Novelists From Italy

"I've killed quite a few people in Chechnya who had American passports."

"If you read Wikipedia it seems that the Moldovans tried to re-annex Transnistria which in the meantime had proclaimed itself independent. It is half true. First of all, the Moldovans did not want to leave the Soviet Union. They left because some corrupt politicians, paid by Western oligarchs, destroyed the USSR. An army of mercenaries from all over the world arrived here: Hungarians, Germans, people from the Baltic countries. If the war lasted only two months it is precisely because the majority of the Moldovan people were against it and did not want to invade us. The greatest number of victims occurred during the first few days, when people were simply massacred while they tried to return home in fear. The first resistance, the most consistent, was popular. We kids rode the streets on bicycles and collected ammunition, we took weapons and other useful things from the dead. We followed the movements of military vehicles and reported them to the adults. It also happened that we fired Kalashnikovs in firefights. At that time the people in my building lived in my house because we had water from the well and several supplies of canned food. In the apartments there was no electricity, nor gas, they also cut off the water in the whole city because the mercenaries had tried to poison it. There were also several elderly people who needed medicine; in our courtyard we had a small refugee camp."

"Mine was a criminal family. My grandfather robbed banks and my father armored vans. During the war my grandfather was a sniper, like almost all Siberian hunters; he was in the same convoy that took the great Vasily Zaytsev to Stalingrad. I'm often told that I had a bad childhood. Perhaps it's true, but I liked it that way. That element got me closer to the adults and I felt responsible."

"In war, I had no time for understanding. It’s really fast and you think only of your mission. If you start to think about morality, you will die, because you lose control. You can’t think about life, you must think only of war so you will survive."

"Boris Nemtsov was shot to death because he was a womanizer. He was obsessed with pussy and was unlucky enough to have slept with the young and beautiful wife of a Georgian businessman strongly linked to Moscow's organized crime. Do the math and you'll see that blaming the secret services is just strange."

"I work with news, on my private Telegram channel; therefore, I have people who pay me to be informed. If people pay to have coherent news, it means that many citizens do not agree with what the Italian media reports and it is not surprising, because the Italian press keeps telling a lot of bullshit. The Russian press is always based on a propaganda line. We must not think that in Italy they are propagandists and in Russia they tell the whole truth. There is propaganda there too, but there is a difference: Russian journalists do not distance themselves from the objective truth, which is what Westerners have started to do quite some time ago."

"Italian journalism and reporting [...] are all whores of the regime. I'm sorry but that's how it is. [...] when we talk about Italian newspapers, we are talking about scrap paper. Intellectual work in Italy no longer exists, coherence no longer exists. When you read something in the Italian press, it cannot be credible, period."

"The majority of Russians are happy and actually want to support this policy more. When we talk about protests by Russians who do not want to go to war, it is all bullshit. Russians want to go to war and they want to defeat Nazism."

"My only commitment is to block any kind of support for the war. I have no other political interests. I have never been seriously interested in any kind of political program."

"The West has beauty, a great cultural heritage, and enormous potential, but it must free itself from Anglo-Saxon hegemony."

"My values ​​are left-wing, but not as the left is defined in Italy. I am not someone who fits into an ideology within the Italian system. I know well that in Italy some say that I am a fascist, because they quote some out-of-context phrase, or some old position of mine. But the truth is that I am the product of the Soviet system, for better or for worse."

"Despite the fact that he [Volodymyr Zelenskyy] is from a Jewish family, and that his grandfather served in the Soviet army, he supports Nazism for money, for economic reasons."

"Let's just say that the childhood he describes, in a context of poverty and marginalization, is credible. Just as it is likely that it led to the natural outcome of prison. Even a brief stint with youth gangs is possible. It's the part about the mafia that's unconvincing. [...] I have met members of the Russian mafia. Those who are killers certainly don't go around telling people about it."

