There is a presenter on Russian television – Darya Zlatopolskaya. She was not tainted by participation in political talk shows and with her decorum, femininity and intelligence, she looked like a black sheep in a flock of her vulture colleagues. But once, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in one of the episodes of her apolitical programme “White Studio”, in which she conducts cultural conversations with invited celebrities, Zlatopolskaya out of the blue mentioned in a positive light Pushkin’s famous boorish work “To the Slanderers of Russia” (1831), saying that it seemed as if it had been written today. She meant that this poem could have been written in the modern era concerning the aggravation of Russian-Ukrainian relations and the West’s reaction to it. A month after the start of the current Russian-Ukrainian war, in early April 2022, one of the most popular Russian actors, Sergei Bezrukov, published a video on his social media channel in which he pathetically recites the same propaganda classic of the national poet [i], whom the Russian people willingly call “our everything.”
Thus, modern Russians understand and admit that their narratives regarding Ukraine are akin to the narratives of their ancestors regarding Poland. Indeed, Pushkin believed that the bloodletting of the Poles was a kind of “family feud,” a “domestic, old dispute” to drain “Slavic streams into the Russian sea” (or, in today’s terms, the Russian world). Europe “hates” Russia for defeating Napoleon (in today’s terms, Hitler), and if the West does not calm down, then we, Pushkin says, can repeat: “Send your sons to us: there is a place for them in the fields of Russia among coffins not alien to them.” As is easy to notice, Pushkin’s compatriots in modern Russia think the same thing about the ongoing aggression against Ukraine.
But the parallels do not end there. In the Russian classic about “Poland, after a century of struggle, surrendered to the power of its happier sister” for the “rapprochement, eternal friendship and fusion of two sister nations” [ii], there are many other motifs reminiscent of today. For example, there are accusations against Poland of wanting to become a NATO bridgehead next to Russia (only the word “NATO” had not yet been invented, so they said “Catholicism” and “Latinism”): “Poland is a sharp wedge driven by Latinism into the very heart of the Slavic world to split it into pieces… [She] says to Europe: “Stand up for me – and, your faithful servant, I will stand guard to protect you from the wild force generated by the combination of the Eastern schism with Mongol despotism; untie my hands, and our enemy will disappear like a ghost; the East of Europe will be yours, and I will pull my fettered brothers to you” [iii].
Aha, here you have the idea of being brothers – another popular motive nowadays. Since “Belarus” and “Little Russia” were already considered a priori and forever Russian (so tightly fused “with Great Russia, due to their historical aspiration for the ideal of a pan-Russian life, that the Volga in the space of its four-thousand-mile channel would sooner dry up to the last drop than these lands would fall away from Russia” [iv] ), then only Poland remained to be persuaded by force to fraternal ties. And even then, one of the characters in the classics, a Pole by nationality, tried to debunk this compulsion to mouse-brotherhood and mouse-marriage: “The unity of the Slavic brothers… Well, there are different kinds of brothers. Cain and Abel were even blood brothers, and not… seventh cousins… Ha-ha-ha! The Sarmatians and Lechs are perhaps precisely in such a distant relationship with the Great Russians, Germans and… Tatars, from whom the present Russian people were formed” [v] . Here is another analogy for you – the classics encountered “the demotion of the entire Great Russian tribe into some kind of mixture of Finnish and Tatar blood” [vi], which is observed today in the Ukrainian segment of the Internet, as in the old days among the Poles.
Finally, against the backdrop of the ambiguous, if not to say duplicitous, position of the new American administration concerning Ukraine, behind-the-scenes talks between the White House and the Kremlin about the status of the “five Ukrainian territories” and rumours about the possible recognition of Crimea as Russian [vii], it seems that the time described by the classics, when “regions and entire states with tens of millions of inhabitants were thrown from hand to hand like a ball in a children’s game,” has not yet sunk into the past: Poland, “without asking about its desire, was thrown from hand to hand by participants in various congresses, European sovereigns, like a thing, they traded the people and the country, like a soulless thing” [viii].
The only thing in which the Russian “heroes” of the 19th century surpassed the “current tribe” was that they openly boasted of their “feats” of the past and present, and did not hide cowardly behind the backs of the small non-titular ethnic groups enslaved and Russified by Russia, attributing to them all the unsightly things in their actions [ix] and painting themselves in white gloves. In the same brochure in which “To the Slanderers of Russia” appeared, there were two more works. One, signed by Zhukovsky, Pushkin’s friend and mentor, was aptly titled “An Old Song in a New Way.” In it, two hundred years before the “grandfathers fought” meme, one can read: “Our grandfathers fought bravely; / Their sons fight bravely… / The assembly thunders, and from afar / Russia cries: Borodino! (As today: to Berlin. – D. D.) The Pole, rebelling before us, / Remembers the names of the Russians… Our vengeful bombs have risen and are flying / At the city seething with rebellion… / The dispute has been resolved! Justice has been given! / The head of the rebellion has fallen! / And our holy glory, / Russian glory lives on!” [x]
Another work from the aforementioned brochure was again written by Pushkin. It completely duplicates “To the Slanderers of Russia.” For example, the singer of the Russian world shouts to the West again: “Come to us: Russia is calling you! / But know, guests! / Poland will not lead you: / Your bones will step over her!…” [xi] As literary scholars explain, the verse “Poland will not lead you” is a reference to the participation of the Duchy of Warsaw on Napoleon’s side in the so-called Patriotic War of 1812. The analogy with the rhetoric of Russia in the 21st century is obvious: today, Pushkin would write: “Bandera will not lead you: Your bones will step over the Banderites.”
