Even those forced to leave Russia find it difficult to break their connection with the motherland. Russian journalist Anton Pavlovich*, who emigrated to Germany, is filled with both sadness and joy. Here is his emotional essay.
"Russia is happiness. Russia is light. And maybe Russia is a mirage. And the sun has not set over the Neva, and Pushkin has not died in the snow, and there is neither St. Petersburg nor the Kremlin – but only snow and snow, fields, fields...". The author of these poems, Georgi Ivanov, left Russia in 1922 and spent his life in emigration. More than a hundred years later, the question of whether Russia exists at all is relevant again for those who are forced to leave it.
So many beloved, familiar and dear things remained in Russia. Memory erases everything negative: the fear and threat of reprisals, the suffocating atmosphere and the feeling of a trap ready to snap. There are the native streets, overflowing with memories and opportunities, here - life from scratch, and for a person who is not necessarily young. Of course, there's a charm to this as well - the opportunity to live two very different lives in one. The desire to return inevitably covers everyone, or almost everyone, unless the departed faces specific criminal charges. To overcome such a desire, one must convince oneself that Russia no longer exists at all and that there is nowhere to return to. This, of course, means that Russia as 1/8 or some other part of the earth exists. But this is not the country you know.
There is no war on my Facebook
But how to do it, if your friends and acquaintances who have remained in Russia, unwittingly but diligently convince you on social networks exactly the opposite? They live the same life, eat in the same restaurants, walk the same streets, visit each other. And everything is fine with them, there is no war, the same happy life is going on, only without you. You can, of course, not use social networks, but what to do with the memories?
In emigrant chats, they advise to read news from the homeland, where there are trials and arrests every day. It helps, but it's not a panacea. You still have to repeat to yourself at regular intervals that Russia does not exist at all. That this is a completely different country - not the one you lived in, that you remember, and that your trapped friends still instinctively simulate. That all the indigenous evil that has been hidden in her until now - informers, obscurantists and xenophobes suffering from their own inferiority - has broken out and is enjoying its power. In exactly the same way, more than a hundred years ago, our ancestors probably convinced themselves of this, fighting the temptation to buy a steamer ticket to the USSR. Those who did not overcome the temptation, sooner or later almost inevitably ended up in the Gulag. Therefore it was necessary to win.
By the way, it is interesting that the Facebook algorithms show me exactly such a Russia - happy and calm. Although, in fact, they should create the information bubble that I want to be in (not for altruistic reasons, of course, but to keep me longer on the site and make more money from me). And, accordingly, to convince me that Russia no longer exists at all. But maybe they understand better than I do what I really want to see.
The motherland will find you everywhere
At the same time, there are other Russian-speaking migrants living near me who came here a long time ago and have settled. Not all, but some of them are "quilters" of the most classic kind: they love Putin, consider Ukrainians enemies, and worry that their children will not be taught homosexuality in German schools. This cannot be explained by poor integration: many of them speak excellent German, have good jobs and generally feel quite comfortable. This phenomenon does not need any special explanation at all. Just "the quilts" they remain "quilters", even after more than 20 years of living away from their homeland. This once again shows that the Kremlin's propaganda has firmly struck people's brains. But many, apparently, want to be struck down themselves.
Recently I saw in a German Russian-speaking community a service offer – how to quickly get Russian citizenship ("details - in a private message"). And what, someone asked, is it possible to get Russian citizenship just like that in a hurry? "It's easy for normal people, but not for freaks like you," replied the author of the post. And he did it very nobly: because those who are preparing to take Russian citizenship must immediately begin to get used to the special way of communication that awaits them in Russia. Thanks to such people! Thanks to them, you get additional immunity against the photos of native birches.
Anton Pavlovich* is a pseudonym of a journalist from Russia who emigrated to Germany. At his request, the column is published under a pseudonym.
This comment expresses the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial team and of DV as a whole.