Reflections at a broken trough

"I consider it necessary to apologize for the fact that it was our graduate who took part in this extremely unpleasant event on the side of the prosecutor's office."

The Electronic Education Electronic Education is opened by a letter from the director of the private school, Mikhail Epstein, which ends with the question “whether it is worth ten years to train children with various school wisdom, so that the prosecutors later destroy the hands of our graduates that we are destroyed and humanly expensive and valuable?”

I wrote a private letter to my colleagues - teachers, graduates, parents of students of the school in which I have been working for 20 years. And having written it, I realized that what happened could be relevant not only for this community. And he decided to publish his thoughts more widely. As an occasion to think for us all ... About our near future.

Here is a situation that, unfortunately, has recently become commonplace: the prosecutor’s office comes to the non -profit organization in order to close it or at least sharply complicate her life. The formal reason for the arrival - the organization has grants of the foreign fund. Informal - it behaves defiantly independently: it offers state bodies options for improving their activities for the benefits of citizens.

And since such audacity is offensive to our state, it, instead of stretching out the hand of cooperation in response, is piled on the violator of calmness with the whole power of the Dragon Laws newly adopted against NGOs.

This time the prosecutor’s office (in the person of her employee) came with an audit at the St. Petersburg Center for the Development of Non-Profit Organizations (Central District Hospital). This specialist found that the Central Department Store committed two serious offenses at once (and, in fact, crimes): he receives grants of foreign funds and engaged in political activities. So, under the sign of the center, a frank “foreign agent” fucked a nest.

And if so, then let the employees of the organization choose one of two: either “with a feeling, with a proper, with a arrangement” to drown in a sea of bureaucratic problems, or self -destroyed immediately.

TsRNO is one of the oldest non -profit organizations of the city, which helps other non -profit organizations work more efficiently, organizing a dialogue between their community and city authorities, business. I believe that TsRNO today is one of the cornerstones of civil society in St. Petersburg.

Our private school is one of such non -profit organizations. For many years we have been cooperating with the Central Department Store. And with some colleagues involved in this work, I have been friends for almost 30 years. I know their motives well and I am well aware of the importance for the city of this organization. Of course, they are not “foreign agents” - in what sense this term is used. They are people who, of their own free will and understanding, trying to make life in Russia better.

What exactly is the "political activity" of the Central Department Store? She is charged with the desire for active interaction with state bodies, the preparation of draft legislative acts, participation in the examination of the laws adopted, etc. Today this is called “undesirable activity”.

I, like colleagues from the Central Department Store, consider it important to cooperate with foreign colleagues - for general benefit. And I do not see why we should close from the world. I have many partners and friends in different countries, and they - I know it firmly - only good people want us. And our organization has repeatedly received grants from foreign organizations, and we used this money for the development of the school. Is it possible to consider us foreign agents as a result?

I see what is happening in the country now-again, as in the 1930s and at the turn of the 1940-1950s, mutual hatred is being planted, some people are forced to hang on other labels, to impede their activities and simply prohibit it.

But why am I saying so long and pathos?

But because in this story there is one more - for me extremely sensitive - circumstance.

* * *

The fact is that the same employee of the prosecutor’s office, who came to the Central Bank and contributed to the assignment of the status of a “foreign agent”, is a graduate of our school.

What do I feel and think about this?

First. I consider it necessary to apologize to colleagues from the Central Department Store and the entire community of the NPO of the city. Speaking that it was our graduate who took part in this extremely unpleasant event on the side of the prosecutor's office.

We were directly related to his upbringing for 10 years. This means that we are lying on us part of the fault for his choice.

Second. I feel personally guilty in this situation.

The guilty primarily to our graduate working today in the prosecutor's office. Obviously, we could not build a job at school to help him understand what the value of civil society is. They did not tell him intelligibly about the repressions of the communist regime, about the atmosphere that then reigned in the country, about the role of investigative and judicial authorities, about the mechanisms that launched and supported these actions. We did not create the conditions in which the children would have accumulated the experience of civil participation in the life of the school, city, country. We could not, while he was studying at school, instilling him a sense of joy from freedom - his own and others, and the need to defend this freedom.

This guy wanted to be a lawyer since childhood. And we could not warn him about the moral difficulties that he would inevitably encounter, working in the prosecutor's office at such a time.

Third. I do not consider it right to silence this situation. We need to talk about her and draw conclusions.

Many believe that a specific performer is not to blame. Like, it is clear that this is an order from a system, and an employee of the prosecutor's office only fulfilled what ordered him to do.

But.

I do not consider it right to write off everything to the system. There are always specific performers. Remember how E. Schwartz in the play “Dragon”: “I was taught this ...” - “Everyone was taught. But why did you be the first student, a sort of cattle? "

Yes, of course, I. Stalin and the Communist Party as a whole are to blame for those distant repressions, but there were also many specific neighbors and employees who were “knocking”, and those numerous specific investigators who mocked people in dungeons and enjoyed it.

There are always specific people who could, in their situation, to do something differently.

It is convenient to make nasty things, hiding behind the back of the "system". But I think that in these cases, the country should know its "heroes" by person. And it is important to call publicly all the involved: the employee who considered it right to complicate the life of a large number of people, and the school in which he was brought up.

Maybe if this were done in due time, there would be no such obvious return to the past now.

Finally, the fourth. We must seriously think about what needs to be changed in the work of the school in connection with this story. This young man studied with us for 10 years. And he was a very diligent and successful student. From the point of view of knowledge in the school curriculum.

But the situation with his participation in the CRNO case once again shows that knowledge of knowledge is not enough: it is important to help the student make moral decisions in difficult situations - for example, when the question arises about choosing between conscience and career.

We need to understand how to continue to work in the socio-political situation that is currently in the country. The difficulty is that we are in a very contradictory situation.

We at school cannot (in fact - we have no right) to actively and in detail the children with the modern political situation, we cannot clearly formulate our point of view on what is happening - it will turn out that we draw children into political discussions, and after all their parents may have different ideas about what is happening. Yes, and there is simply no time for this-there is only a watch of physics-mathematics-geography ...

But we cannot help but think that the education of the value of freedom should take more space in the educational program of the school. We cannot help but warn children about what time we live today, what difficulties they will face. They did not live in the Soviet Union, but we lived, and we have experience.

Otherwise, I'm afraid very soon we will also find ourselves with “foreign agents”, and our graduates will come to close the school as unreliable.

So I ask: is it worth ten years to train children with various school wisdom, so that later the prosecutors with the hands of our graduates destroy what is in a divine and humanly expensive and valuable?

Mikhail Epstein