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Jil Silberstein:Voyages en Russie absolutiste. Vie et mort de quatre opposants. Editions Noir dur Blanc. Mise en vente: 7 avril 2022. 848 pages, 28 Euros /34 CHF

Vaste enquête à travers la Russie d’aujourd’hui, Voyages en Russie absolutiste se veut avant tout un hommage au combat acharné de quatre hommes confrontés – chacun à son époque – aux ravages de l’autocratie. Mais faire se côtoyer les destins du poète et romancier Mikhaïl Lermontov (1814-1841), de Vladimir Tan Bogoraz (1865-1936), révolutionnaire et pionnier de l’anthropologie, de l’écrivain anarchiste Victor Serge (Viktor Lvovitch Kibaltchitch, 1890-1977), antistalinien, auteur de S’il est minuit dans le siècle, et d’Anatoli Martchenko (1938-1986), l’un des derniers intellectuels russes à être mort en détention au Goulag, c’est aussi proposer une histoire informelle – encore que remarquablement documentée – de l’opposition à l’absolutisme russe sous toutes ses formes, de Catherine II à Vladimir Poutine.

Enfin, à travers quatre « pèlerinages » de l’auteur – au Tatarstan, au Caucase, en Oural et jusqu’aux lointaines rives de la Kolyma –, c’est à la rencontre de « héros de notre temps » que le lecteur est invité.

Jil Silberstein est né à Paris en 1948. Après bien des voyages, il se fixe en Suisse, travaille dans l’édition, dirige la revue d’anthropologie culturelle Présences. Lors d’un séjour en Amérique du Nord, il rencontre les Indiens du Québec-Labrador, dont il partagera la vie plus d’un an. Ainsi est amorcée une série de textes, entre voyage et ethnologie : Innu, Kali’na et Dans la taïga céleste, publiés par Albin Michel. Poète, essayiste, lauréat du Prix Schiller, il est également traducteur de Trakl, Miłosz, T. E. Lawrence et Charles Reznikoff.

Interview avec Jil Silberstein à lire ici. 

About the author

Nadia Sikorsky

Nadia Sikorsky was born and raised in Moscow. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University and went on to complete her postgraduate studies there, earning a PhD in History. She spent 13 years at UNESCO, first in Paris and then in Geneva. After serving as Director of Communications at Green Cross International, founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, she launched NashaGazeta.ch in 2007, Switzerland’s first Russian-language online daily newspaper.

In 2022, Nadia Sikorsky was named to Le Temps’ Forum des 100, which brings together individuals who, in the newspaper’s view, have “significantly contributed to the success of French-speaking Switzerland”, from across public life, business, politics, science and culture.

After 18 years at the helm of NashaGazeta.ch, Nadia Sikorsky decided to devote herself to what had always held a special place in her work as a journalist: culture in all its diversity. This led to the creation of Russian Accent, a trilingual cultural blog in Russian, French and English, born in the heart of Europe, in Switzerland, which has become her second home and whose multiculturalism and multilingualism have helped shape the character of this new project.

At the heart of the project is the perspective of a European of Russian origin, drawing on more than 35 years of professional experience and a deep knowledge of both cultural traditions. Nadia Sikorsky sees her role as that of a cultural mediator between the two. The title of the blog, Russian Accent, reflects this idea: the accent is neither a linguistic barrier nor a political position, but a distinctive cultural imprint within a European context.

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