The name of Yermolov, who “flooded the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains with Russian and Circassian blood” and was appointed by Alexander I “commander-in-chief of the army of 113 thousand bayonets, which was going to help the Austrian oppressors against the Italians” [xii], is also found in historical novels about Poland. (Moreover, the troops for this special military operation were gathered in Poland and Ukraine [xiii]. Thus, feudal Russia was preparing to fulfill its international duty to protect the conventional Bashar al-Assad and allow his regime to continue to crush the people under its totalitarian and hydraulic press [xiv] .) On his way to an audience with Alexander, Yermolov, if we are to believe Russian fiction of the 19th century, stopped by the emperor’s brother, who ruled as viceroy in the Kingdom of Poland. And here, in the suburb of Warsaw called Praga, Yermolov indulges in nostalgia: “I remember this place well!.. It was a long time ago, more than a quarter of a century ago [in 1794]… How the late eagle Alexander Vasilyevich [Suvorov] and I took this very Prague by storm… It was a hot affair! We repaid the villains for the Easter massacre [the neutralization of Russian soldiers stationed in Warsaw by Polish patriots during Easter week in April 1794]!.. Blood flowed in streams… And the Polish gentlemen wavered, threw down their weapons, ran away like hares, or begged for mercy on their knees… But there was no mercy… not for them, not for their wives, not for their children… So that they remember how the Russian people can pay for treachery!” [xv]
It is important to emphasize that all this did not come to the novelist’s mind out of nowhere, but was based on real historical events. Suvorov himself testified that “blood flowed in streams through the streets and squares of Prague” and that the “extermination” was “terrible” [xvi]. Colonel Nikolai Orlov, professor at the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff, reported in his lecture dedicated to the centenary of the assault: “The memoirs contain a description of the frenzy to which the Russians indulged in Prague. One grenadier, in a frenzy, stabbed unarmed Poles and even the wounded with a bayonet; as if to add variety to his exercises, he chopped off the Poles’ heads with an axe (it’s a good thing he didn’t use a sledgehammer, as in the 21st century [xvii] . – D.D.), saying: “they’re all dogs.” One Cossack, for fun, stuck a small child on a pike; another, having torn a child from the embrace of a stabbed mother, smashed it against the wall” [xviii] . Orlov believed these descriptions only halfway [xix], but did not deny that, “of course, there were excesses”: for example, the nuns “who did not have time to escape from the monasteries [to the Russian camp, where they were promised protection] were beaten (i.e. killed. – D.D.), and the girls who were in the monastery for training were raped and then beaten” [xx].
Of course, one can blame the Cossacks for the massacre, as one Anglo-Saxon Slavist does with the Prague massacre (and does so categorically and in defiance of eyewitnesses) [xxi], but it was not the Cossacks who, a century and a half later, attacked Poland, that “sister nation,” and, having divided it with the Nazis, published caustic cartoons in the spirit of “Here we end the history of the Polish state” [xxii]. And it was not the Cossacks who shot tens of thousands of unarmed Slavic men of Polish origin in Katyn and other places, and, having shot them, destroyed their files after them, deciding that their fates “do not represent historical value” [xxiii]. No matter what ridiculous statements Russian pseudo-liberals make today, telling a naive Western audience about the deep mental pain with which “our boys” bomb Ukraine, shoot defenсeless people, send home stolen goods, torture prisoners in their dungeons not only physically but also morally (forcing them, for example, to learn the Russian anthem [xxiv] ), but to the question of whether it is psychologically difficult for Russian executioners to exterminate their own kind and cover entire forest areas like Sandarmokh with their corpses, there is a universal answer given by the warden of one political prison in tsarist times: “If they order a prisoner to say “your excellency” – I will say “your excellency”; if they order him to strangle him – I will strangle him” [xxv].
“Our fundamental enemies are stupidity and cruelty,” Maxim Gorky once said. “It is time to cultivate in ourselves a sense of disgust for murder… Has the memory of our vile past, the memory of how we were shot in the streets by the hundreds and thousands, instilled in us the executioners’ calm attitude toward the violent death of a person?” [xxvi] In general, the early Gorky said a lot of things that today in Russia would be called flagrant Russophobia, but at that time, in the Bolshevik manner, they called it “scratching the heels of the bourgeoisie.” Here are some of Gorky’s early statements off the top of my head: “There is no doubt, gentlemen, that you, armed people, can kill and slaughter with impunity as many “bourgeois” as you please… You were brought up on violence and murder and… when you say “there can be no trial for us”, you say this… only because you know: under the monarchy, no one was tried or punished for mass murder… You, wild Russian people, corrupted and tortured by the old regime, it has instilled in you all its terrible diseases and its senseless despotism in your flesh and blood”; “Now… our people have freely revealed to the world all the riches of their psyche, brought up by centuries of wild darkness, disgusting slavery, and bestial cruelty”; “We, Rus’, are anarchists by nature, we are cruel beasts, in our veins there still flows dark and evil slave blood – the poisonous legacy of the Tatar and serf yoke … There are no words that could not be used to curse the Russian person”; “The most sinful and dirty people on earth, stupid in good and evil, drunk with vodka, disfigured by the cynicism of violence, hideously cruel”; “And now this weak, dark … people is now called upon to be the spiritual leader of the world, the messiah of Europe … The “leaders of the people” do not hide their intention to light a fire from damp Russian logs, the fire of which would illuminate the Western world, the world where the lights of social creativity burn brighter and more intelligently than here in Rus’. The fire was lit, it burns poorly, it stinks of Russia, dirty, drunk and cruel”; “And we must not close our eyes to the fact that now that the “people” have won the right to physical violence against man, they have become a tormentor no less brutal and cruel than their former tormentors”; “When, about a year and a half ago, I published… an article in which I said that the Russian people… are passive, but cruel when power falls into their hands; that the renowned goodness of their soul is Karamazov’s sentimentalism, that they are insensitive to the suggestions of humanism and culture – for these thoughts… I was accused of all sins against the people. “He [the author of the newspaper “Pravda”] has no right to chatter nonsense about my alleged “contemptuous spitting in the face of the people.” What he likes to call “contemptuous spitting” is my conviction, formed over decades”; “G. Zinoviev asserts that by condemning the cruelty, rudeness, etc. committed by the people, I am thereby “scratching the heels of the bourgeoisie.” The trick is crude, not clever, but – nothing else can be expected from the Zinovievs” [xxvii] …
However, while condemning the Zinovievs, Gorky insisted that it was unacceptable to denigrate all Jews because of them; therefore, having received from someone “a pack of anti-Semitic proclamations,” Gorky scolded their authors, saying that they were “ordinary Russian people, from those wild idlers and lazybones who, being themselves to blame for all their misfortunes, shamelessly blame everyone, anyone, for their insignificance and inability to live – except themselves” [xxviii].
