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I'm just a Bolshevik with a laptop.

There are people who think I'm a Bolshevik, and this is all a major distraction at best and heresy at worst. But I really don't care.

Having spent the greater part of my life under a Communist dictatorship, I am very familiar with the Bolshevik mentality according to which an author in general, and an eminent author in particular, is always guilty, and must be punished accordingly.

I am a Marxist Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.

I am also one of those persons who were transformed, who grew out of the Soviet system and transformed myself into the new Russia.

Although I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet.

I'm a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal, too.

One senses that all the Bolsheviks, even those who ended up as cold-blooded autocrats, had been on a journey from idealism to something else, and didn't notice - to mix periods - when the Rubicon was crossed.

I'm actually embarrassed to tell people I'm Russian these days, because it's become such an awful place.

I'm Russian Jewish. And I had to grow up really quickly.