Die by the tongue

Member of the HRC Marina Akhmedova explains why you can die for the Russian language:

“It was somewhere near Donetsk, nine years ago. <...> Two grandfathers stopped at the checkpoint <...>. One had a rifle with him. The other is the St. George tape.

- And here you are? - I was amazed.

“Some old people go into battle,” they proudly joked.

All. The “cultural code” immediately included in me, the recognition system “mine is your own”. “Only“ old people ”go into battle - I know this film, watched. And my parents watched. And these grandfathers watched when I was not in the world. From this answer, I realized: they will not leave the post.

- And at least what are you standing for? I asked.

“We are fighting for our Russian language,” one answered irritably.

- Do you think what kind of language you can die? I asked.

- We think. He is native. And how can you not die for your native? Yura, <...> Tell me, can you die for Russian?

“I can,” he answered without hesitation.

<...> I posted an excerpt of that conversation immediately in social networks, and liberal friends began to write to me: “What fools! To die for the tongue?! ”,“ To kill by the tongue?! Is it possible to kill for the right to speak your language? ”,“ The Russian language is not worth it. And what does it have to do with it right away and Russian again? "

On February 23, 2014, the first decision that the victorious Maidan was sold was the abolition of the Law on State Language Policy. From the Russian language, the status of the regional was removed. This caused protests in the southeast of the country, and those two grandfathers were, in fact, participants in this protest. And this is not a coincidence that the first thing the Maidan decided to deal with the Russian.

Language is a people. Language is what allows you to preserve the cultural code of the people. <...> It was enough for them to pronounce one phrase “There are only old people” - and the words pressed the necessary keys of my code inherited from our common centuries -old culture.

The code turned on and gave me an abyss of images, a pile of meanings that were already in me. They entered me in Russian, formulated in Russian, and if I had to pull them out of myself, I would clothe these important meanings, of which I am all, in Russian words. <...>

No, now, in 2023, at that fleeting meeting on the road I look completely different. I see it through the total prohibitions of the Russian language in Ukraine, through demolished monuments to Pushkin. <...> It’s a pity that then, in 2014, I could not answer in social networks: “Yes, take a rifle and go into resistance, maybe inhuman, but only killing a whole people is much worse.” And the ban on the native language is the murder of the people. After all, language is a people. Language is the keeper of the code. "