Russian Writer Evgeny Chizhov: Writers Should Stay away from Both Authorities and Opposition

... than joining the dissident movement, which had by then become widespread and was quite active. So, this interest was massive. But the people keen on Eastern mysticism were, for the most part, not literary types. In fact, I only started writing about Central Asia in my third book: the first two novels had nothing to do with it. You mentioned the great influence of the Beatniks, but that movement was mostly tapping into the culture of East and South Asia: things like Zen Buddhism, Hinduism and Krishnaism (in Allen Ginsberg’s case). Did the Muslim East become a comparable source of inspiration for Soviet people? It is just that the Muslim East was close by, and visiting ...