Letter to X-Man | Colta.ru

Today, a new long-awaited project "In Separation" starts on Kolt. What will it be about?

Separation is a polysemantic word that must now resonate in different minds and hearts with different strengths.

For those who left the country since the beginning of the war, it is separation from their homeland, from their previous comfortable and clear life. For those who remained in Russia, it is separation from many friends, from the former social circle and its structures, from the idea of ​​who the community to which they belong is made up of.

What were the true boundaries between the two groups – those who left and those who stayed? How did people’s identities change, how did their ideas about the present and the future change, wherever they were?

What happened to the famous concept of “we”, which the intelligentsia readily used before the war, and have some new “we” grown up in place of this old “we”?

What does the everyday and reflective experience of people who were once together but now lead a disparate existence look like in reality?
Is it possible to close, at least partially, the knowledge deficit about how life is now organized in Russian-speaking communities in Moscow, Riga or Paris?

The "In Separation" project does not want to continue the absolutely destructive rhetoric of "discussions" or "fights" between both groups in the form in which they have been conducted in social networks since the beginning of the war. All the words, often very unfair, have been said here - and nothing but new ruins have emerged in this place.

On the contrary, the project sees its task as learning more about those who, in Russia and in exile, continue to struggle for existence, burdened by different, but no less difficult obstacles and external pressure.

Those who are separated want to know more about each other - and therefore, I want to believe it, to understand each other better. The project sees its place and task in organizing at least part of this vitally necessary exchange.

To do this, Kolta will use a variety of forms: from conversations with sociologists studying the field to candid documents of the time, diaries and other private testimonies of the turning point.

We begin with a text by Muscovite Ivan Davydov , written in the genre of a letter to a distant friend.

All illustrations for the project are made by Ksenia Leonova , a regular author of Kolta, who in her new life in Paris is mastering the profession of an industrial artist working with neural networks.

Stay with us!

***

Hello!

Here is a surname, a name, and a loud title ("included in the register by the Ministry of Justice"), but why do we need this? I'm telling you something from me, anonymous. It's better now. But it's not "to all of you." There is no "all of you," and I remember a specific conversation we had, our last conversation, in a bar - well, there, on the corner, I never paid attention to what it was called, it was just convenient, right on the way. Anyway, you get the idea.

***

Summer of '22 (or even spring?), what later became the background for life, was then her nerve. It happens, you know, - a sharp pain gradually turns into a dull one in all possible senses, does not go away, but retreats a little, or something. And you begin to live with it, and it may kill you in the process, but, firstly, this is not accurate, and secondly, it kills slowly.

Those who left were already there then, now there are more of them, and you too. And I am the one who stayed behind. The newspapers write that many are returning. Surely, but mine have not returned. No one. At least not yet.

There's a strange moment here. I've never been attracted to gangster romance. It just happened that way. Of course, I've had occasion to communicate with real gangsters in the romantic times that fashionable films are made about these days. There were interesting people. But I wasn't drawn to becoming one of them at all. And I wasn't drawn to trying to make friends either. And now, among my acquaintances and even friends, there are people who are wanted. People with absentia sentences. People who are in prison. And a man who was killed in prison. The gangster romance has finally caught up with me.

Okay, for some reason I'm still talking about something else. I need to talk about those who left and those who stayed. About ourselves, what else can we sing about? We were actually talking about those who left. I tried to weakly defend them - we are more afraid, perhaps, but it is harder for them. Life from scratch in places where no one needs you. An understandable and respectable choice, sometimes conditioned by the desire to tell the truth (that is, what you think), sometimes by other lofty considerations, and sometimes by the real prospect of a criminal case in your homeland. Your position, if I remember correctly, was tougher. We didn't know that in a month you would also leave.

***

What follows will be a bit confusing, but that's how it has to be. You ask how I live here (you don't ask, of course, but I need to somehow steer towards the thought that should appear here). How? As a person who finds himself inside a big story. As a person who constantly expects trouble from the state. As an uncaught criminal. Of course, I have not committed any crimes and I even try to comply with all the punitive laws of recent times, but it is clear that this does not protect me from punitive laws. These are the rules of the game now. That is, none. At any moment, the state can eat me, and this knowledge does not add optimism.

I'll also say something about big history. You know, in my early youth, reading the books that were dumped on us then (okay, you're younger, you don't remember, you probably think that books have always been around), I envied the people inside big history. Not realizing that it was all around me. Articles in newspapers, arguments at the congress of people's deputies on TV, and these books too, and my father, who suddenly became sad because he was not paid his salary again, and my mother, on the contrary, happy - she had just been paid at work, but not her salary, but some kind of food set and two pillowcases. That was big history. As it turned out later. We didn't eat pearl barley, by the way, I won't lie, but we weren't living in luxury either. Although the presence of books made up for a lot.

And here I am again, inside the big story, this time perfectly aware that this is it, and I am not at all happy about it. I would like to find myself on the boring sidelines of the big story, but it seems that will not happen.

By the way, yes, books. You didn't get to see this (and thank God), but I saw with my own eyes how they wrap books of people who were super-popular writers yesterday, and today have become foreign agents. And how they carry out of the store, looking around, in a closed box, books of a writer who was previously considered a classic, but overnight turned into a propagandist of sodomy and, it seems, also pedophilia. They carry them out to bury them somewhere until better times. Hoping for the return of better times. And now this is - oh, the word came up well - the norm.

