Saving the honor of Russia

In the capital of Russia and other large cities of the country, rallies are being held in memory of lawyer S. Markelov and journalist A. Baburova, who were killed in the center of Moscow on the street. Prechistenka January 19, 2009 We are publishing an article by their friend, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Public Administration of Moscow State University Yaroslav Leontyev .

On Sunday, the first picket this year in memory of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova took place in Chelyabinsk . A group of young people came to the Eaglet monument on Aloye Pole with lit candles and portraits of Stas, Nastya and other dead anti-fascists. Thirty people in a city with a population of one million – is that a lot or a little?

Compared to the hundreds of boys and girls who came to Kronstadt Boulevard in Moscow on Saturday to honor the memory of Yegor Sviridov, this is certainly not enough. But there are other quantities in our not so long history. In August 1968, after the introduction of Soviet tanks into Czechoslovakia, several eight dissenters saved the honor of the two hundred and forty million USSR. There were an order of magnitude more driver mechanics in these same tanks.

But History and historians did not even take an interest in their names. The names of Pavel Litvinov , Vadim Delone and their friends, on the contrary, remained in the textbooks (fortunately, there are other textbooks besides the Vdovinsko-Barsenkov ones). As a result, Larisa Bogoraz , Natalya Gorbanevskaya and other forerunners of August 91 turned out to be exactly 23 years more perspicacious than their contemporaries...

By the way, when we gathered at the beginning of Prechistenka for Stas and Nastya’s fortieth birthday two years ago, there were not much more participants in the memorial picket than in Chelyabinsk. But more than a thousand concerned people responded to the Committee’s call on January 19 last year.

A thousand for Moscow – is it a lot or a little? The question, however, is rhetorical. The number of underground fighters from the “Red Chapel”, pilots from the “Normandie-Niemen” - are there many of them or few? At least they are enough to save the honor of entire nations.

Fifty anti-fascists, who marched in memory along Pokrovka two years ago, saved the honor of Nizhny Novgorod, a city with a population of one and a half million. Several Saratov anarchists, who at the same time put up a banner banner on a supermarket, saved the honor of the second ancient capital of the Volga. And there were also Perm and Sochi, Izhevsk and Petrozavodsk, Berlin and Paris, Rome and Thessaloniki...

Having at first been upset by the number of participants in the picket in the city on Che, I was consoled by a comment in LJ from one of its organizers: “ The action in memory of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova took place! I will definitely post an official post-release tomorrow and some photos, but for now a little of my chaotic impressions... I want to thank everyone who came and supported the rally today! it is very important for me! but, unfortunately, there were not enough people, mostly young people, my friends and acquaintances. And there were not enough journalists, although they could have come, after all, Nastya was their colleague... Everything went off without provocation. The police behaved extremely correctly... This was the first rally for me in which I participated, not everything went as we would have liked, but well, we will learn from our mistakes...”

I know that the new generation is singing new songs. And let empty talkers and ill-wishers slander and hiss in the comments, mockingly assessing the number of picket participants in “Tankograd”, I will answer them with a line from an old song by a person of “Caucasian nationality” in the person of Bulat Okudzhava:

Don't give a damn about the gossipers, girls.
We'll settle the score with them later.

Saving the honor of Russia

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