There is no doubt that if the slightest inclination toward anti-Semitism were not unconditionally punished in the West today, then the Russian pseudo-opposition, touring “at a gallop across Europe,” would tell local politicians that “the Jews have set two sister nations at loggerheads,” and that the Russians themselves (or, as Gorky ironically said, “the meek Slavs, those Russian people who now so senselessly and cruelly rob and kill each other” [xxix] ), due to their delicate mental makeup, are generally incapable of occupying and killing anyone. But since such a position would today result not only in political suicide, but also in a ready-made article, the “good Russians” found a more convenient scapegoat – the Caucasian and Siberian national minorities. “They are already used to it: when for 20-30 years you write everything off as a ‘Chechen trace’, then it comes out automatically. It’s not us, it’s the evil Chechens” [xxx], – comments on such behaviour journalist and former political prisoner Zara Murtazalieva, who lives in Paris.
The situation is made especially piquant by the fact that the shifting of blame from the sick to the healthy is being done by those who were in the Kremlin bastille yesterday and would have rotted there for another 20 years if not for the “evil Chechens,” since Moscow agreed to hand over its would-be oppositionists to the West only in exchange for an FSB officer imprisoned in Germany who had murdered a former member of the Chechen resistance – “an act of state terrorism,” as the German investigation and court qualified this crime.
When the exchange took place, Prague-based publicist Harun Sidorov asked himself: “Will any of the freed Russian oppositionists and their leaders… have enough conscience to come to the family of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, whose murderer was exchanged for them, and express sympathy to his loved ones?” [xxxi] The question, of course, was rhetorical, but it turned out worse: the freed men began to go to the parliaments of European countries and whitewash “our boys,” hanging racist labels on non-Russian ethnic groups.
“It is psychologically difficult for Russians to kill their Ukrainian brothers – even Putin and his propagandists have not thought of such a revelation – after Bucha, Irpen, Borodyanka, after the nine children who were just killed in Krivoy Rog. But the best of the “good Russians” [oppositionist Vladimir Kara-Murza] thought of it,” states Vadim Zaidman, a publicist living in Germany. “And now decide for yourselves what kind of Russia these liberal imperialists (an oxymoron!) will build if, after Putin’s departure, they get their hands on this grandiose construction project of the 21st century: the very PRB [beautiful Russia of the future] that they cherish – or the same concentration camp of nations, only with a freshly painted façade” [xxxii].
The last option from the alternative proposed by Zaidman is the only possible one. This is what history suggests, because the liberals of Tsarist Russia dreamed of building a beautiful Russia of the future, but in the end, we still got a Kalashnikov assault rifle, as the Russians themselves like to say. This is how the Caucasian émigré press reported on this in 1936: “To all these doubts [about the absurd position of the assimilated national minorities of the empire]… the answer was most often given as follows – by those, of course, who continued to support Russia: the tsarist government commits one stupidity after another, oppresses foreigners, gets involved in unnecessary wars, does not give the population sufficient rights – now another Russia will come, a real one, liberal, parliamentary, of left-wing parties – then… This Russia came to power – in successive combinations from Lvov-Guchkov-Milyukov to Kerensky-Chernov and Lenin-Trotsky – but the slide to wholesale Bolshevism was so rapid that everyone who had not yet lost their common sense was faced with the task not of cooperation with the central government, but of possible defence against it” [xxxiii].
Alas, it is very difficult, almost impossible, to defend oneself against Moscow after it has already grown strong and reformatted itself into another Kalashnikov assault rifle. Today, the newly-minted Russian Black Hundreds, having created a chauvinistic organization called the “Russian Community,” beat up, humiliate, and insult people of non-Slavic appearance, including indigenous residents of non-Russian republics, and they don’t dare utter a peep: as soon as they even jokingly mention creating an organization to counter the “Russian Community” for self-defence, the police immediately take them away. But initially, the so-called Russian Federation was created precisely as the Beautiful Russia of the Coming Future: as a treaty federation with the ability to swallow as much freedom as it can fit. Yeltsin later explained that this was his strategic trick: not yet having the power to put the “black-asses” and “slant-eyes” in their place, to keep them under Moscow’s thumb at the cost of temporary handouts, so that later, after the central government had been strengthened, he could remind them who was boss. Which was gradually accomplished [xxxiv].
Last year, one Russian activist in exile was asked: “And if the regime falls and there is some new Russia, is it possible to change people’s thinking?” Oddly enough, the activist had the intelligence and decency to answer: “Unfortunately, I don’t see any preconditions for the fall of the regime and no alternatives, because all media liberals are imperialists” [xxxv].
Kara-Murza’s scandalous speech in the French Senate is further proof of this truth. It also demonstrated that a person who likes to boast that he is not only a politician but also a historian [xxxvi] does not know history. “The closeness of two ethnic groups never prevents hatred and bloody conflicts,” archaeologist Askold Ivanchik recalled in 2020, “on the contrary, there are many examples when very close ethnic groups cut each other with great pleasure. Take, for example, the people of the former Yugoslavia. There is still a difference in language between Russians and Ukrainians, but there was practically none between Serbs and Croats, and Bosnian Muslims too. But there was a conflict. And there are quite a few such cases” [xxxvii].
