“I have never been as pessimistic as I am now,” says Maxim Osipov (born 1963 in Moscow). A physician who spent a life caring for others as a cardiologist in a small town 130 kilometers from Moscow, distant from politics and intrigue as it seemed, he wrote delicate short stories that earned him a place among the leading Russian-language storytellers. When the invasion of Ukraine forced many decent Russians into exile, he fled with the rest of them. The war grew longer than expected and pushed him into exile.
A few days before February 24, 2022, when Europe witnessed its biggest offensive since the Second World War, Osipov traveled to Barcelona with foreboding to present his internationally acclaimed collection of stories Piedra, papel, tijera. He returns two years later with Kilómetro 101, selected by his editor in Spain, Luis Solano. The new collection reveals his keen eye for small details and his compassionate pulse in depicting ordinary people who cross his path thanks to his medical work.
Adiós al pasado
Much remains behind in Tarusa, the town where his great‑grandfather, also a doctor, settled after leaving the gulag under Stalinist law to live well away from Moscow and big cities, following an accusation linked to the deaths of Maxim Gorky and his son. There Osipov lived. “I have lost the home I built and knew every corner of. The flowers in the garden. The position of each tree I planted with my mother. The graves of my parents and sister. And I have also lost my job as a doctor. Some friends stayed behind, though most escaped Russia like me. What do I feel? A deep sense of bewilderment; I do not understand what happened to my life, my country, or everything around me.”
Osipov first moved to Berlin, passing through Yerevan in Armenia. Berlin hosts a sizable Russian community. The Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich lives there. Invited by Leiden University to teach Russian literature, he settled in Amsterdam a year and a half ago, where he directs La Quinta Ola, a magazine sustained by Russian authors at home and abroad, and by Ukrainian writers who express themselves in Russian. “The current wave of emigration resembles the first one sparked by the Russian Revolution. It is fascinating to gather a plurality of opinions and perspectives because the Russian language does not belong to any government but to anyone who speaks, writes, or dreams in Russian.”
Although his family history carried political weight, he had not seen himself as a political writer until the war forced its way into his life. His opposition to Putin found its voice in essays published in small-run journals that the state left largely unbothered. “Politics is at the center of world interest right now. No one can honestly say, I am not interested in politics, without sounding naive. Has the war changed me as a writer? Probably. Since waking up, Ukraine and Israel have followed me, and that may have changed me. Perhaps I will stop writing in the future. I try not to take myself too seriously.”
¿El fin del hombre soviético?
Alexievich praised his work as the most exacting diagnosis of Russian life, and Osipov returns the compliment by lauding her keen portrait of the post‑Soviet citizen, someone bent by power but grateful for a firm hand. “That inheritance still exists, as she observed, even if her title spoke of the end of the Soviet man. In many ways, today’s Russia resembles Nazi Germany more than Stalin’s Soviet Union. The personality cult around the leader has always dominated Russian politics, yet not to the extent we see now.” He suggests that removing a leader like Putin could shift things. “I hope the West can find a way to secure a solution not just to rid the world of Putin but to halt the war.”
A war, he insists, is quietly ceasing to be local and turning global. “The West should help Ukraine as much as possible. It is a stand against the axis formed by Russia, China, Iran, Hamas, and North Korea. Treating these conflicts as isolated is dangerous. It is one large struggle where Ukraine and Israel must prevail. So, one might say we are entering a third world war, and we have not fully realized it.” Osipov remains deeply pessimistic.