Memory - antidote from transformation into a herd

After 20 years, Putin knelt before the victims of Beslan. These are the feat of mothers who did not allow you to forget about what they did with their children

20 years ago, during the assault on the school in Beslan, hostages were killed. Many were injured. Everyone who was there was injured forever. Before Beslan in Russia there was no assistance to the victims of terrorist attacks. But even after Beslan, she did not appear immediately, but after many years. And this happened because several Beslan women who lost their children at school No. 1, tired of tired not only about their dead, but also about the living.

For many years they have achieved expensive treatment of surviving hostages, their rehabilitation, and sanatorium treatment.

But their most important achievement is memory.

These women did not allow us to forget about their dead children. For 20 years, they have been demanding an investigation of all the circumstances of the tragedy and an answer whether one of the officials will be punished for it.

Over these 20 years, they tried to discredit, quarrel, they were humiliated, even publicly swept, reproached, asked what they still need, because everyone already knows about them. And this was their merit - that everyone knows about them.

Society closes with tragedies. It is common for a person to think that nothing terrible will happen to him. And that if a terrible happened somewhere, then it is far away, it’s not with me and not about me. Beslan mothers of 20 years shout that what they survived is about each of us. No one is safe. And while there is no transparent investigation, until the society knows all the details of the tragedy, all of its heroes, and while these culprits have not been punished, all living things are not protected. The events of recent years showed that they were right.

The attacks in the latest history of Russia happened, and they quickly forgot about them. After the terrorist attack in Crocus, shopping centers are still crowded, and we still do not know whether the fire system works there, whether spare exits are opening, and who is generally responsible for all this-in general. As we still do not know who - in general - was responsible for saving hostages in Beslan and Dubrovka and who is responsible for so many dead civilians.

I do not urge to close shopping centers. Life undoubtedly takes its own, and that's right. But life without memory is not life, but an animal existence.

And we live without memory, without understanding, without pain. We live, "under us without sensing the country."

And only Beslan did not let him forget about himself - by the forces of a dozen desperate women. From year to year they talked about their pain, traveled around Russian cities with photographs of the Beslan tragedy, argued with the authorities who wanted to destroy school No. 1 - and achieved the conservation of the school at least as a memorial complex. For many years, flying to Ossetia, people from different parts of Russia necessarily go to the city of angels - the cemetery of those who died in a terrorist attack - to put flowers, read the names of the dead, lying here with whole families, cry. Even for young people who did not find that tragedy, Beslan is not an empty phrase.

On September 1, publications about Beslan began to appear even in state media.

After 20 years, the Russian president arrived in Beslan and knelt before the monument to the victims of the attack. Beslan mothers have been waiting for this for 20 years.

Nobody had succeeded this, and they were able to force the country's first person to kneel. Because they did not allow you to forget about their tragedy.

Will he fulfill his promises of the investigation of the attack, given once again to mothers? I am sure not. But 20 years after a terrible crime, the authorities knelt before the dead, in fact, pleading their guilt. This is the same precedent that the state refused to create, saying that “hostile forces” could use repentance (Putin spoke about this with Beslan’s mothers shortly after the tragedy at a meeting in Moscow).

Repentance needs our society. In this terrible century, we all have something to kneel for all. Beslan mothers taught us that there are things that cannot be forgotten, to survive.

Their long -term watch watch is our only antidote from turning into a consuming, not remembering a herd.