One such case can be considered the old conflicts with Poland, if we look at them through the prism of Russian propaganda of that time. Thus, more than thirty years after Pushkin, during another Polish uprising in the 1860s, one Slavophile (as it was customary to say then, but an ordinary adherent of the Russian Reich) grumbled at the Europeans: “On the one hand, by giving the Poles unrealistic hopes, on the other, by insulting our national pride, you awaken in us all the instincts inherent … in the nature of large states – and nowhere are these instincts as powerful as in Russia – where the consciousness of its all-Russian state power, together with the feeling of its breadth and space, its enormous size, as a people, alone animates and moves, alone makes up for the poverty of internal, local, zemstvo, public life. And nothing so kindles hostility towards the Poles, moreover, nothing so justifies this hostility in the conscience of the most peace-loving Russians as this participation of Europe, as this union of the Poles with the Western non–Slavic world. Whatever they may say, in Russian society – consciously or unconsciously – there lives the memory and feeling of our kinship tribal connection – such relations, which… non-recognition on the part of the Poles – has for us the appearance of some kind of betrayal of the spirit of tribal kinship” [xxxviii] . All this is so reminiscent of today’s talk about “traitors-Ukrops who sold out to NATO” that one involuntarily recalls a joke which, according to the testimony of Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Zhabinsky, who fled to the West, was circulating “in the Soviet Union in 1940, when they were ‘extending a hand of fraternal help’ to the peoples of the Baltic: an indignant [British Foreign Minister Anthony] Eden asks Molotov: “When will you stop extending a hand of fraternal help?” “When you stretch out your legs,” Molotov replies. “Nothing has changed” [xxxix], concluded Zhabinsky, telling this anecdote in his 1952 autobiographical novel.
Since some commentators minimize Kara-Murza’s guilt by claiming that he is right in the part of his statement that Ukrainians and Russians are the same (“the same”), it is worth clarifying right away: when Russians speak of “Slavic brothers”, they never mean equal and equal-in-value brothers, but only “younger brothers and sisters”, “medium and small”, “daughter and son peoples”, “settlements” from their “super-ethnos”, their “blood relatives who broke away to the side, changed, distorted the language” [xl]. This banal paternalistic arrogance is the same arrogance that pushed the classics to brand Ukrainian regionalism as “Khokhlomania”. “A young girl of a man’s build… A passionate Khokhlomaniac. She built a school on her estate at her own expense and teaches the little khokhlos Krylov’s fables in Little Russian translation. She goes to Shevchenko’s grave like a Turk to Mecca” [xli], Chekhov wrote in a letter dated 30 May 1888. Philologist Irina Dyagileva noted in 2010: “From the standpoint of today, the words khokhloman, khokhlomanstvo, khokhlomanka seem to be occasional formations that are not widely used in speech (i.e., a private, random pearl of drunken Vasya from the gateway – D. D). However, in the 19th century, this was the name given to supporters of the political independence of Little Russia, the opposition of Russians and Ukrainians. The views of the khokhlomans caused hostility, discussions in printed publications, and were ridiculed in literary works” [xlii] . Let us add that these critics did not even think about the political independence of the “Little Russians”: they believed that “a native of our south considers himself to be nothing other than Russian, and only for the sake of distinguishing himself from others calls himself a Kharkovite, a Poltavaite, etc.” They were outraged by the “artificial creation of a special literary language for the Little Russians,” which “forcibly drags” the latter “into a cultural schism” and “literary separatism,” and “according to the logic of which it follows that Kvitka and Shevchenko are ours, and Pushkin and Lermontov are not ours, but Muscovites !..” [xliii]
By the way, returning to Kara-Murza’s statement: from the words “Ukrainians are the same as Russians” to the words “Ukrainians are the same as Russians” there are only three letters, and it is psychologically, physically and historically easy and pleasant for Russians to omit them – both for the bandit Girkin (“There is no Ukrainian people. There is a Russian people of Ukraine” [xliv] ), and for President Putin (“I don’t make any difference between Ukrainians and Russians. I believe that they are one and the same people” [xlv] ), and for ex-President Medvedev (“It is more correct to talk not about… the dichotomy “Ukrainians – Russians”, but “outskirted Russians – Russians” [xlvi] ). One must be a very naive person to believe that “good Russians” think in their souls differently than all their presidents and ex-presidents, together with the classics, who were already shaken by the fact that “Khokhlomans” dare to assert that “the language of Shevchenko, Kvitka and some others is in fact the language of the 14-million-strong Little Russian tribe and that this tribe is not only part of the great Russian people, but a separate nationality, like the Latvian or Georgian” [xlvii] .
In conclusion, let us return to Gorky and his opinion that, despite their “famous kindness,” the Russian people are “exclusively” characterized by cruelty, over which neither time nor evolution has power [xlviii]. Granted, this is an exaggeration, and Gorky himself, amid his rebukes, also found kind words for his fellow countrymen. But such is the Russian reality that, from era to era, observers are forced to conclude no less bitter than Gorky’s. One of them is the writer Anatoly Pristavkin, who stated in 2002 that “the danger comes not only from criminals,” but “from almost every person, because our world, contrary to the legend that Russians are an overly kind nation, is fantastically cruel” [xlix]. Against the backdrop of the recent tragicomic case of a Russian woman who wanted to find out whether she would receive compensation from the state for the death of her second husband, who was leaving for Ukraine, if she had already received compensation for her previous husband [l], the following words from the 2000s, spoken by the executive secretary of the Union of Soldiers’ Mothers Valentina Melnikova, are once again relevant: “I do not respect my compatriots. They put up with the war in Chechnya, often abandon their children maimed in the war, and the first thing they ask is what kind of insurance they will receive for their son’s injury in the war” [li].