"According to Lilin, the very existence of the Urkas was a state secret. An almost extinct community, which had left a deep mark, single-handedly winning the war of 1992, when Moldova, in the grip of hot post-Soviet spirits, invaded the breakaway province. In Siberian Education, it is narrated how the "Siberians" triumphed by blowing up one of the two cinemas in Bender full of soldiers. Marian Bozhesku, Ukrainian researcher and author of Transnistria 1989-1992, the most exhaustive study on the conflict, says he has never heard of this. "For us the memory of the war is still very much alive, we fought desperately. To say that criminals won it is ridiculous", says indignant Denis Poronok, who is the same age as Lilin, 31, and disputes "Nicolai's version": "The blown up cinema is a fairy tale, and there were four theaters, not two in Bender in 1992"."

"When confronted with glaring innaccuracies and contradictions, Lilin retorted that these charges are the equivalent of accusing Anne Frank of miscounting the number of electricity poles in Bergen-Belsen. I leave it to the reader to pass judgement on the aptness and sensitivity of the comparison."

"To avoid further deaths and douse the fire of this civil war, Ukraine must cease to exist as a State. The government, law enforcement and the army which have stained themselves with crimes against humanity must be arrested and tried for their responsibility. NATO should be dissolved immediately, seeing as the bloc of nations comprising the Warsaw Pact hasn't existed for more than two decades. What's needed is a military intervention by the UN to disarm both sides involved in this war. The criminal Nazis of Kiev, their Washington collaborators and advisors should be brought before the International Court of Justice in Hague and judged with all the severity that the law allows. Only this way and only from that point on will true and coherent news start arriving from that scarred nation: only then will the world be able to breathe freely."

"I'm apolitical. I only write about what I've seen and experienced, but someone who still dreams of black communism would prefer me dead. And if I had stayed in the country, I already would be. That's why I, my wife, and my four-year-old daughter sleep with a Kalashnikov next to our pillow. [...] The Carabinieri are very worried, and my family even more so. On Facebook they have written terrible things to me, some absurd (a guy who claims to have paid hitmen from the Russian mafia to eliminate me) others more credible."

"This book reads like a fantasist's ravings [...]. The success of Educazione siberiana implies that Italian publishing is floundering in the same cesspit as Italian television. One can only hope that British readers are not so gullible."

"Lilin draws on the vast literature about the prison life and criminal underworld of Russia to create a sect whose putative "Siberian" origin is fantastical and whose traditions, practices and language are lifted from well-known Soviet and post-Soviet prison-based criminal fraternities [...]. Lilin's furious reactions to those who cast doubt on his criminal credentials can best be explained by the fact that some elements of the book do reflect his own experience while most of the rest is widely known in Russia to readers of quasi-fictional crime tales by Valery Karyshev and to viewers of the prison-based TV series Zona."

"The narrative mode of the book is strange: sometimes, an anthropologist seems to be describing the traditions of a hitherto unknown Siberian ethnos who combine utterly ruthless criminality with the religious punctiliousness of the Exclusive Brethren, their traditions embodied in a Grandfather Kuzya who guides the juvenile hero and his friends on when, whom, how and with what weapon to maim and kill. At other times, author and reader wallow in a pornography of violence."

"Nicolai Lilin's words, in which he finds himself threatening our journalists with mafia-like methods and tones, are, to say the least, shameful. [...] But it is also shameful that this character has for years been invited to important television studios to talk about the Russian war in Ukraine, and that he has had ample space to pollute public discourse in our country."

"Needless to say, Lilin has never set foot in Chechnya or a Siberian prison, but, following in the footsteps of Baron Munchhausen, this does not stop him spouting a load of exorbitant cock-and-bull stories – and everyone, at least nearly everyone, laps them up!"

