​September the fourteenth

Last week Ya.M. wrote to my wife. Senkin-Tolstoy, author of the immortal story “Ferdinand, or New Radishchev”. Unfortunately, this book, published in the mid-2000s, passed by the reading public. The reason is the Russophobic tone, to the taste of the curators of our literature, and, as a result, the vanishingly small circulation.

“Dear Vika! I returned from the village, I was in isolation, I look at your summer posts and other materials and everything is somehow peaceful, but the enemy attacked Ukraine and is tormenting it, why is war not declared, martial law? So, will the Ukrainian authorities wait for Russian tanks to reach the Dnieper? Don't understand anything? Explain how you see this? Maybe Moscow agents are sitting there? Maybe they are politicians who are not thinking about defending the Motherland, but about re-election to the Rada. Does this mean things are bad in Ukraine? Your..."

The professor, writing under the pseudonym Senkin-Tolstoy (in the first edition of his Pskov travelogue, he called himself simply Senkin) is one of the most attractive Russian people I have met. Open and witty. Skeptical, but not angry. Russian man in his development, as he may appear in 200 years.

One of his most endearing properties is the notorious gift of universal responsiveness. This pan-humanity has nothing to do with our primordial conquest, which in Russia is usually masked by reasoning about brotherly love. Senkin’s all-humanity is empathy, and, if necessary, compassion for another. It’s good to know that somewhere there, in the north, lives a person who selflessly loves Ukraine and empathizes with its troubles.

I decided to answer Ya.M. publicly. I think other normal people in Russia have the same or similar questions. I hope to be useful to them.

***
Dear friend,

I did not respond to your congratulations for two reasons. Firstly, Facebook apparently crashed, and you congratulated me a couple of weeks ahead of schedule. Secondly, in the spring I could not write at all. There was no air and no words.

After the annexation of Crimea, as an International Panorama observer would say, new realities have emerged in the world. This would be nothing if only the world plunged into them - that difficult-to-define concept that is used in cheap journalism to designate the “international situation.” Unfortunately, it was not the inhabitants of Syria or Somalia who became an involuntary part of this situation, but us, suddenly crushed by the Slavic closet. Indifferently and prominently, the awareness of finitude, and at the same time completely sudden finitude, of our life and our children appeared.

You probably noticed that old Kyiv - the upper city on both sides of Khreshchatyk - was built mainly in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, in the wake of the capitalist boom that gripped the declining empire. These are mainly economy-class buildings - without architectural frills, made of cheap brick. Among this raznochinsky-petty-bourgeois development, a dozen more magnificent buildings in the spirit of Art Nouveau stand out. On one of them hangs a memorial plaque: Anna Gorenko settled in this new luxury building in the early 1910s.

Seven, at most ten years after twenty-something Anya (it turns out she was then younger than my eldest daughter, also Anya) moved into her bright apartment with high ceilings, most of the inhabitants of these old and new houses - all these intellectuals, businessmen, officials, rentiers were swept away from the face of Kyiv by war and revolution. Some were completely dead by 1920, some had left their homeland forever, some lived out the remaining century with their fates reversed and, as we understand, looking back, without any hope.

Thoughts about this often visited me in pre-war Kyiv, but only in the spring of 2014 did they migrate from the category of philosophical meditations to the category of practical issues. What to do if tanks enter the city? Where to send children? Should I go with them or stay? Whose experience—the Czechoslovaks after 1968 or the Poles after 1981—should we emulate when preparing for life under occupation? My daughter is flying to Moscow - when and will we see each other again?

Such a collapse of the world has never happened in the memory of our generation. Glorious crash, loud. Our Russia, captured by people from the criminal organization - the KGB, suddenly appeared in all its inhuman glory. Not the first time, of course, but - God forbid I see it once. And the point is not even that our country, with obscenities and Russian language, perhaps fled to the West, starting a proxy war with the “brotherly” people as a warm-up. It’s just that in place of what previously seemed quite normal faces, the hari, snouts and muzzles of the God-bearing people appeared in the style of 1917. The sudden transformation of Russians into aggressive and bloodthirsty brutes is perhaps my biggest shock in this whole story.

The peaceful tone of the Vika posts that you write about is something like auto-training. Current life in Ukraine is a complete hassle. In one tangle - war, economic crisis, collapse of the state. We must get used to the idea that the worst has not yet come, that the historian-reconstructionists who studied with C grades will still try to make a strong mixture of Auschwitz and the Greek project of Mother Catherine. Taking care of your family and children allows you to at least temporarily put off the anxiety attacks that come with reading news and stories on Facebook.

Are you asking if things are bad in Ukraine? Ukraine, as we have known it for the last 20 years - good-natured, uncollected, kindly - no longer exists. The old statehood, built on the unreliable foundation of the Ukrainian SSR, has died, and we are present at the birth of something new.