Therefore, the question is why, despite the change of political systems and historical periods, the “biosphere of evil” continues to dominate Russia. To dispel it, as the late publicist Vadim Belotserkovsky believed, “it is first necessary to recognize its existence. A large number of Russians believe that there is no evil biosphere over Russia, since the Russian people are very kind.” Belotserkovsky added, “The same can be said about modern Russia with even greater justification as… about Soviet Russia: it is impossible to denigrate it, since in reality it turns out to be blacker than the blackest ideas about it!” [lii]
And again – an involuntary echo of Gorky’s “There are no words that could not be used to curse a Russian person”… Alas, Gorky himself was soon beset by a curse, common for writers in Russia. The essence of this curse was formulated by one pre-revolutionary critic as follows: “If any of the Russian writers [begins] to rebel, then only to immediately repent and humble themselves even more deeply” [liii]. Gorky did not escape this fate either: from a truth-teller, “scratching the heels of the bourgeoisie,” he became an apologist for the Chekists, proclaiming from the pages of Izvestia to those who “shout about the ‘cruelty’ of the workers’ and peasants’ government” (as he had done several years earlier) that this cruelty “is the cruelty of self-defenсe of the people, surrounded by secret and obvious traitors,” and therefore “justified”: “It is quite natural that the workers’ and peasants’ government beats its enemies like a louse” [liv]. Forcing his pen “to scribble shameful nonsense, toadying to those who make the weather” [lv], Gorky did not leave a single bottom unpunched that came his way. He sang praises, among other things, to the construction of the infamous White Sea-Baltic Canal (“Tens of thousands of people have been re-educated. There is something to rejoice about, isn’t there?” [lvi] ) and to the Solovetsky camp. The prisoners of the latter, having learned of the writer’s visit, naively hoped for deliverance: “The singer of ‘Burevestnik’ will, of course, brand the executioners and say his weighty word for us, oppressed and exterminated by the executioners. Gorky is no ordinary man, he is a tramp, you can’t fool him with nonsense, he will see everything, he will expose everything. And so – we waited” [lvii] . In Gorky, the unfortunate convicts found three Japanese monkeys in one person (“I see no evil, I hear no evil, I speak of no evil”): “It was in Gorky’s power to heed the groans of the vale of despair… But he passed through it as if blind and deaf. If that were so, then at least he would have remained mute after that. But, submitting to the powerful “social order,” he did not hold back his tongue or pen and… glorified the “reign of the plague” [lviii].
Of course, we could go on and on about all this, but firstly, we have already abused the reader’s time, and secondly, this topic is not relevant to the essence of this publication. We started talking about Solovki to end with the same thing we started with – with the brotherly love of the Russians for the Poles:
“A mile from the place where Gorky played the role of a distinguished tourist with rapture and shed tears, touched by the people who dedicated themselves to the humane mission of re-education through labor… – a mile from there, in a straight line, brutalized overseers beat with their sticks the tortured, exhausted penal soldiers – Polish soldiers – harnessed eight and ten at a time to sleds loaded with [timber]. They were used to transport firewood along the black trail. The Poles were kept especially inhumanely” [lix].
And such a human team was called “vridlo” – “temporarily acting as a horse” [lx] .
Truly, you couldn’t make this up.
Dagun Deniev
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[i] Sergey Bezrukov. А. С. Пушкин «Клеветникам России». Читает Сергей Безруков // YouTube. 2022. 3 апреля. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGVjKf4-By8.
[ii] Жданов Л. Г. Цесаревич Константин // Lib.Ru. 2010. 27 декабря. URL: http://az.lib.ru/z/zhdanow_l_g/text_0150.shtml.
[iii] Самарин Ю. Ф. Современный объем польского вопроса // Lib.ru. 2011. 11 мая. URL: http://az.lib.ru/s/samarin_j_f/text_1863_polskiy_vopros.shtml.
[iv] Аксаков И. С. О связи нашего общественного внутреннего вопроса с польско-русскою задачей // Lib.ru. 2017. 10 марта. URL: http://az.lib.ru/a/aksakow_i_s/text_1860_o_svayzi_oldorfo.shtml.
[v] Жданов Л. Г. Указ. соч.
[vi] Самарин Ю. Ф. Указ. соч.
[vii] Шестаков К. Зеленский ответил на слова Уиткоффа о пяти регионах Украины // DW. 2025. 16 апреля. URL: https://www.dw.com/ru/zelenskij-otvetil-na-slova-uitkoffa-o-pati-regionah-ukrainy/a-72256807; Красовская К. Bloomberg: США «открыты» для признания Крыма российским // 2025. 19 апреля. URL: https://www.dw.com/ru/bloomberg-ssa-otkryty-dla-priznania-kryma-rossijskim/a-72285277.
[viii] Жданов Л. Г. Указ. соч.
[ix] Впрочем, такое тоже имело место. Участник Семилетней войны (1756-1763) между европейскими державами Андрей Болотов обвиняет разведотряды казаков и калмыков в военных преступлениях России в Пруссии: «Таковыя поступки наших казаков и калмыков поистине приносили нам мало чести, ибо все европейские народы, услышав о таковых варварствах, стали и обо всей нашей армии думать, что она таковая же». При этом Болотов признает ответственность русских за уничтожение населенных пунктов: «А что мы разорения и опустошения мест огнем производили, того уже и оспорить не можно. Мы не только были тому очевидными свидетелями, но и сами для сожигания деревень были посыланы. Мне самому таки случилось однажды командировану быть для истребления огнем одной прекрасной деревни; но я радовался, что упросил другого офицера принять на себя сию комиссию, от которой я внутреннее имел отвращение» (Болотов А. Т. Жизнь и приключения Андрея Болотова, описанныя самим им для своих потомков. В 3-х томах: Том 1 / Отв. ред. О. А. Платонов. – М.: Институт русской цивилизации, 2013. С. 373, 468).
[x] На взятие Варшавы. Три стихотворения В. Жуковского и А. Пушкина. – СПб: Военная типография, 1831. URL: http://lib.pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=8968.
[xi] Там же.
[xii] Жданов Л. Г. Указ. соч.
[xiii] [Богданович М. И.] История царствования императора Александра I и России в его время. Т. VI. – СПб: Типография Ф. Сущинского, 1871. С. 15. URL: https://runivers.ru/bookreader/book57910/#page/1/mode/1up.