"If this "memoir" were believable, it might have some value (and serve as a pretext for invading Transnistria as a festering sore of criminality). But credulity collapses in the first pages, and not just because the chronology is a complete mess. The background to the "memoir" (in interviews on Italian television Lilin has begun to call Siberian Education an "autobiographical fairy-tale") is the deportation by Stalin in the 1930s of a group of intolerably active and anti-communist Siberian robbers westwards to Bendery on the Dnestr river, where they flourished in the 1990s. Usually, Stalin either shot such people, or sent them 1,000 miles closer to the North Pole: this would be Stalin's only recorded deportation from Siberia to Europe, all the more incredible because Bendery was from 1918 to 1940 in Romania."

"The foreword states that names, dates and places have been changed "to protect those involved" but gives no clue that the book is not a truthful account of someone's experiences. Almost a quarter of the book, pages 99-188, is an ultra-violent account of fighting in a built-up area – presumably Grozny – in which Lilin and his group rescued a cut off Russian unit, but not before it had lost 13 lieutenant-colonels."

"If Free Fall were a novel, it would be just a plot-free Russian version of Andy McNab. But, marketed as a memoir, Canongate can say that it "offers a unique perspective on one of the most controversial wars in living memory"."

"His works ("Free Fall: A Sniper’s Story" and "Siberian Education") are truly impressive for their triteness and the sheer quantity of outright lies, nevertheless, this man is a favorite among some Western readers in Europe and the United Kingdom."

"Inside Russia people watch Nikolai Lilin’s ascent with surprise and admiration. [...] Wild and uncivilized as Russia may be, it is still highly unlikely that a book by a contemporary German writer about a squadron of former SS officers hiding in the forests outside Berlin, listening to Wagner with their children and grandchildren, reading aloud from the works of Junge and banging on tin drums as they rob passing trains, would ever be published here. [...] Everyone here would immediately see this drivel for what it is. But back in Europe, strange things can happen. Plenty of second-rate books make it to print, and the most popular still seem to be this load of nonsense that no one in his right mind would ever bother reading in Russia."

"If you would prefer Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs without their ingenious wit and structure, this may be a book for you."

"Judging by the many laudatory reviews of Nicolai Lilin's book in the European and American media, Western readers have no doubts about the veracity of the facts he presents. [...] The reviewers were not even bothered by the fact that Bender was called Tighina before 1940 and was part of Romania, and Stalin simply could not exile anyone there, especially since people back then were exiled to Siberia, not from it."

"I asked Nicolai Lilin-Verzhbitsky what he thought about the comments of his former friends. He thinks that they envy him: "They feel offended and inferior. I managed to leave there and achieve something, but they did not". At the same time, in a conversation with me, unlike in interviews with Western journalists, he repeatedly emphasized that his book is not an autobiography and that his Western publishers are marketing it as such. And he, they say, has nothing to do with it."

"Hailed as an insider's account of a cruel yet unknown world, Siberian Education was a literary sensation when first published in Italy in 2009. Lilin's raw and ungrammatical Italian has now been smoothed into readable English by Jonathan Hunt. The veracity of the story's basic elements has been fiercely defended by Lilin and accepted by many critics; yet many readers may feel they have landed in the Hayborian age invented by Robert Ervin Howard, among the likes of Conan the Barbarian and the Vanir warlords."

"The book [Siberian Education] is presented as a "shocking exposé of an extraordinary criminal underworld", although a strategically placed note (absent from the Italian edition) warns the reader that "certain episodes are imaginative recreation, and those [unspecified] episodes are not intended to portray actual events". During an interview on Italian television, Lilin repeatedly threatened a journalist who cast doubt on his story. At the risk of exposing myself to the wrath of the last descendant of the Siberian criminals, I venture to say that the urkas have never existed — at least not as described by the author."

