NEW YORK – “I strongly believe in the mission of Penbut I had to step back from leadership not to be part of something I consider a bad decision.” The statement is from Masha Gessen56, a journalist of Russian and American nationality, one of the most critical voices against the Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Gessen announced his resignation from the board of the Pen America group, the New York-based nonprofit considered one of the most important global organizations in defense of freedom of expression, after the decision to exclude two Russian writers from a meeting organized at the World Voices Festival, in order not to displease two Ukrainian authors. The concerns had been raised by the writer Artem Chapeyepseudonym of Anton Vasilyovich Vodyanyiand by the journalist and author Artem Chekh, who are participating in the war as soldiers, the latter as a sharpshooter and gunner. Both were guests of the meeting focused on the authors in the trenches.
After their arrival in New York, the two noticed that at another meeting, moderated by Gessen, and dedicated to authors in exile, there were two Russians, a journalist and historian and a young novelist. At that point Chapeye and Chekh threatened not to participate if the other panel, which the Chinese novelist also attended, was not canceled Murong Xuecun. After a series of attempts to save programming, the CEO of Pen America, Suzanne Nosselannounced the cancellation of the meeting.
Gessen, who introduces himself using the neuter pronoun, said he does not change his commitment to the organization but can no longer occupy the role of vice president. The festival closed on Saturday and few had noticed the crash. Gessen’s resignation, revealed by The Atlanticmade it an international case.
The boycott of Russians has become a touchy issue that has crossed many sectors, from sport to theatre, from opera to literature. Nossel had spoken out against boycotts in the past, but Pen America had never been involved. Last year the Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov, president of Pen Ukraine, had made a speech at the Festival after participating in a conversation, on stage, with the Russian-American novelist Gary Shteyngart. But compared to this year, Russian writers had not been invited, also due to the restrictions related to Covid. This time the return to normal of the program has provoked the clash.
The arrival in New York of the delegation led by Chapeye and Chekh opened the case. The first explained to the New York Times that a “Ukrainian soldier cannot appear, for political and image reasons, under the same umbrella with Russian participants”. “I think – he added – that the only consequences of appearing together would have been my guilt in front of all the people killed and tortured by the Russian army”.
For years Gessen has been an antagonistic voice of Putin, to whom he dedicated the corrosive biography “The Man Without a Face” in 2012 and, five years later, “The Future is History”, dedicated to Russian totalitarianism. The boycotted Russians are independent journalist and historian Ilia Veniavkin and novelist Anna Nemzer, who left Russia soon after the invasion of Ukraine. Both collaborate with the Russia Independent Media Archive, a project in defense of independent journalism supported by Pen America itself. Gessen did not criticize the boycott call made by the Ukrainian authors (“they are fighting a defensive war with all the tools they have”) but explained that “the question concerns only Pen’s answer”. And that no to exiled authors, albeit Russian ones, was considered a repudiation of the heart of the mission.