“Writing is my way of living”

Ms Kljutscharjowa, congratulations on the Johann-Philipp-Palm Award! Before we talk about the award – you are an author who has received numerous accolades. Who do you actually write for, and what does writing give you?

Let me begin with something personal. Writing is part of who I am. When I am not writing, I feel as though I am not truly alive. Writing is my way of living.

But it is also my way of coping with the most difficult moments in life. When my country began its war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022, the only reason I did not break down emotionally was that I wrote down everything that was happening inside me and around me. On a deep existential level, one could therefore say that I write first and foremost for myself. Just as a person does not breathe “for someone”, but simply breathes because otherwise they cannot live.

It sounds as though writing was almost a survival strategy for you. But you also publish your work – you address an audience. How do those two things fit together?

Writing has another dimension – the one in which a text becomes a means of communication. To me, a text is a bridge between people. As both a writer and a journalist, I write to bring people closer to one another. I believe that the more we know about one another, the less we fear one another. And the less we fear one another, the less room there is for hatred and cruelty. Yes, I know that may sound naïve today. But I know no other way.

Your most recent book, “Woher kommst du? Tagebuch einer Geflüchteten”, is explicitly aimed at a German audience. What did you hope to achieve with it?

It was important to me to show the world of refugees from the inside – not through statistics, political debates or headlines, but through lived experience. I wanted to give people who know very little about this life the opportunity to understand it better.

The same applies to my journalistic work. Today I write primarily for a German audience and report on what is happening inside Russia. My focus is on political repression, which is becoming ever more brutal and absurd. It is important to me to show that Russian society is far more diverse than it often appears from the outside. There are people who oppose the war and pay for it with their freedom, their safety or even their homeland. Telling the stories of these people is another way for me to build bridges.

Let us stay with this bridge-building function of literature. What can literature actually achieve? Do you see yourself more as a chronicler of the war – or also as a dissident?

Literature helps us preserve our humanity. What is human in us is the most beautiful thing – and at the same time the most fragile. It is easily lost.

Why is that so crucial right now?

Because every form of violence begins with dehumanisation. It is difficult to hit a human being, to humiliate a human being or to kill a human being. But if you no longer see the other person as human and see only a label – “enemy”, “migrant”, “person of a different faith”, “terrorist” – then violence becomes possible. That is precisely the principle of all propaganda: it dehumanises.

Resisting dehumanisation is one of the most difficult inner tasks. I see the role of literature as helping people remain human and accompanying them on this difficult path.

You have lived in Landshut with your daughters since 2023. How do you perceive the younger generation’s view of democracy here – and what might motivate young people in Germany to engage more deeply with it?

It is important to pay attention to the testimonies of people from non-democratic societies. They are more frightening than any dystopia.

Young people who were born and raised in a democracy take freedom for granted. As someone who has witnessed the transformation of a democracy into a dictatorship, I can testify: it is very easy to lose freedom. And it is practically impossible to regain it.

That is quite a bleak warning. Do you nevertheless see a future for democracy – even in view of its current crisis?

Even though democracy is currently in a deep crisis and seems unable to meet the challenges of our time, there is no alternative. Neither for Germany nor for other countries. Democracy is the best thing humanity has ever invented.

Let us talk about Russia itself. What fears do you perceive among people there today?

They are the fears that plague people under every dictatorship. The fear that every word could be used against you. The fear that anyone you know – your best friend, your brother, your neighbour, an acquaintance – might denounce you. And you end up behind bars. And your children in an orphanage.

What, then, could give these people courage?

What does it mean, in such a situation, to “give courage”? To say: “Don’t be afraid, go to prison”? Who would dare to do that?

What could give people courage? If Putin were arrested somewhere and brought before an international tribunal for all the crimes he has committed against the Ukrainian people and his own. That could give people courage. But I don’t believe it will happen …

That is a sobering picture. Is there any organised opposition left in Russia at all – and how strong do you consider it to be?

There is no opposition in Russia as a political force, and that is not surprising. For 26 years, Putin has systematically dismantled every form of opposition. Some politicians have been killed – Nemtsov, Navalny – others expelled from the country, and still others are in prison with no hope of release.

If, for example, you watch the video of Navalny’s funeral – where people streamed to his grave without interruption from morning until evening – you can see that there are many who disagree with the regime. But without leaders and without organisation, they do not constitute a political force.

Do you see this as another task for literature – to record such quiet forms of resistance?

Yes. Perhaps that, too, is a task of literature: to preserve experiences that would otherwise disappear into silence.

Ms Kljutscharjowa, thank you very much for this open and compelling conversation – and congratulations once again on the Palm Award.

Thank you.

Background information: Natalja Kljutscharjowa – Writer and journalist in exile

Natalja Kljutscharjowa, born in Perm in 1981, is one of Russia’s most distinctive literary voices. She has published poetry and prose since 2002; in the German-speaking world, she became known above all for her novels “Endstation Russland” (2010) and “Dummendorf” (2012), published by Suhrkamp.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kljutscharjowa began documenting the war and its consequences in a diary that attracted considerable attention – a chronicle of the collapse of the world as she had known it. In 2023, she left Russia with her daughters and went into exile in Germany, where she has lived in Landshut ever since. That same year, Suhrkamp published her “Tagebuch vom Ende der Welt”. Most recently, she published “Woher kommst du? Tagebuch einer Geflüchteten”, in which she portrays the lived reality of refugees from an inside perspective.

From exile, Kljutscharjowa also uses her journalism to advocate for people politically persecuted in Russia and reports for a German audience on the country’s increasingly brutal repression – and on those parts of Russian society that oppose the war.

Background information: The Johann-Philipp-Palm Award 2026

The Johann-Philipp-Palm Award is presented by the Palm Foundation every two years to individuals or institutions who show exceptional personal commitment to freedom of expression and press freedom, often under the most difficult conditions. It is named after the Schorndorf bookseller and publisher Johann Philipp Palm, who was executed by Napoleonic troops in 1806 because he refused to reveal the author of a pamphlet critical of the government.

The award, worth a total of €20,000, is granted for a lifetime achievement and this year is shared equally between two individuals: Natalja Kljutscharjowa and the Mauritanian author and human rights activist Yahya Ekhou.

In the jury’s statement on Kljutscharjowa, submitted by Suhrkamp editor Carl Wilhelm Macke, she is described as having shown herself, “in confronting silence and the end of a world …, to be a person of courage and literary integrity”. The award ceremony will take place in Schorndorf on the first Sunday of Advent.