"If we summarize the information from Nicolai Lilin's book, his interviews in the Western press and speeches at book fairs, then by the age of 23 the author had managed to: serve two terms in a Transnistrian prison, be under investigation in Russia, serve three years as a sniper in Chechnya and a couple more years as a mercenary in Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan. At 24, he got a job as a fisherman on a ship in Ireland, then moved to Italy, where he got married, opened a tattoo parlor, wrote a bestseller and almost became a victim of a politically motivated assassination attempt. Now Nikolai Lilin is 30 years old, he has his own fan club and he seriously discusses why Anthony Hopkins is not suitable for the lead role in the Hollywood film adaptation of his book."

"According to Lilin, the Urkas were an ethnic minority, "descendants of the ancient Efey", who lived by hunting and robbery and who were deported from Siberia to Transnistria in the 1930s, when it was part of Romania (it would be annexed to the USSR in 1940, in the partition of Europe between Stalin and Hitler). Thus the communists would have populated the "Romanian empire", as the writer calls it, with Russian criminals, defeating the local gangs. "Absurd", laughs Pavel Polian, a Russian historian who has been studying the deportations of communism and Nazism for 25 years: "They were deported to Siberia, but not from Siberia, much less to Moldova. And the Efey never existed"."

"I met Lilin years ago after the publication of Siberian Education. He told me he was a friend of Licio Gelli and that he went around armed because he had many enemies. The book was very interesting, but it contained a series of obvious lies, both about the history of Russia and about his life. Half of my family is Russian and therefore I have direct sources, but I was amazed that everyone believed him. Shortly afterward, he wrote an article for L'Espresso, where he explained that he was a former sniper and that he had received offers from high-level mercenary groups to go and fight somewhere. It was such bullshit that I expected people to throw eggs at him. But no. The world of culture began to acclaim him as a hero, a thinker, a philosopher. Just look at those with whom he debated, who introduced him, who praised him. It was like living in a parallel world where those who loved him most were left-leaning. He took part in debates on democracy, on war, on the whole world, he had exhibitions of "Siberian" tattoos with institutional sponsorships. Every time I spoke about him I was accused of spreading shit about "someone more famous than you" or of having been fooled by Russian friends and relatives, who evidently had it in for someone who told the truth about the Putin regime."

"Over time his books began to sell less and he became a propagandist of the worst pro-Putin bullshit. I thought that everyone who had given him prestige and visibility would have done some self-criticism. Fat chance. People on the left who I knew very well decided to side with him because he was a "pacifist" and once again it seemed absurd to me, like an episode of Black Mirror. Just how was it possible for them to ally themselves with someone who published photomontages of the Ukrainian president snorting cocaine, in which he wrote that Navalny's wife was having fun with her lovers while he was dying, who insulted homosexuals hidden in the Ukrainian army? I don't know, I still can't wrap my head around it. Okay, the story is not over, given that today he made veiled threats to use polonium on journalists who speak badly of the Tsar. I just hope that, now that he is a fugitive, he doesn't become a martyr for free thought. And I also hope that those who previously praised him don't insult him now. Certain things have to be done when it's hard, not when it's convenient. But we're in Italy. Whoever talks the loudest always wins."

"The Siberian community in which I grew up came from a much older one that had already developed a system of self-control and was opposed to any form of power. It didn't just oppose socialism, but also the Tsar's regime and its slavery. [...] By the late 1980s, I already knew that the community was dying. When I started writing I realized that this tradition had helped them survive, but it couldn't save them."

"Actually, I now consider myself Italian in all respects. I have Italian citizenship, it would be wrong and incorrect to define myself as Russian, although I have recently received quite a few attacks from my former fellow Russian citizens."

"There is no [Siberian] community anymore. Just me, my brother, and maybe some others. The problem is that there is nothing left in Siberia either. The core of this community was deported to Transnistria and did not survive there."

"The only thing for certain about Russia is that it will always be immersed in chaos. That's normal. It's its historical state."

"I live a fairly peaceful life compared to many others, but I have the support of the army and the police. I walk around with my gun. And I have weapons at home. But it's not true, as has been written, that I sleep with a gun. I sleep with my daughter. However, I prefer not to delve into the matter further."

