Translated material
Sokurov's appeal to the residents of St. Petersburg
Dear residents of St. Petersburg!
Yesterday afternoon a significant event took place in our city, which perhaps most of you did not notice.
In the Central District of the city, an old resident of St. Petersburg, House Number Three, who lived on the corner of Zagorodny Prospekt and Shcherbakova Lane, was killed.
"Doctors" - city planners and official "therapists" - decided to publicly apply the method of euthanasia to this quite strong old man, who had not even had time to tell everything about the events in the life of people and the city, which he had witnessed for a century and a half. And he won’t tell anything anymore... But he still could, I’m sure he could.
I met and spoke with him several times - and His speech was quite intelligible and not even without humor. But He will not tell anything more - he will not tell about how he survived the terrible blockade, how the noble citizens who lived in his rooms and known for their good deeds passed away into another world, and how they were born - he will also not tell. Mister Dom, of course, was sick, and sometimes his whole body ached and trembled during a cold - after all, people did not like to treat Him, although He tried, tried for a long time to both warm them and shelter them from the cold of St. Petersburg’s evil autumn and painful winter .
House Number Three realized too late that St. Petersburg residents are unreliable people: they may forget to patch the roof, they may not take care of repairing the ceilings - in general, these St. Petersburg residents do not like to be treated, their memory has become short, they are fussy and lazy at the same time.
...Yesterday I stood at His walls and saw how hastily the vandals ripped open His body, beat on the window frames, heard the House grinding and groaning, His flesh shuddered and was torn, like the skin of a Lamb, He really wanted to still live and was able to live and instill faith in the eternal life of Russian culture and in the inviolability of the words “thou shalt not kill,” “thou shalt not harm thy neighbors,” “don’t lie,” don’t lie, don’t lie...
At some point, after the bucket hit the wall, I saw a break in the wall... This three-story resident of our poor city was not a strongman, he was not... And a wall of three or four bricks is not a bundle of muscles, but these are THOSE BRICKS, THIS IS THE WORK OF OUR ANCESTORS OF RUSSIAN CITY BUILDERS, THEIR LABOR, THEIR SKILL OR INABILITY, THIS IS THE MATERIALIZATION OF NATIONAL HISTORY, THIS IS THE IMPORTANT DOCUMENT AND EVIDENCE OF THE VERY LIFE OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE, THE CAPITAL OF THE UNHAPPY COUNTRY...
“Look,” the bone-crushing builders shouted to me, “it’s completely rotten, why the hell do you all need it?!” Old people - to the dump, to the fire, we will destroy everything and in this place we will create others, we will create new people. We will buy everything here: your hermitages, and all sorts of palaces, and your stupid embankments - we will buy it all, demolish it and build our own - new, cheap, and this new thing will bring new money.
At that moment I realized that I would never be understood by these creatures, these cattle slaughterers. And everything inside us is different, and in our eyes there are different worlds, and our memory is different.
Is there any point in thinking about where these “surgeons” came from? Where is the “womb” hidden, which, without ceasing, has intercourse with the devil and carries its ugly litter into life? Wolf packs - old and young hungry wolves in St. Petersburg holes and basements: “architects”, “developers”, “builders”... Does it make sense to ask yourself where these prospectors received their education, who issued diplomas to these savages, who blinded them - and who, who supports and protects this armada? You can answer this way: this is Russian capitalist brainless expansion, Russian money is bad, stupid money. But this answer doesn’t make it any easier.
Lord, help us in our opposition to the dark forces and their army, we can no longer cope, there are few of us, and we cannot oppose anything to our enemies...
Have you seen the eyes of our policemen when they, dressed in gray uniforms, appear in front of us? I looked at those faces then. And I asked myself: who teaches these young men arrogance, hatred of the citizen, of the person? Who rehearses with them, who develops this initially prison, camp tone of conversation with a human citizen? Why did the police immediately begin to protect from us those who committed illegal actions? After all, there wasn’t a single sheet of permitting documents at the place where the excavators were working? Of course, this is not an accident - the police know the procedures and do not ask for documents only when they are given the task of “covering up” some kind of lawlessness.
So, does it work? After all, at the scene of the action, there was no reaction to all our messages to the police that there were no documents about the destruction. Moreover, they pushed us away and, under threat of arrest, demanded that we go far away.
Questions, questions, questions... Today it is impossible to think without anxiety about the future of our state, consumed by accumulated and new unsolvable managerial and social tasks. The number of unprofessional decisions in various areas of government and public life is enormous.
We are drowning, we are perishing, and below us are the enormous depths of civilization, long since mastered by our neighbors in the Old World... We are behind and every day we are falling further and further behind. We cease to believe in the Russian state and our very ability to create a reasonable state without external help.
I must now ask for forgiveness from those citizens who for some reason hoped that my appearance at the construction site would stop the demolition of the building. I also apologize to the young people from the people's organization "Living City" who stood on the street with posters demanding a stop to Nazi tyranny. I agree with them: this is the reign of Nazi ideology, when nothing is precious, when violence and arbitrariness solve all problems. I am as powerless as you, citizen, I am nobody and nothing in our city, my opinion means nothing.
The time has come to look for other people whose authority in St. Petersburg will be obvious both to the authorities and to the people (the masses), including the young people of the city. These new leaders, perhaps, will lead the people to new violent demonstrations, or will be able to sit down at the negotiating table with the authorities and achieve normalization of life... Perhaps they will be able to defend the priority of the principles of culture, the significance of national culture over all other program tasks. After all, the development of culture is the main task of the state. We only need a state in which the culture will not allow the people to run wild.
And today I am ashamed. I am ashamed that in St. Petersburg the overwhelming majority of residents are absolutely indifferent to the fate of St. Petersburg. Millions of city residents happily, to the fullest extent, take from the city everything they want, devouring it, using it, but there are so few who try to protect it with selfless love. Millions of young people born in this city have forgotten or never thought about their great responsibility to it. You are leaving St. Petersburg to be torn to pieces, is this really your final decision?
There are many poets in St. Petersburg. In St. Petersburg they know how to speak beautifully. All. This is not enough anymore. Petersburg is not eternal. It may not exist.