When I first conceived the work Violence, I was 20 years old. Back then, its foundation lay in the ideas of life’s fatality, the finiteness and mortality of humanity. My outlook was pessimistic: it seemed that everything would eventually be destroyed—civilization would perish, the planet would die, everything was doomed, and nothing could change that.

In this story, a person was a wanderer, endlessly roaming through life, constantly discovering new facets and surprises. He moved back and forth, trying to make sense of things, yet inevitably ended up at a broken trough. The main idea was that humanity was doomed.

Additionally, Violence carried anti-utopian ideas about a controlling state—a theme that often concerns young people when they leave their parents’ home and begin to struggle against the system.

Now, looking back, I realize that the ideas of fighting the system still resonate with me, but they have taken on a different character. Expressing this in the old way feels pointless and uninteresting since so much has already been said on the topic. Orwell, Zamyatin, and other authors have masterfully shown what a totalitarian world and human civilization can look like at their worst.

Today, as I work on Violence, I suddenly understand that it is not just a story about the system or fatalism. It is a story about people. About interaction. About battling inner demons.

I no longer seek to provide answers. On the contrary, I ask more and more questions. And each reader finds their own answers, relying on their personal life paradigm, age, social, moral, and economic conditions, their state, and the values it imposes.

I think it’s important not to have ready-made answers for everything. True thought is a process of asking questions and reflecting, not reading pre-written answers from a script.

In a way, I remain a dark character, looking at the world through a fogged-up glass. The characters of Violence are also complex and contradictory. They combine both good and bad traits.

It is important for me to show how circumstances influence a person’s choices. How they decide to be kind or cruel, to act justly or unjustly. I don’t want to create flat villains. My characters are real people who act as they see fit, even if it seems wrong.

The main idea remains the same: a human being is a creature that carries violence. But violence is not always evil. Through the use of force, a person transforms the world around them, making it more convenient, bending it to their will. This is a selfish, inconsistent, and sometimes illogical being.

In Violence, I explore what happens when this concept expands to the scale of civilization, to a vast society. I try to build a utopian system that could bring good, but I do not forget that even a utopia carries elements of violence.

As I work on Violence, I continue on this path myself. It feels like the road is still not fully traveled, and perhaps the end won’t bring answers—but that’s okay. Sometimes, it’s more important to stay with the questions than to rush to close them with the first conclusions that come to mind.