Not those and not these

The participant of our project “After” sociologist Alexei Levinson writes in Novaya Gazeta:

“The West’s active response to the Russian Asian expansion into the European space is sanctions that caused the flight of Western companies and brands. The second, more serious, is assistance to Ukraine. There is a third. He is a special kind.

These are the actions of several of ours precisely that Western neighbors, who suddenly closed the boundaries for citizens of the Russian Federation. They were closed to almost all Russians, as recently closed for migrants/refugees from Asia and Africa. The remaining people in front of the doors appealed: where are your European/universal values?! In general, they understood that this was a reaction to his own and to what it was accompanied by. They understood that the historical memory affected what those who were called Russians did when they became masters on the lands of the Baltic states and Finns. And the fright of the threats "we can repeat."

But there is one more, deaf, but a strong topic: they equated us to non-Europeans! It was this that caused such an acute shock inside the Russian pro -European minority, and caused the feeling that they had betrayed.

The fact that the Russian authorities would close the exit were easily ready to believe. But that these of our close European neighbors, Russian Europeans, will refuse to recognize that we are “our own”, that we need to be accepted and hidden - it was unimaginable. < ... >

And the unexpected gestures of our neighbors from the south and the east became the sign. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, other countries of the former Central, now Central Asia, as well as Türkiye, as well as Armenia with Georgia at this very moment opened their doors. Some on our fugitives and rejectors earned, others have a charitable, but they all did not refuse to recognize our fled almost their own. Most of these countries are the former colonies of Russia ("prisons of peoples"), the establishment of "Soviet power" there is a story, comparable in the gravity of sins with what was done in Poland and the Baltic states. Turkey, with which Russia has fought more than once, would also have something to say. But here it is (for now, at least) they do not recall the Russians, give them eastern hospitality.

The fact that Russians were refused in Europe, and in Asia they were accepted is the main sign and sign of who we are now: not these and not those. Russian Europeans, gathered in Europe, and unexpectedly ended up in Asia, gathered to continue to live by Europeans, now painfully thinking about their identity. After all, we are not suitable for real Asians, they do not belong to the great cultures of the East. (These people with the thought that Russia is better than any West and every East and that it does not need no one - not to calm.) "