, my Federico,

before plastic bottles outnumbered your plants,

flores, pajaros, tus mariposas…

 

Your butterflies –

How right you were to write about them,

Not about those brave new airplanes.

How good you knew their worth so well!

But tell me… did you guess that you were bidding farewell?

 

How wrong were all your friends!

What a luck you didn’t live to see their art progress –

Art that can be turned off with a switcher.

Art that’s like that orange of the suburbs –

Perfect shape and colour,

Great to decorate,

But try to bite it. Bite!

 

How sad you’d be… How sad.

 

What kind of art is that if you can turn it off or cut in pieces?

Luna, luna, dear, oh my dear luna.

Now the only being left alive here in your land is your Moon

Moon that takes my lips and says,

 

“I’m still here, here.

Do you hear me? Hear?”

 

*

 

– It was very moving, precious, and enchanting. I think that will be all and a perfect closure. Even so, you can add something to share with the reader, even with the Catalan community, if you feel like it.

 

"The only thing I can add is that, for me, Ukraine comes first. So no matter the difficult experiences that I have lived through or that Russian minorities live through today in this context; I believe that the most important thing, the most essential thing, is to support Ukraine in every way possible, because I am convinced, from everything I have lived through, that this is the war against Europe. If Ukraine loses this war, the rest of Europe will be swallowed by the conflict. 

 

Ordinary people here cannot imagine themselves as part of a military conflict, but they could end up finding themselves in that situation. Would they be willing to take up arms for Catalonia, and go kill people? Or for the independence of Catalonia, or for the Spanish State? Or for Europe? The conflict with Ukraine is a truly serious matter that many people underestimate. 

 

And I know there are many conflicts in the world. There is a terrible genocide of the Palestinian people. There is a terrible conflict in Sudan. There is a horrific situation in China with the Uyghur people: they are Chinese Muslims, more than a million of them are in concentration camps, women are sterilized, and men are forced to produce cotton. Most of the clothes we wear are made by these slaves. And we don’t even fight for their rights. 

 

But as far as I am concerned, as a Russian, and for you as a European, and for the rest of the Catalans and Europeans, I believe we must pay attention to this invasion, because it is against our freedom and our independence."