Empathy from above

February 21, Governor of the Moscow Region Andrey Vorobyov instructed the heads to PERSONALLY meet refugees at trains and buses. And reserve places to accommodate refugees in all municipalities. So far, people have been placed in six urban districts - Volokolamsk, Klin, Kolomna, Zaraysk, Podolsk and Pushkino. However, everyone else also prepares and reports.

Zhukovsky chats began collecting things and food for refugees from the republics newly recognized by Russia, although it took a day to decide on what boundaries. Meanwhile, the Zhukovsky branch of United Russia cheerfully reported on its accounts within a few hours that the first car with humanitarian aid had departed from the Young Guard collection point. to the Rostov region. As they say, Russia is a generous soul.

I have a question for the authorities and society, in which compassion has suddenly awakened not even for the neighbor, but for the distant, and which still do not notice the neighbor. I remember well the beginning of the pandemic, when elderly people in quarantine simply remained cut off from the world, some had no loved ones, some lived in other cities - and there were many of them. And the entire royal army, not just in a few hours, in a few days, was unable to get together and begin organized assistance to the needy Zhukovites. Everyone was waiting for instructions from above, because even we now have help on a schedule and according to instructions, and without this, officials are not used to helping, they simply do not have this option; once upon a time they may have had it, and then it fell off like a rudiment. Society organized itself much faster, people began to bring food to the editorial office, older people left requests for food, and active residents delivered it to their addresses. By the way, I’ll say right away that two administration officials, as private individuals, also brought food. And then, within a few hours, entrepreneurs suddenly appeared, strongly sympathizing with the refugees, and the party in power cannot sleep until they help. And the heads of municipalities should be met right at the train.

My grandmother turned 90 this year, she has been in the city since its formation, she gave it everything, but during all this time no one obliged Zhukovsky’s leadership to come to her. They came from social security, gave me a scarf, gave me a telegram from Putin and a letter of gratitude from the head of the city in the style of “thank you for being alive.” However, both the president and the heads are talking about something else: my grandmother lives to spite the Pension Fund and for the last month has had difficulty leaving the house, because the condition of the roads and sidewalks in winter is worse than in the Donbass. Mikhail Kashin lives in Zhukovsky, a prisoner of a concentration camp where he was sent as a child, and city leaders did not come to him, and food gifts are brought at best on holidays. In the emergency building 12 on the street. Serov is survived by the family of Zhukovsky residents who built Zhukovsky, and now both are bedridden patients with water dripping from the ceiling, and their daughter is simply exhausted. And there are not even dozens of such Zhukovites, but hundreds. The heads, in principle, were not surprised; they had long since become the troupe of the Karabas-Barabas Theater, excuse me, Governor Vorobyov.

However, when empathy awakens in society, descended from above, it becomes creepy. Live life is periodically collected for operations of Zhukovsky children, and for targeted assistance to elderly people who are no longer needed by the state. We often publish their stories, and are incredibly grateful to those caring citizens who make the impossible possible. By the way, in most stories the same people help, for whom empathy is a state of mind and one of the characteristics of the heart. But there is always the worry that we won’t make it in time or won’t collect it; the collection doesn’t always go quickly, and every time it’s like a miracle. And in Zhukovsky there are a large number of people who need help because they find themselves, as officials like to put it, “in a difficult life situation.” But behind every such “situation” there is a human tragedy of people living with us in the same city, but they turned out to be not as interesting as refugees from another country. Because it's not trendy.

Helping people is a wonderful impulse, but in Zhukovsky there are a lot of people who can be saved first, and then the whole world. But the political agenda dictates its own, and the human agenda has long faded into the background, unfortunately, not only in power, but also in a large part of society.