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Sergei Filatov, the chairman of the Union of Writers of Moscow
We have been paying special attention to the literature and young writers of the North Caucasus in general since the beginning of the program, when we felt that this area requires extra attention.
We began to hold separate symposiums of young writers of the North Caucasus.
They are called "symposiums" but in fact they were master classes, creative meetings, which take place at the forums of young writers that we hold in Moscow.
And there very interesting trends appeared. A very strong group of writers appeared in the Chechen Republic.
Perhaps this is due to the fact that they have been through war. And the main theme of their works is war.
Absolutely stunning talented writers appeared and emerged there: Suleiman Musayev, who works as a teacher of the Russian language, Lida Davletkireeva, an absolutely brilliant literary critic, she defended her dissertation on the topic of comparison of Russian and Chechen writers as they look at the last war in Chechnya.
This analysis is very deep, very interesting, of course, scholarly, I must say.
Asya Umarova has manifested herself greatly, a young writer from Chechnya.
A whole series of her works, which she wrote when she was five years old, during the war "War Through the Eyes of a Child" suggests itself for publication.
After all, all of the sketches she had in her head have been recently put on paper.
These are very interesting, sharp and very appealing works in general.
The second group of writers is represented by a writers group from Dagestan, it is also a very strong team.
Alisa Ganieva is the leader there, she works today in Moscow for "Nezavisimaya Gazeta."
She has proved herself as a writer, as a children's writer, and as a literary critic of broad expertise. A talented girl.
We have already published two collected works on the North Caucasus.
The first collection was "Young Writers of the North Caucasus", published a few years ago, the second volume was published this year, it was prepared by Lida Davletkireeva.
It is called "Taste of Quince", after a work written by Suleiman Musayev.
Here is what I wrote to them. They write a lot about issues that took place in Soviet times - the deportation, the war in Chechnya, this is already in our times, repressions experienced by these nations, changes in living conditions not only in terms of cultural life, but also of everyday life in the Soviet era, changes in borders which took place and generally a lot of things happened in that period which greatly affected the lives of these people and their characters.
When guys describe these processes, they do not have a deep understanding of what happened in that period of time.
I wrote to them that in 1922, when the national policy was adopted, it was a perfect document, a beautiful document, and that if our government consistently realized it, without hurrying to report about achieving certain results, probably the tragedies that occurred in that period of time would not have taken place.
They gradually built up to such an extent that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was an explosion.
It was an expected explosion, Dudayev is not to blame for it, no one personally.
These are problems that accumulated in people with time, they caused an explosion of the situation.
It seems to me that people who write about these things have to have a historical understanding of how these processes gradually accumulated and how they evolved.
Both good and bad, everything should be in a piece of writing, be it poetry or prose and there possibly can be some fictional details, but the historical truth should be kept in these works.
Most importantly, the reader should understand that the writer knows more than he does, when he is reading his works.