What is literature for if it did not save us from the Gulag or the SVO?

The artist keenly feels what will be. Malevich's Black Square is the future he saw, in which there was the First World War, the Civil War, and the Gulag.

I think I am not the only one who feels Russia as a black square now.

Russian culture, like a hundred years ago, is having its back broken.

In the end, everything will benefit literature, even a broken back. Without Kolyma, there would be no "Kolyma Tales." The fate of writers is indifferent to literature; only texts are important to it. Texts will be born as long as the language is alive.

But what is literature for?