Black crack. Sofya Rogacheva - about the thickening broth of fascism

“Well, how are you here?” - Here so far. - Oh, I don't know what to do. Imagine, Sonya and I went to the Pyaterochka yesterday, and the guard says to me: here is the entrance only for the whites. - Svetlana brings his hand to her eyes, cannot hold back tears. Svetlana is a parishioner of our temple, she and her husband have three children, already adults, a few years ago they adopted dark -skinned Sonya. Sonya is now 9, a lovely child, a brisk, violent curls break away from the pigtails, runs, jumps, quickly thinks behind the common tea what she likes more, and demands just that - but does not say. Almost. The foster parents knew what they were going to. Sonya is developing, as they can, they invest so much that the mountains would have moved, but the speech that has gone into mysterious sand appears back slowly and dropped. Sonya almost does not speak - but others do not deny themselves anything, the incident in Pyaterochka is not the only one.

“You know, and as we come to the playground, so the parents of their children immediately lead,” Svetlana complains. - Well, tell me what is it? After all, this is fascism, right? - She looks at me with concern: suddenly I do not agree. And when I nod, agreeing: well, of course, but what else is it except fascism? - As if even more upset. As if there was still hope: suddenly it just seemed to her, suddenly both a “five” and the playground is just chance, but in fact everything is not so hopeless ...

It did not seem, Sveta did not seem. Most of my acquaintances have been on the platoon for two months, someone quickly left, someone pulled out the children from the best universities and sent it away, someone left all social networks and lay to the bottom, someone, on the contrary, developed frantic activity-not a day without a post, any of which can easily cost the author of freedom, someone cannot fall asleep until he talks about his friends about the sore. I belong to the breed that cannot calm down until late at night, until it convulsively reviews all news from Ukraine. One such night I came across a video-peppy correspondents ask valiant Russian liberators about who they protect in Ukraine. “Children, probably,” the correspondent suggests. “Of course,” a young soldier readily picks up, “we consider all the children ours who were born here and who has white skin.”

O-pa! Here it is - the circle is closed. Didn’t his parents take away the future warrior from the playground in indignation, when a dark -skinned child appeared on it, and even God, disabled? They took away, irritably muttering offensive to the little alien, or even in public explaining the offspring to be torn from the game, why they are to stay here with these ... all kinds ... then obscene.

Otherwise, where does it come from - “and who has white skin”?

Oh, my mother did not read this soldier a book of the gymnater Sergei Mikhalkov “Girl and Uncle Tom”. Yes, do not hit me with fists, who remembers that this is a naive and impudent agitation about "and their blacks are linked." Yes, agitation, yes, impudent, anti -American, anti -bourgeois, but ... whatever one may say, but I can’t forget my childhood tears at the place where the performance is: the evil planter sells black slaves, and the line reaches Uncle Tom - who will give more for him? And then a girl from the hall runs out onto the stage and holds five rubles to the planter. Little lines still beat in the ears: “And silence reigned, // Wede with the breath of the hall, // and the whole Soviet country // stood behind this girl.” Laugh at me - still tears appear. And the picture stands in front of his eyes - a huge black uncle Tom stands, drooping, in chains and rags, and a white girl in a red pleated dress holds his hand.

And I also remember how in the mid-90s my beautiful friend Faina Yanova, who worked in London at the Air Force, brought me to her Bush House, to the dining room, and proudly told the familiar cook, standing on the distribution that I was from Russia. I thought I was blinding - this is how this kind black man shone, so he shook his hands linked to the castle, depicting unity, nodded so energetically and exclaimed that the Russians are the best. But I remember the feeling of awkwardness and even shame - so undeserved then his enthusiasm seemed to me. I know how we squinted at a classmate who came out for a student from the Congo ...

When and how the black crack went through the vaunted brotherhood of the peoples, I can’t say. But she went - and I drove so far that Mariupol and Kharkov erased from the face of the earth, and the mass graves around Kyiv, the mother of the Russian cities, did, and - yes, that there, everyone knows everything, of course, who wants to know.

The same black crack, destroying my country, like an old house, which has not seen a major overhaul for a hundred years, drove me to the border with Georgia. Behind Vladikavkaz, ahead of the Georgian road, around-an amazing beauty of a mountain with snowy peaks. In the valley are endless trucks, cling to the mountain. Cars are made past the wagons - to the border. First to ours. The border point looks like a barn. Or like a hut - there is no, one and the other together, eclecticism, so to speak. Sarai-Barak is very inhabited. For departure, you need reasons - it is so easy to leave Russia in a given, separate place is impossible. Seeing my documents, a person at the passport control picks up the internal phone.