And — also by the way — about time, this is the main thing. There is a feeling — I had it almost immediately, when it all began — that there is no more time. Time has stopped. The flow of stunning and terrible news does not cancel this truth — everything has already happened. Everything that happens, has happened. February is not ending, and the only way out of this time impasse is through a catastrophe. I don’t want a catastrophe, but I don’t see any other way.

The final transformation of the fatherland into a dictatorship is a catastrophe (and a question of the future, otherwise I would not be writing to you now, and in the best case for myself I would be scratching something out with a nail under the bunk in the barracks). But collapse is also a catastrophe. The options, in general, are such that both are worse.

And once again, by the way - realizing the inevitability of a catastrophe, I do not want it at all. Neither for myself, nor for those who are here with me. And it is hard for me to treat with love the people who sincerely wish this catastrophe for Russia, that is, for me, to put it simply. Sometimes I understand their reasons, and sometimes I do not, but I cannot share their bloodthirsty hopes. This is an important caveat.

***

And, of course, the very possibility of talking about those who left and those who stayed is a sign of the reality of this new world of great history with frozen time. We are used to another world, a transparent one, where leaving did not mean anything at all, the possibility of returning always existed, and there was no break. And now there is. It is physically felt, although we can still meet even in Europe (a flight across one hundred and forty-eight borders and half a kingdom for tickets). Or in Turkey, it is easier. Or in Georgia. Where, however, they may not let me in.

Or you. Or both of us.

There is a gap.

It just seems to me that you - excuse me for this "you", the appropriateness of any generalization is always questionable, and the word "seems" here is not just like that, I always mean that I can be mistaken - in your new reality, you are somehow rapidly replacing our reality with a fictitious one. Where some terrible and funny news is important - well, I don't know, children in kindergarten, built in the form of a clear letter, promises of a bearded madman to create a rural paradise here or a beardless madman to create a nuclear war there.

Militarism, empire, what other words are we supposed to say? What we hear daily from the political scientist Y and from the economist - I almost wrote "Z", but the letter Z is taken, let the economist be S. A ringing emptiness, the remains of meaning ground to dust, something that does not describe life here at all.

This is all not about that, not about us, and even, strangely enough, not about the era.

I try to travel a lot around Russia, and in recent years, I also travel on foot. I look around and see only confused people who are clinging to the old normality with all their might. Willingly pushing great and grandiose events to the periphery of their consciousness. It seems that they feel the same as I do, the same chill of timelessness, which must be followed by an inevitable explosion. They simply cannot describe these feelings clearly (although I do not pretend to be clear either).

This is its own tragedy (forgive me the high-flown word, I always remember that there are people who are worse off, whose tragedy is real, whose troubles are incomparable with mine, and yet): trying to prolong a story that has already ended. We are living people inside a dead world, zombies are the opposite, it hurts.

The world in which we all settled more or less comfortably, which seemed understandable and which seemed to be able to steer somewhere in the direction of the humane and humane, has already disappeared. It seems that it exists, but it is not, and it will definitely not be there anymore. Maybe it will take several generations for the humane and humane to return. Maybe there will be no return. One thing is clear - I will definitely not live to see it. And you. Except for today's children. Who are built in a clear letter and led to meet the hero, who was previously sentenced to fifteen years for dismembering his common-law wife. Yes.

I constantly try to console myself and those around me, I remember Harms, I repeat like a mantra - “life has again conquered death in a way unknown to me”, but I don’t really believe it myself.

All the funnier, of course, are the congresses, conferences, congresses of deputies and other symposiums on the formation of governments in exile that are fashionable in your region. We - both those who are here and those who left - have no future left. Only this frozen and, by the way, rather nightmarish present. We must think about how to live with this and what to do.

***

This does not mean, of course, that everyday journalistic work has no meaning. On the contrary. Within the frozen time, news does not disappear anywhere, as was said somewhere above, to follow what is happening, to talk about what is happening, to comprehend - it is still very necessary. Within Russia, one now has to move as if in a swamp, choosing hummocks so as not to drown, words so as not to sit down. All the more important are you, who have ensured yourselves the right to speak directly (I repeat - I remember that this is a serious choice, and I respect this choice). Thank you. Without any irony.

But I'm not talking about a professional position, I'm talking about a human one. You know, I have no desire to brand anyone, argue about whose guilt is greater collectively, figure out who stole what from whom in the nineties, or even mock the self-proclaimed rulers of future Russias (okay, there is a little bit of that, but you see, I'm still holding on). Living people inside a dead world need solidarity more than the awareness of their own rightness and impeccability - this is my naive creed now. The end of history happened in a single country - this is even more amazing than communism. And this feeling unites us (it should unite us, I think), it should be stronger than everything that divides us now - borders, the ability or impossibility of speaking, the desire to talk in a stream about our own great role in the Russian future or the lack of such a desire.

Here I could write out something like a program of action, but any such program turns out to be a not very convincing justification for one's own impotence. The world did not catch me, but it caught me. And since for some reason they have not killed me yet, I will continue to do what I can more or less do. Here. And I wish the same for you there.

And I really appreciate that we remain friends. Let's stay further. There is nowhere to run anyway. Even for those who left.

I'm waiting for a meeting I don't expect.

Sincerely,
Davydov