Death and fate

The words are powerless.

The day before yesterday, for example, you write about current Russian affairs, calling for the evacuation of potential victims of judicial terror and seeing salvation and meaning in that evacuation, and now ... Now in them, in these words you do not find any point or salvation. From fate where you are evacuated.

Arkady Babchenko left Russia last winter, protecting himself and his family from endless threats and direct reprisal. In the status of an enemy of the people, unable to grieve correctly about the dead compatriots, hopeless Russophobe and the traitor. It was a reasonable act, and it might seem to be the worst for him behind. Debaration, wanderings, the eternal search for dough in the framework of the project "Journalism without intermediaries", this is our, as it were, legalized by the profession of grateful readers - everything is better, though than a prison or death. In the fall of 2017, he finally found a shelter and work in Kyiv.

Yesterday he was killed in this city. When he returned with purchases from the store, like Anna Politkovskaya, not in the elevator, but in the doorway of the apartment. Shots in the back, like Boris Nemtsov on the Moskvoretsky bridge.

The words are powerless, yes, and no departure will save anyone, but it will not necessarily become suicidal and active protest activity in the capital of our homeland and on its outskirts. There is a lottery, and, as in any game with unknown bets, one can only guess about certain laws that determine fate. About how a person behaves in this life, trying not to risk too much or attracting death every day.

As far as I can judge, Babchenko evoked two difficultly combined feelings in many: admiration and irritation. They delighted his courage, dashing, wit. It was annoyed by the uniformity of hatred with which he responded to literally any event related to bossies and speeches and the gullible reaction of our unfortunate population. The journalist commented on our blogs in his blogs that was excommunicated from almost all Russian publications, and the mocking meme "is mournful of Arkady?" was a response to his merciless posts and tweets. Even people who are quite solid with Babchenko in relation to Putin and the Putin regime were sometimes warned from his extremely harsh statements. In relation to the living and the dead.

And it was still scary for him. How terrible it is for yourself when you write and know that you have crossed a certain feature that should not be crossed. But if you soften the phrase, it will not be clear why you are talking about the so -called politics and why not to indulge in the composition of the lyrical eight -play about love. Nobody will read, but you will not seduce any of these small rats, with their cloaks, daggers, poisons and pistols.

Today, after he was killed, it is clear that all the years Arkady Babchenko teased his fate and conquered her. This was not a tribute to frivolity or there is an irresistible hatred of the above regime, and, speaking of "all the years", you should keep in mind a whole life. And not only the time spent on journalistic business trips in the war, in opposition and in exile.

It was a special character warehouse in which indefatigable reporter curiosity and frantic public temperament overcame any fears. Otherwise, having got on the call to the first Chechen slaughter, he would not have signed up for a contractor for the second. Otherwise, I would not stigmatize friends and friends who allegedly failed to bring to victory a revolution of the early tenths. Otherwise, the American Abrams would not have seen on Red Square, bringing to a frenzy like -minded people, to whom he seemed to be a provocateur at such a moment. But in his black and white world, populated almost exclusively by the forces of evil and liberators, the victory could not look different. Well, he loved to troll the enemies, more and more burning over the years to the role of the enemy of the people, Russophobe, the traitor.

The words are powerless, and it’s completely sad to think about it, recalling Arkady Babchenko, a writer, the author of the wonderful Alkhan -Yurt, who went to the blogosphere, since you can’t live in writing work now. However, in his unequal verbal duel with the Russian Federation, which is rightly called Putinskaya, he sometimes gave out such brilliant texts, more often the memories of the damned war than responses to the anger of the day, which, perhaps, will compose the best pages in his collected works. And they will certainly publish and read it, for death, no matter how inhuman it sounds, especially martyr, always luck for the writer. Not everyone falls out, even in Russia. Chosen.

But then, years later, when the misses of its fierce journalism without intermediaries, the marginal honesty, and correctness will be indicated with the immutability that time is derived. On the night after the murder, and tomorrow and in the coming days, another is indicated: the random and endless pain in the words of people, his loved ones, mockery in the lips of the scum. As well as official comments that you read with the usual disgust. With the feeling that Arkady Babchenko knew how to express surprisingly accurately, sometimes the only correct words, but the words are powerless when a killer and a huge, confused country, who considers the journalist an enemy, is polemicized with a person. Then there are no words left and you, after the dead, simply sign up under almost all the words that he managed to say.