And I didn't think of exaggerating

Twenty years ago, if not more, I wrote that in our country there is only one decent politician, and she is crazy. I must admit that over the past years I had no reason to doubt Valeria Ilyinichna’s integrity, and as for her madness, it hurt my eyes less and less, however, perhaps because I myself was going more and more crazy.

Based on what has been said, what seems strange and not ideal to me about Valeria Ilyinichna, I won’t go into detail now, I simply love Novodvorskaya, and decent people do not publicly discuss the shortcomings of the women they love. But I still think it’s possible to say a few words about her statement today, entitled “ Weak people are not repressed .”

“Are you scared already? ” the author poses the question from the very beginning and very directly. “But this is not yet repression. Repression, after which they return home from the rally, well, or sit for several hours in the police department, or receive 15 days - this is not yet repression. “When you get 10 years for this, like in the Soviet era, and when it never even occurred to anyone that someone would unauthorizedly go into the square with some kind of anti-government slogans, this is repression.”

What can I say? I myself constantly object to exaggerations of the bloodiness of the regime, which, in the sense of exaggeration, only clouds the picture and throws off the aim. Well, it’s funny to argue that the consequences for those who go out into the streets to protest now are incomparable to Brezhnev’s times, when such a thing would have resulted in much greater trouble without any discussion. However, let’s try to be objective here too.

Yes, the “demonstration of seven” against the entry of troops into Czechoslovakia was, in modern times, more than peaceful and innocent, and in modern times it was suppressed with unprecedented cruelty. But, by the way, it was still an exit to Red Square with an open political protest. And people didn’t even get all the real camp sentences, there was exile, and a mental hospital for “only” a couple of years, followed by a move to Paris, scary, of course, but not entirely fatal.

But under Stalin, for something like this, or even much less, they would have either been shot immediately, or in any case turned into camp dust.

And under Ivan the Terrible they could even skin them alive. And one must still agree that under Joseph Vissarionovich such a measure of social protection was no longer so widespread.

So Novodvorskaya’s main message - “There is no need to exaggerate” - is quite fair. And yet here is where there is some distortion and some danger.

Quite objectively, the airplane is the most reliable and safe of all mass transport vehicles. You can't even compare it to a car. Last year, in panic, they announced that the number of victims of plane crashes in Russia had increased two and a half times. And it's true. But it is also true that with all this increase, 162 people died that year. And I can’t write “only 162 people.” I couldn’t write “everything” even if one person died.

However, twenty-five to thirty thousand people die every year in car accidents, and ten times more are injured. Let's still be honest and objective - there is a huge difference. But for anyone who died on the plane, and for his relatives, there is no difference. For them, each person’s own tragedy is isolated and unique, and statistics have no meaning.

Yes, “this is not repression yet.” Tell this to Pichugin, who received a life sentence, or Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, who received a suspended life sentence. Come on, there are such passions there. It’s there, in the damned West, if a person gets six months in prison with a TV and a gym, he comes out already in serious “authority”. And here the overwhelming majority considers a couple of years of Mordovian camps for Pusek, especially since some of it has already been spent in pre-trial detention, as simply nonsense not worth attention.

Of course, not repression. Novodvorskaya probably has the right to such a phrase. I will not risk taking on the responsibility of such a statement.

http://auvasilev.livejournal.com/496498.html