Millions of Russia

In his open letter to Gustav Gusaku, the future Czechoslovak and Czech president, and then, in 1975, dissident Vaclav Gavel wrote that the inhabitants of his countries now think much more about themselves, their own home, the family - it is here that they find calm, here they can freely realize their creative potential. “They rush about in search of household items, good things, want to improve their home, make life more pleasant, build cottages for themselves, take care of cars, pay more attention to food, clothes, home comfort, in a word, are primarily focused on the material parameters of their private life,” wrote Gavel.

It is probably not easy for the Russian reader why this text caused such a storm of emotions in Czechoslovakia itself, in Europe, and in the United States, why it turned into a multiple quoted manifesto of Havel. After all, what is written in it is a dream, for many Soviet people in those years inaccessible, but becoming accessible only today: cottages, cars, things, products ... What did they still lack?

But Gavel, among the first, saw one of the main signs of that time - the loss of interest in their own country, in public development. Everyone lived in his house as in a tank, so as not to think about the state occupied by strangers. Czechoslovakia was divided into thousands of small countries that did not want to notice a large one - and at that time it intensified in great insanity every day, and it was very difficult to perceive this growing madness as its own homeland. Yes, in fact, there was no homeland at that time: Gavel and other Eastern European dissidents did not just fight with a variety of husaks - they first of all tried to return this homeland to people.

Russia after almost four decades is in the position of the same Czechoslovakia trampled by the foreign tanks. The hopes that as if that appeared at part of society after rallies in Bolotnaya, mercilessly trampled, like the Prague Spring once. The reaction intensifies every day, developing into the already familiar insanity by Soviet times, a daily growing madness that could be commented on in the usual ironic manner, if it had now had not gone through the caterpillars through innocent people, even for children, joyfully, demonstrating impotence of not only decent, but already just sane people. There is no chance for a successful resolution of this situation.

But there are millions of small Russians that are not yet large, but capable of becoming it when the time comes. There are people living their own lives, building their own worlds, turning off the Time program and trying to forget about Putin or meadow. People who would like their homeland to appear - and deserving this homeland. The time will come - and they will definitely understand that the homeland does not appear just like that and not to replace it with any cottage, no new furniture in a renovated apartment, no prestigious school for children and a TV forever turned off. But I do not promise that this will be next year.