I lower the details. I can only say that in this wonderful place I happened to visit twice - the first time I could not defeat. On the first day, she had the happiness of communicating with only one Ephesians, in the second she lost her account - it seems that fellows in tight -fitting blue shirts flashed about six. This is not to say that they were engaged exclusively with such dangerous birds as your humble servant, a foreign agent. In the “room for temporarily not missed No. 12”, an apathetic small one in the worn shoes on the barefoot, to which one of the blue-collapses approached the barefoot, was quietly sitting, for some reason he squatted and found out: “What kind of education is-yes, yes.-You graduated from 11 classes?-Yes, and still at the institute.-so what kind of education? The pot -bellied elderly uncle rushed from the corner to the corner: “Well, how much time you can write out a fine - I’m already two hours here, I have diabetes, I’m without food, I feel bad now!”

I also rushed about, I’ll tell you honestly, while I was not brought before the clear eyes: how did your life change from the moment you were declared by a foreign agent? And what are your restrictions and what responsibilities are imposed on you, and how do you look at what is happening in Russia and in the world, and why can you not work at home, and - finally, when you already gave back your passport, we hope you won’t write about us badly? Well, hope. There is nothing to write about you because - all on one face.

And then the Georgian border - not at all like a barn or a hut - funny roofs with a Christmas tree, in the form of mountains, probably, and most importantly, police in characteristic forms, but with human faces. There, however, on my opinion, too, someone called someone tastefully, and I had to wait for an answer for 4 hours with ducking, but how many miracles turned out before me! Through the border point, the wave behind the wave came from Kherson. We talked with two. I admit, not without fear, I approached them: now, I think, they will be attached properly - like an occupier. But no, they smiled, nodded sympathetically, having heard that the journalist, rejoiced at the word “Petersburg”: one studied there, the other lived for some time in his youth, thoroughly leaving “all the Hermitations”.

And they themselves willingly told how they decided to flee from Kherson through the Crimea on their cars, how they had 16 checkpoints in the way, where they were searched and undressed, looking for incorrect Bandera tattoos.

“They kicked men from cars, did not have time to undress and lie down on the ground - all, they scored with butt,” says Mikhail. - I was lucky, I managed. But not everyone was lucky, some remained there.

“There is nothing more to do, and there is nothing either,” Victor waves his hand. - Neither in Kherson itself, nor in the Kherson region, they do not let the machines with foods. Well, they rarely and indeed throw all sorts of nonsense on the shelves, chips there or what. The humanitarian is generally selected and sometimes only distributed - as their own. We have just hunger there, real.

“And how,” I ask, “will you have a referendum?”
Both of my interlocutors laugh sarcastically.

“But how,” Mikhail reveals to me his passport in the blue cover. - They took pictures of our passport at each checkpoint - with these photos they will hold a referendum. They will vibrate our data and draw what they need. But in fact, the city is empty, there is almost no one left.

The conversation was short -lived - a large group of Ukrainians, with drivers - fathers of families, young mothers, children of all ages, grandmothers, old people, only 30 people missed 10-15 minutes. There was just no one at passport control, but as soon as the refugees came in - all three glass booths came to life, and people began to pass - cheerfully, affectionately, stroking on the heads of children, with jokes, cleverly and quickly resolving human streams. Grandmother persuades the little granddaughter to turn to the policeman: “Let the uncle see what a beautiful girl you are!” “Have you seen ugly girls? I have not seen,” the policeman speaks. And everyone dissolves on the other side of the border.

The next wave arrives. A beautiful young mother with long black hair holds a child for 3-4 months, very crumb, he cries, catches his lips with a jacket: hungry. A policeman comes up, sees a thermos from mom - it is necessary to pour warm water, dilute baby food. “Now, now,” the policeman worries and runs away for boiling water. And this wave of refugees also quickly acquires stamps in passports and dissolves.

In Tbilisi, it was as if the affectionate glances that looked at the Ukrainians on the border were continuing: at every second or third house-a yellow-blue flag, sometimes in an embrace with Georgian. In windows-yellow-blue cups, toys, even water bottles. In the window where marvelous hot lavashs are sold, the inscription: “Hlib for Ukrainians are bezed”. My heart is freezing from this inscription. I recall the St. Petersburg artist Sasha Skochilenko , who replaced the price tags with information about the shelling of Mariupol in the store and who was now locked in jail and accuse of publicly spreading the obviously false information about the actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. I recall how they beat people from the Gostiny Dvor who shouted “No War!” And “The world world!” And also - as in St. Petersburg they shudder at the sight of the participants in the rehearsals of the Victory Parade with red sleeve dresses with a white circle and a black number inside.

People - shudder, nonhumans - no. The hot broth of fascism is stirred. How rapidly it thickens and grows stronger, it becomes clear only when you go to a safe distance.

Sofya Rogacheva - journalist

The "Opinion" expressed in the heading of the point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial office