Letter from Russia. №1 "I am Against it"

We are beginning a new series of posts, where we will periodically share letters written to us by Russians. We hope that these distant voices will reach an international audience and give people a better understanding of what it is like living in Russia.

***

I’m against it. Full stop.

I’ve been against it since the start and until this day. I’m against it. And I’m not alone, we aren’t few.

Each in their due time, some saw things immediately, some saw later, but their numbers are growing. AND YES, I’M AGAINST IT! Because I grew up with ideas of world peace, because wars are spawned from vice, of the lowest part of human nature, because of the fear that innocents die, because of the all-encompassing fear, because of the destruction and annihilation of what had been created by our predecessors, because things have rushed backwards against the grain off sensibility and humanity: it’s the end of thousands of lives, the end of the country.

And someone keeps hungrily stuffing their mouth with this, remaining unpunished.

They eat and eat more, they spur on, they make one pretext then another, “NATO is at our borders” or something else, "Russians are oppressed", “who, if not us, shall save the world from taint” spun to ecstasy by propaganda. I don’t buy it.

I DON’T BUY IT! Because I remember since childhood what my father taught me, “the world’s happiness isn’t worth a single tear of a single bullied kid”. I was too little to read Dostoevsky back then, but I remember those words well.

And also. I HATE. I hate the new Inquisition, nurtured with state-of-the-art tech, producing 100 laws a year to choke freedom and destroy dignity. It’s the 21st century Inquisition, a total paralysing fear, 24/7.

And sometimes it reeks so bad, that it makes you want to get up and leave the country, slamming the door shut.

And yet,

however,

against all that torments the soul in this time of madness, I love this land, I grew up here, my home is here. It’s the simple and banal feeling of homeland.

So when the hour strikes, I will join in. And we are many.