[xiv] Аллюзия на слухи о нецелевом использовании промышленного пресса в узилищах бывшего сирийского диктатора. См.: Пресс для раздавливания людей: появились жуткие кадры из застенков Асада в Сирии // Хартия’97. 2024. 15 декабря. URL: https://charter97.org/ru/news/2024/12/15/622708/; AFP. Syrie: les prisons sous Bachar al-Assad, des machines à extorsion // 2024. 17 декабря. URL: https://www.la-croix.com/syrie-les-prisons-sous-bachar-al-assad-des-machines-a-extorsion-20241217; Syrie : quand la libération de la prison de Saydnaya se transforme en visite du symbole le plus noir de la dictature Assad // Franceinfo. 2024. 12 декабря. URL: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-magazine/france-2/envoye-special/video-syrie-quand-la-liberation-de-la-prison-de-saydnaya-se-transforme-en-visite-du-symbole-le-plus-noir-de-la-dictature-assad_6951419.html.
[xv] Жданов Л. Г. Указ. соч.
[xvi] Цит. по: Орлов Н. А. Штурм Праги Суворовым в 1794 году. – СПб: Типография Штаба войск Гвардии и Петербургского военного округа, 1894. С. 89-90.
[xvii] Коротков Д. Головорезы (21+) // Новая газета. 2019. 20 ноября. URL: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2019/11/20/82805-golovorezy-21. О культе кувалды, появившемся в России в первой половине 2020-х годов, см. запись социолога и публициста из Германии Игоря Эйдмана на его странице в Facebook от 24 марта 2024 года: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0xJ4zowtMktKaj72qKA8MB9bGKFEU2HUcJDcu4Nkg5oom11B1uSnAuNjNng2DxpLdl&id=100001589654713. Для читателей будущего эта и другие записи в Facebook, цитируемые в настоящей публикации, заархивированы по соответствующим ссылкам на сервисе archive.today.
[xviii] Орлов Н. А. Указ. соч. С. 90.
[xix] Орлов объяснял свой скепсис чрезмерной стереотипностью этих зверств: «Они повторяются чуть не при каждом описании штурмов разных крепостей» (там же, с. 91). Но ведь война на то и война, что на ней происходят вещи немыслимые. Режиссер Говорухин собственными глазами лицезрел последствия российской резни в чеченском селе Самашки в 1995 году. На месте он заверил жителей, что «потрясен» увиденным, но, вернувшись на родину, стал, как водится, отпираться: «Чтобы российская армия вошла в мирное село, расстреляла каждый дом просто так, повесила на околице села тридцать детей, отрезала 11-летней девочке голову, вырвала сердце юноше… Уж в это поверить трудно, …армия у нас рабоче-крестьянская – это дети самой честной части общества… Такое можно сочинить только в каком-то пьяном угаре русофобии». Комментируя эти заявления, чеченский историк Хасан Бакаев писал: раз «Говорухин не может поверить, что русские солдаты, “дети самой честной части общества”, могли убивать женщин, детей и беспомощных стариков» и что «такое можно сочинить только в каком-то пьяном угаре русофобии», то «пьяными русофобами» нужно назвать и русских мемуаристов XIX века, описавших аналогичные сцены в период завоевания Кавказа. «Надо полагать, что тогдашняя русская армия состояла из детей еще более “честной части общества” – крестьян», – с иронией заключает Бакаев (Баксан Д. След Сатаны на тайных тропах истории. – Грозный: [б. и.], 1997. С. 175-176). Действительно, как указывает историк Моше Гаммер, подавляющую часть (80-85%) русских войск на Кавказе составляла регулярная армия, а солдатами в ней были русские крестьяне, для которых вопрос, «чем наполнить желудок», всегда был актуален. Поэтому разорять деревни северокавказцев они шли охотно: «Сады и отары горцев [были] важным источником добавки к рациону солдат… Это служило дополнительным стимулом для участия в походах на горцев. Походы не только разнообразили тяжелую повседневную гарнизонную работу солдат, из походов они возвращались с грузом свежих овощей и фруктов, с коровами и овцами, с другими трофеями» (Гаммер М. Шамиль. Мусульманское сопротивление царизму. Завоевание Чечни и Дагестана. – М.: КРОН-ПРЕСС, 1998. С. 45-47). О том же, в какой нравственной, а точнее безнравственной атмосфере жило крестьянство, из которого рекрутировали этих солдат, можно узнать, например, из исследования Н. Флеровского «Положение рабочего класса в России» (1869). Не имея возможности вдаваться в подробности непростых будней крестьянина («он питается такой нищей, которую добрый хозяин и лошади своей не даст» и «утоляет свою жажду тем напитком, которым угощали римляне распятого Христа», «муж смотрит обыкновенно сквозь пальцы на разврат жены, если он имеет от этого кое-какие выгоды, но встречаются и такие выродки человечества, которые принуждают своих жен к прелюбодеянию, чтобы добывать таким образом деньги», «любовницы соблазняют мужей отравлять своих жен», а «жены отравляют своих мужей», «во время пьянства крестьяне бьют своих жен не только каждый день, но несколько раз в день, и весьма часто какой-нибудь изверг забивает свою жену в гроб», «для крестьянской матери смерть ребенка приносит чаще радость, чем горе»…), ограничимся следующей общей констатацией исследователя: «Жертва беспощадного унижения, он [крестьянин] держит в таком же рабстве свою жену и свое семейство и воспитывает детей, всасывающих с молоком матери раболепие и пороки. Никакое красноречие не в состоянии описать того беспредельного зла, которое от этого происходит» (Флеровский Н. Положение рабочего класса в России. – СПб.: Издание Н. П. Полякова, 1869. С. 40, 41, 53, 51). Таким образом, «честное» происхождение вовсе не гарантирует безупречность поведения.
[xx] Орлов Н. А. Указ. соч. С. 91.
[xxi] Дословно англоязычный автор говорит: «Cossack troops seem to have been mainly to blame, but they had probably been given a green light by higher authority» (Keep J. Soldiers of the tsar. Army and society in Russia. 1462-1874. – New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. P. 216).
