You know what I'm gonna tell you, guys? Why don’t you go to hell? I’m talking about you, who besiege embassies, loot food stores, persecute either Georgian wine or Estonian cheese, about unpunished and cast off all restraint hoods spilling paint on gravestones, about politicians fanning the burned-out ashes for their self-interest and lust of power, about you, who makes profit on hostility, hatred and sales of weapons, about customs officials fleecing passengers, about functionaries devouring money of widows and children, about Russians and Estonians, Georgians and Chechens, about all without distinction as to age and sex. Let us live like human beings, eh?
It has become a bit too much of you lately. The only thing consoles -- that you fight each other. But let the common people alone. Millions of normal people – teachers and doctors, workers and shop-assistants, dry-cleaner’s employees and taxi-drivers – want to live without spite and hostility, without all these problems that you’re thrusting on us. We all want to work and earn our livings, we want out children to live normal lives in human conditions but not in expectation of war and terror. We want to spend our two-week vacations in three-star hotels in Georgia, Crimea or Estonia. Why not? We want to drink Georgian and Moldavian wine, to eat Estonian cheese and Azerbaijan greens.
Why don’t you want to live as others do? People can always come to an agreement, if only they had good will. One can agree on where the monument of Russian soldier should stay – in the city centre or at a military cemetery… One must make an effort, quite minor mental effort and try to understand what’s in the mind of another man, just to stay in his shoes. An Estonian is not obliged to love the Soviet power, its collectivization and industrialization, its repressions aimed both against own people and aliens, and he is not even obliged to love our soldier-liberator. To respect graves – sure. Any normal person, not a scumbag or a madman, esteems strangers’ graves. And own too. And you guys, you have not yet learnt to respect your own graves, and require respect from another nation. In our own country, in the capital, in the near outskirts they dig up our burial places, not strangers’ to realize a very interesting commercial project. But here our active guys keep silent for whatever reasons…
We are all tired of you, guys. Get on with some work; there is a lot in our country where to take a hand in: our orphanages and medical institutions, polluted lands and poisoned water. Not to mention corrupt officials at all levels. If you are honest people, and if real life of real people, but not the political crackling is important to you, then get down to business.
There is a cultural environment created by musicians and writers, scientists, painters, architects. This is the only thing that will remain. War creates nothing valuable, it leaves behind only piles of dead bodies and warped metal, invalids and orphans. Look at Grozny – who needed that? Who won in this war?
Culture – Beatles and Avro Pyart, Andrey Platonov and Yaan Cross, Pavel Kuznetzov and Yulo Sooster – gives a foothold to the world. The survival of humanity depends on culture for it’s the only guarantor of the life. And that place where we are invited by gallant lads smells of destruction, war and death.
Guys! Most of you are young. Now you are making your own future, if you want to sit in trenches, you’ll get it. War is the nastiest thing that could ever be. Even if it’s a very small war waged by restricted contingent in a small country.
Well, to send you to hell would be too simple. It would be much better, if you stopped for a moment and each of you thought with his own mind, but not with a public one… The public mind is so big and irresponsible, but everybody is personally responsible for his own life. And in the war everyone dies personally…
Ludmila Ulitskaya
