The romantics transferred

Each nation, like individuals, is interesting, but sometimes it is strange to see how others perceive it. One way or another, not only details, but also facts, milestones are distorted. More often - without any intent. The scrupulous descriptions of the life of great people make the impression of complete reliability, but each of them would only shrugged: "You never know what I seduced in letters and what I chatted on the feast!"

So with the peoples. In the position of a person like me - Russian in life and work and a Ukrainian by birth, education and native language - there are known advantages. When I read as a Russian that they write about Russia in Ukraine, and as a Ukrainian - that they write about Ukraine in Russia, I easily notice that both sides are not completely laughed at each other. More often, some trifle is missed or turned upside down, but it may contain the whole essence. I do not take obviously hostile scriptures-they are also noteworthy, but differently. No, we are talking about those Russians who wish the victories of Ukraine, and those Ukrainians who hope for democracy in Russia.

Take, for example, the Ukrainian rebel army. No one knows for sure when it arose, and the Russian fan of Ukraine is the last one who thinks what it means. The army was, and when it arose, not only historians argue, but also the people who served in it! The Russian does not delve into the fact that this army, from a legal point of view, was not at all, because there was no corresponding state. Here a generalization immediately begs. The Russian soul, with all its subtlety and hills, does not think of itself without severe prose in the form of a state. The Russian mind does not accommodate such an incident that the Ukrainian army was, but the Ukrainian state, part of which it would be - otherwise, to the hell, the army was not.

The Kremlin uses this feature of Russian consciousness to the fullest. They broadcast about the UPA as if there was not only it, but also the state - almost the same one, at the head of which the Kiev Hunt is standing today. In turn, the Democratic Tolik of Russia noticeably overestimates the maturity of Ukrainian civil society. The employment of the Ukrainian population is also the war. Obviously exaggerate the rally of Ukrainians in the face of Russia.

It would be better to speak simply about the falling away from Russia that part of the Ukrainians who were especially benevolent to it. Now they have cooled down to her: who is furious, some with annoyance. Most fell calmly. This is the main consequence of the war. Only now can we firmly say that Russia was left without Ukraine, even if it, Russia, will still capture it entirely. Anyway, Russia has ended for Ukraine. Essentially, only in this war did the historical life of Ukraine resumed, which had barely begun at Bogdan Khmelnitsky. Pushkin was an imperial to the brain of the bones, which did not prevent him from understanding that the matter could end not in the best way for the third Rome:

Where will we remove the system of strongholds?
For the bug, to Vorskla, to the estuary?
Who will Volyn be left for?
Who is Bogdan's legacy for?
Recognizing the rebellious rights
Will Lithuania rejected from us?
Our Kyiv is decrepit, golden -headed,
This ancestor of Russian cities,
Whether it will be akin to the violent Warsaw
The shrine of all your coffins?

The legacy of Bogdan in the end went to himself, Bogdan's heritage, and Kyiv was almost akin to Warsaw, and, which would hardly surprise Pushkin, this became more with Polish efforts.

I do not need sociology to see where the Ukrainians, in turn, are too much too much in their ideas about Russia. They somehow do not keep in their heads that they are for Russians. Russian dialectics is still the one: you are us, but since you do not want to admit it, then we are not you. It is difficult for a Ukrainian to understand this twist, I think, because something decisive for him is hurt: self -awareness (self -identification). To agree with the Russian approach would mean to say to myself that I was not. It is so difficult that you are not responding with indignation, but with amazement: what kind of nonsense you are, Mil-human!

That is why a Ukrainian is not quite believed that it was this nonsense that abandoned the Russian army into Ukraine. How easy it is to Russian, it is difficult for a Ukrainian to imagine that the war can cause the Russian desire to consider him, Ukrainian, Russian. Putin’s recognition is that for him Russians and Ukrainians are one people, causes Ukraine bewilderment. In this case, it costs hatred, who does not promise the Russian ruler with his majority nothing good.

It is interesting, by the way, to observe the Poles, for whom a similar story is far behind. Enlightened Poles almost reverently belong to Russia by Herzen and Sakharov. When I look at it as a Russian, I see some overkill. Still, they do not draw a fairly deep border between the Russia that they are in love with, and the one that inspires them with disgust. They want to hope that these two Russia can someday converge, that Sakharovskaya can eventually ennoble Putin, while I, Russian, know for sure that these are two different planets, tiny and huge. The small Russian minority will remain like this, and you, Poles, are romance, as you should. But in Ukraine, I know, Ukrainian, there are no more such romantics. Over the past year, the latter were transferred.

Anatoly Striere - writer and publicist, host of the Radio Liberty program "Your Letters"

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