[xxii] Как пишет белорусский писатель и журналист, кандидат философских наук Константин Скуратович, в советской сатире о Польше «чередой проходят имена авторов, изданий, названий, импровизаций на тему крушения польской государственности, где в каждом сюжете рушатся устои или “уносят ноги” те, кому их надлежало защищать (как в речи беллетризованного Ермолова предыдущего столетия. – Д. Д.). Например, на рисунке Н. Радлова (журнал “Крокодил”, № 28 за 1939 год) с доходчивым названием “Не долго музыка играла” (“гремела”, если быть точным. – Д. Д.), изображена классная комната польской школы. Учитель, обращаясь к своим ученикам, говорит: “На этом, дети, мы заканчиваем изучение истории польского государства”. Дата “конца польской истории” отмечена в тетради одного из школьников: “Сентябрь 1939 года”», то есть месяц, в который гитлеровская Германия и сталинская Россия напали на Польшу, став тем самым двумя зачинщиками Второй мировой войны. Скуратович К. Гибридные войны в дотелевизионную эпоху // Белрынок. 2017. 22 сентября. URL: https://www.belrynok.by/2017/09/22/gibridnye-vojny-v-dotelevizionnuyu-epohu/.
[xxiii] Цит. по: Тумакова И. «Это враги народа, правильно их расстреляли» // Новая газета. 2019. 20 декабря. URL: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2019/12/20/83234-eto-vragi-naroda-pravilno-ih-rasstrelyali.
[xxiv] Кстати, до таких моральных издевательств не додумались, говорят, даже кадыровцы: «По словам опрошенных МИПЧ [Медийной инициативой за права человека], отношение к пленным было в целом достаточно лояльным: “Охрана, состоящая из чеченцев, обращалась с ними вполне нормально. Там нет историй с круглосуточным заучиванием и пением российского гимна или песен с извинениями, нет мощной пропаганды”. Отношение к украинским военнопленным, как правило, менялось лишь тогда, когда в места их содержания приезжали российские надзиратели», т. е. русские. Бадюк Е. «Обмен происходит, когда это нужно Кадырову». Что известно об украинских военнопленных в Чечне // Настоящее время. 2025. 28 февраля. URL: https://www.currenttime.tv/a/groznyy-ukrainskie-voennye-chechna-plen-kadyrov/33321446.html.
[xxv] Цит. по: Лурье Л. Наш Гиммлер // Огонек. 2013. № 9. 11 марта. С. 36. URL: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2141065.
[xxvi] Горький М. Несвоевременные мысли. Статьи 1917-1918 гг. / Сост., введ. и примеч. Г. Ермолаева. – Paris: Editions de la Seine, 1971. С. 30. URL: https://vtoraya-literatura.com/pdf/gorky_nesvoevremennye_mysli_1971__ocr.pdf.
[xxvii] Там же. С. 176-177, 179-180, 198, 165, 170, 55, 192, 193.
[xxviii] Там же. С. 245.
[xxix] Там же. С. 247.
[xxx] См. комментарий Зары Муртазалиевой от 16 апреля 2025 года под ее записью в Facebook того же числа: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02r348LHtSGJKHJtV9ZdbRbwSFwHMJbPd3tcsS3RnAkQE2hfys6CiP3sCvpZj1ghSPl&id=100004437331330&comment_id=691653453245976&reply_comment_id=555468200918211.
[xxxi] См. запись Харуна Сидорова на его странице в Facebook от 1 августа 2024 года: https://www.facebook.com/HarunVadimSidorov/posts/pfbid0ijw9bvBQMCKZmYwG8RogK6kwc8W7iX5Cuv12eNgz2hkUMsm16XjdcZYdcvSLWTi3l.
[xxxii] См. запись публициста Вадима Зайдмана от 13 апреля 2025 года: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02b7EQEifz5PFrgKd1GC4cJUFnmTMkU9BGCJaJjKFFWMMHMZm799emJ2jS1qoX8Htul&id=100011145870592.
[xxxiii] Оленин В. Враги независимости // Кавказ. 1936. № 1/25. Январь. С. 23. URL: https://dspace.nplg.gov.ge/bitstream/1234/42327/3/Kavkaz_Le_Caucase_1936_N1.pdf.
[xxxiv] Вот как рассказывает об этом Ельцин-центр: «26 апреля 1990 года в СССР был принят закон “О разграничении полномочий между СССР и субъектами федерации”, который уравнял в правах автономные и союзные республики. Этот закон закономерно был воспринят Ельциным и его соратниками как покушение на территориальную целостность России, поскольку 16 автономий становились независимыми от РСФСР»; «Для России единственным способом сохранить автономии в своем составе было – предоставить им как можно большую свободу. Именно так позднее, в 1996 году, Ельцин объяснял произнесенную им знаменитую фразу: “Про суверенитет было сказано то, что нужно, в нужном месте и в нужное время. Чем можно было остановить сепаратизм автономий, не имея еще необходимых властных и экономических рычагов?.. Было найдено нестандартное решение, в чем-то похожее на тактику “встречного пожара”: когда горит лес, пожарные, точно рассчитав траекторию, пускают навстречу стене огня встречный пожар. И огонь, захлебнувшись, глохнет. Так вот, начало этой сложной работы часто ассоциируется с моей фразой, сказанной в Казани: “Берите суверенитета столько, сколько сможете проглотить”. И наш расчет оправдался»; «План Ельцина сработал… Российскую Федерацию удалось сохранить в качестве целостного федеративного государства. И хотя у отдельных республик (Татарстан, Чечня) еще долгое время была особая позиция, со временем урегулировали и проблему их статуса в составе России». См.: Борис Ельцин: «Берите столько суверенитета, сколько сможете проглотить» // Ельцин-центр. 2015. 6 августа. URL: https://yeltsin.ru/news/boris-elcin-berite-stolko-suverineteta-skolko-smozhete-proglotit/; Мороз О. На Ельцина давят со всех сторон // Ельцин-центр. Без даты. URL: http://www.yeltsincenter.ru/author_comment/release/na-eltsina-davyat-so-vsekh-storon.
