Live here and now

“I think it’s a betrayal to leave Russia now,” a friend of one of my sons, a 25-year-old frequenter of Bolotnaya and Sakharov, told me the other day.

“And if you have a choice: prison or emigration, what will you choose?” I asked.

“I will choose prison,” he answered as if he had been thinking about it for a long time, weighing all the pros and cons.

I've heard something similar before. It was probably in the early 80s. At the parents' kitchen, the guests argued until they were hoarse. “I don't want to live in this country anymore. I'm suffocating,” shouted one of the then famous writers whose books were published abroad. His father objected to him: “But this is a betrayal. You can't leave."

The front door slammed - the father ran after the writer, trying to explain why he was wrong.

Then there were seeing off close friends. People left, never to return. Then the choice was tough: emigration or prison.

Today everything is different. Yes, among those who left after the rally on Bolotnaya on May 6, 2012, there are those who were afraid they would put them in jail.

There is a case of Guriev, Ashurkov. We seem to know that they really faced, if not prison, then at least criminal prosecution. But what threatens those who are leaving now, like the journalist Leonid Bershidsky, who recently published a text on FB that looks like a manifesto of a new wave of emigration - an emigration of disillusionment?

Maybe it would not be worth paying attention to his case if it weren’t for a series of similar publications, and often repeated conversations that “it’s time to dump.” All arguments, reasons and reasons are clear. And still. Why do we give up so quickly?

We are suffocating in the musty air of today, when the morning sip of coffee is poisoned by the news from the State Duma about another idiotic law, when it is impossible to turn on the TV - more and more aggressive propaganda flows from there. But after all, not only those who were dragged for interrogations and who were followed by cars with FSB officers were leaving. Those who have the opportunity to find work abroad leave. Yes, according to polls of sociologists, there are not so many such people across the country. But these people are part of the very “creative class” that protested against dishonest elections, those who tried to change the agenda in the country, people with brains, finally.

Why do they so easily admit defeat to those who give the order to close independent media, expel editors-in-chief, and deprive television companies of the air?

Why do we allow ourselves to be disappointed when we are only slightly pressed? Look around - it's not true that there is no media that would protect the weak from the strong, it's not true that no one opposes the insane power. There are pockets of resistance. The most recent example: the Ministry of Culture banned the showing of "dangerous to morality" performances in the Central House of Artists, as a sign of solidarity, writers and publishers moved to other venues. And surprisingly, such sites were found.

Under pressure from human rights activists and the press, Mikhail Kosenko was released from the psychiatric hospital. In Soviet times, he would not have been released so quickly.

Alexei Navalny and Konstantin Janaskaus are kept under house arrest because they are feared. So you can't give up. Today, emigration is not a betrayal. This is surrender.

But in this country there are still a lot of things that need to be done.

I am not against emigration. In the end, it is the right of everyone to choose where to live and raise children. I am categorically against such glorification of the departure: we are so wonderful, we can’t be here anymore, we will return later, when Russia becomes Europe.

Russia, of course, will become Europe. But for this you need to live here and now.