Russia-Versteher 2.0
Some time ago Marina Ovsyannikova appeared with an anti-war hand-made poster during presumably live news broadcasting on the main state russian channel. It was aimed at the western audience and started with english line:
‘NO WAR
ОСТАНОВИТЕ ВОЙНУ (stop war)
НЕ ВЕРЬТЕ ПРОПАГАНДЕ (don’t trust propaganda)
ЗДЕСЬ ВАМ ВРУТ (you are being lied)
RUSSIANS AGAINST WAR’
It was followed up by video where she read text about why she is against the war against Ukraine — published by _______ (Ksenia Sobchak who has family ties with acting president of Russia.) Not undermining the importance of such statement in the given circumstances, people felt under temptation of looking for heroes among russians who are trying to oppose the war against Ukraine, and now it feels like something essential is being hidden behind the scenes.
The attention and the reaction that happened all over the western media show an inner, deeper conflict that seeks for its resolvance: the conflict between guilt and hope. The attitude toward Russia and russians that dominated before the 24th was built with ties created through historical events, close economic and business relations and both informational and cultural infiltration. Aa the result, there was cosy sympathy with some sentimental type towards exotic and ‘impossible to understand’ russian soul covered with pragmatics of reliable resourse partner needed for the economics of many European countries. The awakening delievered by war against Ukraine brought the type of shock that couldn’t have been imagined. It raised questions that are yet to be answered all together meaning ‘How could we have missed that coming?’ The feeling in this question is guilt and self-questioning, doubt in any existing logic of critical perception and even more: obvious, clear blindness. Not the type of insight one would enjoy, right?
Whereas Ukraine goes with ‘ban anything Russia-related all over the world’ and pushes the (historically known) idea of collective responsibility for the situation that led to the war of 2014 and escalated to full scale in 2022, it surely tries to create the heat and pressure the main purpose of which is to save lives of the Ukrainians being under bombings and dying in the fight for Ukraine. Russia-verstehers instead are slowly drifting to russia-verstehers 2.0 and try to safe their self-esteem from admitting the mistakes and shaking of the illusion claiming readiness to relook some aspects of the relations but in keeping it to quite limited horizon. Previous days, days of massive war, brought some thoughts about double-standards that were offered for Ukraine for years. Retrospectively many things surely look clearer and now the warnings from the past about russian plans since occupation of Crimea, Luhansk, Donets don’t sound premature or overkilling.
Huge layer of issues is yet to be reconsidered and we shouldn’t hurry with that. The thirst and search for ‘good russians’, ‘other russians’, ‘also suffering russians’ is on the edge of egoistic act of self-care and search for relief ‘we couldn’t have been that much wrong’. This is what means go back to double standards. It adds nothing to the situation: whether the act of Marina Ovsyannikova was sincere, staged, provoked or pre-shot. It adds nothing to the picture of russians in the modern world who are for now perceived mostly as that type of nation that has been invading countries all around for years and with increasing gluttony totally lost any shame or common sense. Isn’t this precedent quite disturbing as it is — that look for ‘at least’ someone there? There are surely those ‘someones’ there, but it’s not clear if there are more of them than 350.000. It’s just the number of civil people of Mariupol who have been for more than a week under instant bombing by russians (who don’t want war as written on poster) and the main horrifying question is what will be the real number of those who would manage to survive under the ruins of the city that was the Cultural Capital of Ukraine in 2021. So instead of sad realisation of lack of heroes in Russia and desperate search for them among people who worked for years at the main state propaganda channel maybe we should think of those who put their lives to save their country and of those who suffer dramatically choosing death over giving up to those who came to rape, kill and ruin? Whitewashing that has already started brought her to the Welt and she became a nominee with Zelenskiy and Tikhanovskaya, what an inspiring trinity built in European perception.
