To friends-Moscow

It is amazing how the organized campaign to “restore the ghost” fraternity between the two neighboring peoples, divided, as usual, by bad politicians, coincided with the emotional sighs of Russian journalists and public figures who support Ukraine in its conflict with Russia - and unexpectedly not understood by the Ukrainian audience. My dear colleague Olya Romanova is surprised at the reaction of the network users to her sincere sympathy for the Ukrainians, whom she still considers one people with the Russians - and that is why she is outraged by a fratricidal war. The popular blogger Rustem Agadamov confirms : yes, one people, Soviet. The wonderful journalist Arkady Babchenko is surprised that his Ukrainian readers want to see Russians - even absolutely wonderful, even absolutely democratic - as tourists, and not the inhabitants of their country. The uncompromising blogger Sasha Sotnik “ says goodbye to Ukraine ” and promises not to bother her to residents anymore - until the foam “foam”.

My dear, I could give you a long lecture on history. I could say that at school you were deceived and that three centuries of occupation have not yet made invaders with one people with the occupied. And even centuries relatively equal residence - they also do not. After all, the British and Scots are not one people, right? And the Castilians and Catalans are not alone. And even the Russians and the Tatars, forgive me my unspokenness, not one people, even though you still live together in the same state. But arguing about the story with neighbors is almost hopeless; This is evidenced not only by our experience, but also by the experience of Europe.

Therefore, I will better tell you about what is reconciling me with the Germans. And given that I grew up in a family that lost most of the older generation during the war and Holocaust, this is not such a simple reconciliation. And besides, already in adulthood, I realized that the German Jews did not feel like strangers among the Germans, and many of them - that there are many, almost everything! - They perceived themselves as the Germans of the Jewish religion. And I assure you that by their compatriots, these people were ready for the excellent extermination than Ukrainians - for the attack of Russia.

So, with the Germans, I am reconciled by either the universal repentance and humility that we observe in the post -war Germany - I do not believe in the universal repentance and even more so in the universal repentance of the vanquished - and the only person is Willy Brandt. The head of the German government, who knelt before the monument to the heroes of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. This is a famous photograph, everyone who was interested in history knows it. But always, when I am in Berlin, I go to the Willy Brandt Museum on Unter-de Linden and look at this photo. And then I live on in Germany.

I don't know how to explain this to you. It seems to me that it's simple. Brandt had nothing to do with Hitlerism crimes. Well, no at all. He left Germany in fact immediately after Hitler came to power. He fought with Nazism all the years of the regime. He became a Norwegian citizen and returned to his homeland in the Norwegian military uniform. He could calmly - and even indifferently - to look at the monument to people whose murder he had nothing to do, moreover, he did everything that he could not happen.

But he felt responsibility - because the more your non -involvement, the more your responsibility to the victims of the regime established in your own country. No matter whether one people or two people. It doesn’t matter what Ukrainians say or write to you - you can’t even imagine what the Jews of the Federal Chancellor of Germany could write in 1970. It is important that you have precisely this desire, at least mentally - to stand on the knees at the grave of every Ukrainian guy, every girl who was ruined by your crazy state. Only this desire. No others. No need to teach us life, rejoice at our landscapes and products. No need to come to us for the forums of the intelligentsia and tell us about corruption. We only need this from you, understand. This is the only thing that can someday, after decades, to reconcile us is your repentance, your understanding of our pain. And the clearer your non -involvement in your state and that immoral wild majority that inhabit it, the deeper this understanding and this readiness for repentance should be. Repentance of others.

Perhaps you cannot understand this to the end also because for many of you what is happening is an alien war. After all, it does not happen on yours, but on our land. And the same Pskov paratroopers, whose graves with a risk to life were searched by Lev Schlosberg - they lived in a world with which each of you never contacts. And at my school in Kyiv there is now a memorial plaque in memory of one of the guys who died at the Donetsk airport. This guy was a friend of my colleagues and acquaintances, this, as they say, is one touch. This is my world. This is my war.

... Once in the days of the fighting for the Donetsk airport, I stood on the boulevard of Lesya Ukrainka near my own house - and I live next to the military hospitals. An ordinary day, people hurry about their business, no one notices anything. And suddenly a string of ambulance appears. A minute passes, the other, fifth, tenth, fifteenth - and they all go and go, go and go - and there is no end to them. And the people who were in a hurry on the boulevard stand and look after these cars. They just stand and look. Without words. Without tears.

What else do you want to know about us? What, in the end, is the difference to you who we were - at least in your fantasies - if you know who you and I have become? Understand that my personal attitude towards each of you will not change because you think about the past and even about the present of our two countries. And your support for Ukraine in difficult times does you honor, no matter what you think about one or two peoples. But please grow up, please. Learn, finally, to be responsible for your own state. For his crimes and his mistakes. Understand that the degree of your responsibility is one hundred times higher than the degree of responsibility of criminals and fools.

Because it is precisely on this understanding that it depends not ours, but your own future.