"The soldiers of my country entered a foreign country and began to destroy it"

Kirill Serebrennikov wrote a text about the war in Ukraine. "Medusa" publishes it entirely

Director Kirill Serebrennikov wrote a text about the war in Ukraine and published it in his telegram . The text is called “red varnish” - this is a reference to a photograph from the bouch, which depicts the hand of a murdered woman with a fresh manicure (it was identified by nails). "Medusa" publishes Serebrennikov’s text entirely.

Every day I watch photos of the war. I look, look. Destroyed cities, burned cars, killed people. This red varnish is on a dead hand . Every day, wherever I am, it seems to me that the planes fly at me, that I need to run to the bomb shelter. My friends, who left and remained, cry for weeks, men, women. For some reason I don't cry. Something accumulates in me without a way out.

Kutzey had a good novel "Waiting for barbarians." The barbarians, whom the hero was waiting for in the fortress came from the inside. We waited for the arrival of the time of new barbarism. For barbarians, another person is only prey. Flesh and resources. Hair. Leather. Scull. Slave labor. Sometimes especially sophisticated barbarians made lampshades, cups from skulls, pillows were stuffed with hair. Barbarians go to the mail to send the loot home. In the premises - hair, skulls, skin, nails with red varnish. The barbarians are busy busy, they are confident in themselves. The war quickly divides, and no culture will save from the most terrible crime if the state gives the right to it.

The Germans understood something about the war only when they began to drive them to the ditches with the corpses of the prisoners of Aushwitz and Buchenwald. And when they forced it with your own hands, without gloves, to bury these corpses. And after the Nuremberg Tribunal. And so, until 45, they talked about “deevalization”, that “there is no such country, there is no such people” and asked: “What did you do when the Germans were killed in the judges ...”.

Strange sleep. I am a guy in camouflage, who was forced to read a book by a dead Ukrainian in a coffin. This is almost “viy”, but it is happening now, in this war. I can’t read, the lines are blurry, but I can’t look at the girl either. I mutter something under my breath. The girl has a red varnish in her arms.

Culture in Russia is always contrary to, spite, against the state. Sometimes with the money of the state, but still - not in his name and not for him. The state and politics in Russia are killed and disconnected. Rouns families. Break life. Culture saves and collects that the human still remains in people. There were many states in Russia, and all of them had cannibalic nature. Those rare years when power in Russia did not eat people are called thaws. The authorities just rested. To start eating people again.

Culture is always about what does not matter to the state. About mercy to the fallen. About compassion. About the abyss and heights of the human spirit. About despair. About loneliness. About funny, small, wretched, useless, untimely people. About the minority. Therefore, few of the state respected Russian culture and almost no one loved. Forced to take place at school. They read these uninteresting books. These obscure films watched. They listened to this strange music. Shrugged. But they read, looked, listened. Because there was no other. There was nothing talented and sincere about the authorities, “which from God”, about “we can repeat”, about the pride and greatness of the empire. Rather, sometimes the state ordered and forced to write, shoot, sing and recite. Read, watch, listen. And almost always came out shit.

The dead girl gets out of the coffin. Approaches to the muttering to me. I don't look. I don't look. Suitable, wants to look into the eyes. I hide them in Russian letters. She suddenly tells me: "Quiet." I can’t help but read, I mutter in Russian. She is loud: “Quiet. Movchi! Tishi I want. " I shut up from fear. But I can’t raise my eyes. She is to me: "Take a look at me."

The soldiers of my country entered a foreign country and began to destroy it. Kill people. Destroy at home. Coffins and stolen household appliances go to Russia from Ukraine, cripples and hatred are returning. These bombs of returning hatred with a capacity of several Hirosim are planted in pieces of my country. They mined the future of every person, every family. This hatred will sweep hopes for well -being and freedom. Life in fear and hatred is what awaits us, witnesses, participants, victims of this war. Even if we are against her.

The state begins wars in order to increase the host of its own “saints” - after all, examples for imitation and exciting apocrypha are important to him. On the dead soldiers lying in the fields, on the executed civilian, abandoned along the roads, do not care: they are a worked out resource, they spoil the statistics of celebrations, they are not. Art is thinking about these abandoned dead - about their last words, about their dreams, about their unborn children. The unbroken dead are the heroes of real literature, honest cinema, a sincere theater.

I'm silent. The dead Ukrainian beauty is silent. Pause. She looks at me. I look at her hands with a bright red manicure. I want to draw a chalk circle. She whispers: “Not at a time, slate. Tse is not finished. " I know that it will not help. But I want to interrupt my desperation exhausting me. At least a creak of chalk. At least a knock of the heart. But everything was silent, as luck would have it.

Those who start the war always lose. Those who rape, kill, torture civilians - war criminals. Those who justify them too. It is impossible to sympathize with the sadists and killers. I sympathize with those who involuntarily turned out to be drawn into a terrible crime of war. Those who still have no blood in the hands of innocent people.

I recall the story of Oleg Tabakov about how the grandmother forced him to take bread to the captive Germans, who were driven through the Saratov after the war. "They are enemies!" - the boy Oleg was indignant. “They are people. Now they are bad, ”said the grandmother. The boy Oleg carried bread to a very young taned German, he cried. Tabakov remembered this for life and told me.

It’s scary to imagine what is happening in the consciousness of a soldier who is against his will in a foreign country and fulfills the order “Kill!”, Only in order to “lag behind him”. I am scared to introduce parents who first support the “special operation”, and then receive pieces of paper with false messages about the death of their child “due to the accident”. I am scared and painful for them. I am scared for those who are stolen by propaganda. Sooner or later they will understand where they were. I cannot refuse them - deceived, killed and damned.

A woman from Buchi before the war took online manicure lessons. That's where she gets red varnish. And then people from my country came - those who speak the same language with me, and killed it. Maybe this color seemed to them too causing.

I hold in my hands some kind of book written in Russian. The letters died. The lips were dry. A dead Ukrainian girl stands in front of me and asks: “Look at Men, a clap. Take a look. " I think: "I can’t, I can’t." "Treba, clap, Treba." I am silent, I don’t know what to do. She whispers: "Bachish?" I say: "No." She laughs: “And you're sloping! Do not bow. " I quietly say: "Then raise my eyelids." Someone raises my eyelids, forces me to look. I'm scared, but I look. I look. There is war.