"Since I have always dealt with security, a private volunteer company linked to the Vatican infiltrated me into some Satanist groups for two years. I discovered a large pedophile ring there between Russia and Europe. I have reported on several people, but the problem is that they are thoroughly protected. [...] I can say that I uncovered the existence of a pedophile network in Munich. The report was never followed up. After all, a porn film with the participation of a minor, shot in a few copies, can cost from 50 to 70 thousand euros. I discovered some really disgusting things. [...] I hoped to continue working in this environment, but, after the publication of my two novels, my face is just too well-known. Plus, I now have a five-year-old daughter. However, I will never stop telling everyone that pedophiles are rich and powerful, and not just in Italy: in Belgium there are pro-pedophile associations that help them hide."

"I am appalled by how things are going with Putin, his homophobic laws, the censorship, pedophilia used as a criminal means of earning money. Western-style corruption has taken over, which is why Putin and Berlusconi are such friends, and even look like each other: both of them have undergone plastic surgery to look younger, but only Satan never ages. They are demons. [...] I no longer have the stomach to live in such a country, where the only way out left is suicide. [...] We need a new revolution, of ideas, not weapons."

"I say what I know and what I know is certain. I have been involved in five wars, on the front lines, even though I am only 34 years old. When you Western boys were still messing around with some girl in the back seat of a car, I was already killing terrorists in Chechnya."

"The first person I killed was a thirty-year-old gypsy who was dealing heroin in my neighborhood. I was fourteen, I tried to fight him and make him leave, but he beat me up. So I went to my grandfather and told him everything; he loaded a revolver, gave it to me and told me to shoot him in the knees. I shot him in the knees with the first shot but the second one went wrong and I hit his liver and he died. It was a war and my father did much worse. He was one of those who carried out reprisals, he suffered three very serious attacks, in one of them I was also in the car when they shot at us. A real war. Then my father had to leave the country because the war was lost. Corruption and the power of traffickers and drugs won. In fact he joined the police, politics, corrupt power and our country was occupied by these people. My mother, finding herself in this situation, married to a man who for years had opposed this system, had to flee because too often corrupt policemen came to search and threaten us, to know where my father was hiding, where his money was. I myself was taken into the woods several times, they pointed a gun at my head to try to get information. Then I also went away and had my experiences."

"What is a criminal? One who goes against justice? But what justice? Weren't the partisans and those who fought against communist regimes outlaws? For the Urkas, even Jesus was an honest criminal, they like it when the gospel says he came to bring the sword. He was a revolutionary."

"Atheism is a religion. Declaring that you don't believe in anything is like saying you believe in something. In this way, they are a group, a cult."

"We are all brothers in that area and I wouldn't know how to shoot a Moldovan, because I love him: he's my brother."

"Russia encompasses one sixth of the Earth's surface. An act of castration has been put in place against the Olympics, because the Olympic Games without Russia will be a joke. What's more, they will be a slap in the face to democracy, pluralism and the unity of all the peoples who find themselves in the Olympic spirit. [...] This is a pretext to make Russia appear as a rogue state in front of the entire civilized world, reawakening the ghosts of the Cold War. It is a way to humiliate Russia and its citizens. Among other things, I still do not understand on what tangible evidence this nonsense is based. To me it seems like an agenda, the arguments seem weak and we have not yet seen incontrovertible proof."

"Translation rights to this book have been sold all over the world, but not in Russian, Romanian, Ukrainian, or any language which the inhabitants of Bendery and Tiraspol might read. Lilin explains this as a precaution against revenge for revealing the secrets of the Siberian urka's language, tattoos and code. Doctoral theses and Internet archives, however, tell everything about the symbolism of Russian criminal tattoos, while the beliefs of Orthodox dissenters and of "thieves-in-the-law" have been described for over a century (but never before confounded as they are in this book, where revolvers used for killing are kept under icons)."