Since for the last 15 years I have made my living as an economic journalist, I note with satisfaction: along with the post-Ukrainian SSR, the Ukrainian oligarchs, comical in their improbability, are becoming a thing of the past. These were very interesting characters. A repentant robber. Cruel joker. Tenderly loving husband of the president's daughter. A couple of talented metrosexuals who got rich from agriculture and political connections... Eh, it was a fun time. Regardless of how the future life of the country develops, the type of economic power that arose on the basis of Soviet industrial giants and Soviet production relations is gone forever.

What is replacing it? The revolution and war threw part of the old elite into the dustbin, brought another part to power, but most importantly, contributed to the accelerated production of new people on an industrial scale. Maidan activists, volunteers, self-defense fighters, volunteers of territorial battalions, leaders of public organizations emerging here and there... Just ten months ago there was neither a rumor nor a breath about them, but today there are dozens on the election lists of political forces going to the Verkhovna Rada and hundreds of new names.

Kremlin political scientists now say “former Ukraine.” I hope that they will not really like the new Ukraine that is emerging in place of the old one. In the worst case, it will be an occupied country in which - against the backdrop of guerrilla warfare and general sabotage - national identity will grow stronger, unfortunately for you and me, on a solid anti-Russian basis (see the example of Poland). At best, it will be a heavily militarized “Israel on the Dnieper.” By the way, Kyiv in September already reminded our mutual friend Maxim Kashulinsky of Tel Aviv - so many people in field military uniform.

War and revolution never have too beautiful children. It is not a fact that we, Russian liberals, will really like the new Ukraine. But now the question is not how the Ukrainians will use their victory. The question is that their victory is a sine qua non of the world order.

Your child was attacked. You protect him - you bite the enemy with your teeth, you hit him with a stick. This does not mean that by fighting back you have forever ensured the victory of good. Your child may grow up to be a scoundrel, and you yourself may spoil him with excessive indulgences or excessive pressure. But is it possible to act differently in a situation where he is attacked? And is it possible not to sympathize with all your heart for your father - and not for the gang?

From Ukraine, which, I believe, will fight off the gang, different things can happen. There is no need to say that the military threat - and it now hangs over the country for a long time - can bring to power people who will justify their theft, sloppiness, and complexes with references to “The Fatherland is in danger,” “everything for the front, everything for victory,” etc. .p. Well, this could happen. But, as you and I understand, there are no final victories in world history, and democracy does not mean coming every five years and voting.

You ask whether there are Moscow agents in the Ukrainian leadership. I moved to Kyiv in the winter of 2010, and this question interested me keenly even then. Sometimes I asked it to former presidents, prime ministers and other prominent big bosses. As you understand, it was not possible to get clear answers. KGB archives with the names of agents left Ukraine in the fall of 1991, and making judgments based on the actions and words of certain figures in Ukrainian politics would be too rash.

At some point, I stopped “digging” because I saw: the Ukrainian political elite, even in the person of its most odious characters, will never be pro-Russian. Pressure and blackmail from the north only strengthened the Ukrainian nobility in the idea that they needed to move to Europe. Here is a typical episode. In September 2012, in the midst of yet another trade conflict initiated by the Kremlin, I approached Leonid Kuchma at the Yalta forum and asked him how he assessed Putin’s new policies. “The collector of Russian lands...” said the second president of Ukraine, who came to power with the active support of Russia, and added a word by which the former directors of Soviet defense giants do not swear, but talk.

What has changed since then? Please note: even among the industrial barons of Donbass there were no quislings and petains who were ready to feign pro-Russian sympathies at the head of some puppet governments. Moscow had to be content with the Kuusinens - chauvinist historians and petty swindlers who emerged from nowhere and stood at the head of the “popular protest” in the Donbass.

Another thing is that, like the oligarchs, the victorious part of the old elite: Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk and others, most likely will not stay on the historical stage. On Tuesday, the Rada, at the instigation of the president, adopted a law on the special status of areas of Donbass occupied by bandits and Russian troops. It is compared to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and is branded as treacherous. I do not agree with those who accuse Poroshenko of capitulating to Putin. The leaders of today's Ukraine are aware that there is a war going on, that the duration of the Minsk truce depends on how quickly and effectively the Ukrainian army is rebuilt, how seriously its allies in the West will help it with weapons and ammunition.

I see no point in scolding the current - obviously transitional - government (in this concept I include both the parliament and the president). They will still have to make many painful decisions that will nullify their political capital. Perhaps, as you write, they are indeed more concerned about the elections to the Rada than they should be. But in fact, the choice that faces them is quite simple - sacrificing their own future, saving the country or perishing with it.

This reasoning contains the answer to your question “Why is war not declared?” A declaration of war on the part of Ukraine makes sense only in one case: Moscow must understand that the scale of possible losses will be completely unacceptable for it. Until Kyiv can convincingly demonstrate to Moscow that an invasion will result in mutually assured destruction, it is too early to declare war - even taking into account the fact that the intervention in Donbass has already taken place.

With this I say goodbye and wish you strength of spirit. You and I don’t believe in the divine, so the best thing a person in our situation can do is not to despair.