The country of those who came out

As a hopeless protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia gives hope today

On August 25, 2023, it turned 55 years old eight people on Red Square with a hopeless seemingly protest against the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Only one who does not want to know, but everything is known in detail does not know about this story. And new materials appear: just, for example, “New Gazeta Europe” published the story of one of the participants in those events of Pavel Litvinov. He gave an interview to Irina Halip. Read who has not read yet. See what humanity it comes from him, how far he is from the opposition that is overwhelming today to judge everyone who behaves differently - does not protest or protest not like that, does not grieve, does not participate in the general persecution or even dares to intercede for those who are poisoned.

He did not stop the protest and could not stop the occupation, as today's single pickets could not stop the war, even the most heroic:

The blind (!) Girl - she, of course, was taken to the picket, and the war continues.

But the demonstration of “seven brave” - there were eight of them, why this name was preserved, it is known, I will not repeat myself - like hundreds of such actions, about another. They changed the identity of those who did not participate in them. Mine, for example.

You will say that almost no one knew about them then. Right. And under Pushkin, the majority of the population was illiterate. Its readers then made up an insignificant percentage of the inhabitants of the empire. But he changed the Russian language, Russian culture and self -awareness of the country, and now the whole world reads it. And that insane courage of the 1968 action is now remembered by everyone.

We always lived with a sense of shame for the country - for camps, for hypocrisy, for poverty and absolute lack of rights. Of course, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Brezhnev with his “Masisi boobs” and “sense of legitimate pride” added new facets to this shame, but the vector of attitude to the native state was formed for a very long time.

Yes, there was a victory, perceived unequivocally positively, even those who understood everything about that war - about the detachment, and about the crazy cruelty of the Stalinist marshals, and about much more. But this unambiguous positive has been preserved, only while the state, turning, as a kind of parody version of King Midas, into the shit everything that it touches has gone to victory to parasitize. There was a cosmos, which began with the first satellite and with the triumphal flight of Gagarin, but then the Americans intercepted the championship, later others turned on, we lagged behind more and more, and then Rogozin finished everything completely. "Luna-25" is only the last stroke.

And on this depressive background people suddenly appear. For example, Viktor Leonidovich Sheinis, who in 1956 is only three years as Stalin died! - opposed the suppression of the uprising in Hungary. (By the way, few people know about this fact of his biography, as they don’t remember that he, who, a brilliant intellectual and a crystal honest person who lived after all his posts in the same Khrushchev small -sized as before the deputy, was one of the Constitution so cursed now. Maybe even out of respect for his memory should be carefully read before?) Leonidovich, therefore, is not the whole people, for "the whole country is not the whole country without one!"

But I learned about the feat of Sheinis much later, but in 1968 I was eighteen and there were already “voices”, so I knew about the protest on Red Square right away. And admiration for these people and gratitude to them also arose immediately and remained for life.

50 years after that demonstration, I was lucky symbolically in touch with this eight. Sergey Sharov-Delone, a relative of one of the participants, Vadim Delonya, unexpectedly suggested that I expand with him the exact copy of that famous poster “For your and our freedom” on the same place on Red Square on the anniversary of the demonstration. I still don’t understand why he decided to provide such an honor to me - you will not ask! - But, of course, he immediately agreed. Apparently, our conversation with him was intercepted: we were waiting, we stood on an area of ​​no more than three seconds. Then, of course, they tried. But, as it is now clear, it was a white strip - we were only fined. And then I happened to meet Pavel Litvinov. He was waiting at the police department, while from there they released his granddaughter Nyusya Krasovitskaya, detained shortly after us with the poster of Freedom Sentsov, and Sergey and I and me. Think about this “relay race of generations”: a grandfather who fights with the Soviet regime is waiting for a granddaughter who was struggling with Putin from the police!

Then, in 1968, it was said that these eight people saved the honor of the country. But the honor is what other people, significant for you think about you. Those eight people, their predecessors and followers, dissidents of the Soviet period and today's protesters did much more. They saved and save ourselves.

Today we tell us from everywhere that the war crimes of the regime are an expression of the evil, slave essence of our people and our culture. We are told that our place - in the hut for the lepers, that we all - even those whom the regime arrested and put in prisons for anti -war protests - are guilty in this war that our country itself and everything connected should be destroyed and forgotten, like a nightmare. We are told that our country is cursed, that the Soviet, like Putinskaya now, the authorities fully meets the aspirations of the people, who is not worthy of anything else, that Russia must be surrounded by a "moat with crocodiles." And each of us should only dutifully carry a load of our own guilt. Or to say that he always hated everything in Russia, curses his former homeland and wishes it to her-not just the Putin regime-death. And looking at the daily murders committed in Ukraine on our behalf, at the abomination of today's life, many agree: yes, slaves, yes, drove, yes, not to raise their eyes.

Firstly, such self-awareness cannot generate anything good.

The regime will sooner or later disappear, and the country will have to be restored. And this will have to do people who believe in her future.

And secondly, for example, I just do not want to agree with this sentence of my country. I hate the regime - both this and communist, I can tell better and more than most of the reverence of Russia about the crimes committed against my people and against the neighbors over the centuries of its history. But I am such a naive person! - I share the country and its rulers, I see in many compatriots, even now in a miserable and humiliating state, a spark of God. For me, this country, bloody and disgusting, remains my country, and I believe in its future. And those eight people give me this faith, and Anatoly Marchenko and Pyotr Grigorenko, and hundreds of those who today consciously went to prison for the right to tell the truth, not becoming a silent accomplice of bandits in power.

For you, the people of Russia are Putin and their servants, these are the uniforms of blue and humble people, these are rapists in buch and scum that destroy the Ukrainian cities? This is your choice. And for me, the people of Russia, the people of whom I want to be, are the Decembrists and Prince Golitsyn, who wrote the “condition” for Anna Ioannovna (died in the fortress, naturally), this is Andrei Sakharov and Yegor Gaidar, these are those who remained unknown by our compatriots, who for centuries opposed the tyrants and fought for freedom of Russia, believing it and knowing it.

Those eight daredevils who went to Red Square 55 years ago were for me and, I think, for many, the first living people, and not characters from books that showed that our fellow citizens could be! - And so. So, and you can at least be like them.

Eternal gratitude to them!