The interview addresses the position of historical materialism within Russian literary scholarship in the past and in the current moment. While it was programmatically discarded after the fall of the Soviet Union together with other trappings of Soviet officialdom, a materialist understanding of literary criticism remained operative in historical, contextual studies of literature and political thought that remained mainstream. In the current moment, it is time to revive the political implications of historical materialism and Marxism in a democratic struggle against imperialism and authoritarianism, as well its theoretical frameworks which allow us to extend historical analysis far beyond simple contextualization of canonical works and authors.