A plagiarized book made it onto the longlist of Russia’s most prestigious literary prize ...

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💃📚A plagiarized book by Simonyan made it onto the longlist of Russia’s most prestigious literary prize. Its title and idea were borrowed from a conspiracy-minded economist who published a book of the same name in 2019

The fantasy-style novel by RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, “In the Beginning Was the Word — in the End There Will Be the Number,” appeared on the longlist of the Big Book prize. Moreover, it was added retroactively, critic Sergey Lebedenko noticed. On the list of 29 authors, Simonyan appears alongside other writers close to the authorities — Prokhanov, Prilepin, and Shargunov. The book was published by Eksmo-AST (whose management was arrested in the “publishers’ case”); its print run has exceeded 170,000 copies.

📌Simonyan borrowed the idea and title of her novel, without citing the source, from a collection of articles by economist Valentin Katasonov, “MO” found. His book was published six years before Simonyan’s novel. The conspiracy-minded professor from MGIMO became famous when he began claiming that COVID arose as a result of an “anti-Christian conspiracy.” Earlier, together with the Communist Party’s TV channel, he made the film “The World Kabbalah.”

📌Simonyan had already been caught quoting Katasonov. In December 2021, she wished her followers a Happy New Year in a post that began with the words “In the beginning was the word, and in the end there will be the number” (without mentioning the author). According to the professor, humanity has entered the era of post-capitalism, or “digital civilization” (“digital slavery”).

📌 Roughly the same idea appears in Simonyan’s novel of the same name: the era of digital slavery has arrived, and the world is ruled by an omnipresent AI. Christ, in a new incarnation under the name “Alpha and Omega,” opposes it. Since the Second Coming has taken place, Simonyan resurrects the dead. They live in the heavenly “splendor” of digital civilization and at the same time swear filthily (loser, crap, fuck, bastard). On Solovyov’s program, the “writer” promised the resurrection of 150 billion people, including Stalin and Hitler.

📌 As writer and political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky told “MO,” the main idea of Simonyan’s book is the idea of “digitizing the human being”, that is, creating a digital version that can exist endlessly. According to him, this is “one of the options for Vladimir Putin and those close to him” — an attempt to make sense of how to preserve oneself and one’s power beyond physical life. Simonyan is convinced that one can become a great writer only thanks to power and in alliance with power, Belkovsky notes. At the beginning of last year, Simonyan joined the board of the renewed Union of Writers of the Russian Federation, headed by Medinsky.

📕The Big Book National Literary Prize is one of the most prestigious and highest-paying literary awards, given for a “significant contribution to Russian culture.” Its laureates have included Maria Stepanova, Dmitry Bykov, Evgeny Vodolazkin, and Leonid Yuzefovich. The prize fund — 6 million rubles.

We spoke in more detail about how Simonyan is getting richer during the war years and spreading her “creativity” around the world in the “MO” program.