[xxxv] Ромалийская И. «Бесконечный колосс вранья». Российская режиссерка и феминистка Леда Гарина – об активизме в эмиграции и борьбе с имперскими мифами // Настоящее время. 2024. 30 июня. URL: https://www.currenttime.tv/a/rossiyskaya-rezhisserka-feministka-leda-garina-aktivizme-emigratsii-imperskimi-mifami-/33011340.html.
[xxxvi] См.: Vladimir Kara-Mourza (opposant russe): «Il n’y aura pas de paix tant que Poutine sera au pouvoir» // RFI. 2025. 14 avril. URL: https://www.rfi.fr/fr/podcasts/le-grand-invit%C3%A9-international/20250414-vladimir-kara-murza-opposant-russe-il-n-y-aura-pas-de-paix-tant-que-poutine-sera-au-pouvoir.
[xxxvii] Наринская А. «Историческая память народа – искусственный конструкт» // Новая газета. 2020. 10 октября. URL: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2020/10/10/87453-istoricheskaya-pamyat-naroda-iskusstvennyy-konstrukt.
[xxxviii] Аксаков И. Есть ли какой-нибудь исход нашей борьбе с поляками // Lib.ru. 2016. 18 апреля. URL: http://az.lib.ru/a/aksakow_i_s/text_1863_est_li_ishod_oldorfo.shtml.
[xxxix] Юрасов С. «Враг народа». – Нью-Йорк: Издательство имени Чехова, 1952. С. 125.
[xl] Петухов Ю. Д. Норманны – Русы Севера. – М.: Вече, 2008. С. 108.
[xli] Чехов А. П. Полное собрание сочинений и писем: В 30 т. Письма: В 12 т. Т. 2. Письма, 1887-сентябрь 1888. – М.: Наука, 1975. С. 279. URL: https://feb-web.ru/feb/chekhov/texts/sp0/pi2/pi2-277-.htm.
[xlii] Дягилева И. Б. Сколько шагов от любви до ненависти? (К истории образования сложных слов в русском языке XIX века) // Мир русского слова. 2010. № 1. С. 45.
[xliii] Де-Пуле М. Ф. К вопросу об украйнофильстве // Русский вестник. 1882. Февраль. С. 852, 855, 856.
[xliv] Костенко В. Вся суть «мышебратства»: Гиркин заявил, что украинского народа не существует // DSNews. 2021. 3 декабря. URL: https://www.dsnews.ua/society/vsya-sut-myshebratstva-girkin-zayavil-chto-ukrainskogo-naroda-ne-sushchestvuet-03122021-444689.
[xlv] Главные заявления Владимира Путина в ходе «прямой линии» // ТВЦ. 2015. 16 апреля. URL: http://www.tvc.ru/news/show/id/66276.
[xlvi] Фещенко М. Медведев назвал украинцев «окраинизированными русскими» // Life.ru. 2024. 13 декабря. URL: https://life.ru/p/1711815.
[xlvii] Де-Пуле М. Ф. Указ. соч. С. 848.
[xlviii] Горький М. О русском крестьянстве. – Берлин: Издательство И. П. Ладыжникова, 1922. С. 17. URL: https://vtoraya-literatura.com/pdf/gorky_o_russkom_krestyanstve_1922_text.pdf.
[xlix] Анатолий Приставкин: «Не собираюсь заворачиваться в простыню и ползти на кладбище» // Аргументы и факты. 2002. 9 января. URL: https://archive.aif.ru/archive/1626802.
[l] Этот кейс стал вирусным в сети. См., например: Казаков Е. «Самка богомола»: Военблогер «Тринадцатый» раскритиковал ждущую выплат от гибели двух мужей на СВО женщину // SmolNarod.ru. 2025. 29 января. URL: https://smolnarod.ru/news/russia/trinadcatyj-raskritikoval-zhdushhuyu-vyplat-ot-gibeli-dvux-muzhej-na-svo-zhenshhinu/, а также запись кинокритика Антона Долина на своей странице в Facebook от 31 января 2025 года: https://www.facebook.com/adolin3/posts/pfbid0GUiU4yjoLBH7mjJCAX9QHT69h2PQmnGq76EdHGGy8AzHYSUqVxWGrQHLDAbGnm1Zl.
[li] Цит. по книге публициста Вадима Белоцерковского (1928-2017) «Путешествие в будущее и обратно» (2003). См. архивированный отрывок из книги с персонального сайта автора: https://web.archive.org/web/20050523061542/http://www.belotserkovsky.ru/book/k038.pdf.
[lii] Там же.
[liii] Мережковский Д. С. М. Ю. Лермонтов. Поэт сверхчеловечества // Lib.ru. 2014. 4 февраля. URL: http://az.lib.ru/m/merezhkowskij_d_s/text_0090-1.shtml. Мережковский считал, что исключением из этого правила является Лермонтов. Однако вполне возможно, что Лермонтов просто не успел переобуться, потому что задатки для этого у него были: в 1830-х годах он не побрезговал сочинить, как пошлый эпигон, собственный вариант пушкинского «Клеветникам России». Речь о стихотворении без названия «Опять, народные витии…». В нем будущий хулитель «немытой России» (ок. 1841) почти переплюнул своего предшественника не только в квасном патриотизме, но и в лизоблюдстве царю.
[liv] Цит. статьи Горького «Анонимам и псевдонимам» (1927) и «Гуманистам» (1930). Их можно прочесть, в частности, на специальном портале, посвященном творчеству Горького, по ссылкам http://gorkiy-lit.ru/gorkiy/articles/article-21.htm и http://gorkiy-lit.ru/gorkiy/articles/article-347.htm.
[lv] «Блажен, кто устоял и низкой лжи в угоду / Высокой истине не шел наперекор, / Не принуждал перо кропать постыдный вздор, / Прислуживаясь к тем, кто делает погоду» – первая строфа из сонета без названия французского поэта Жоакена Дю Белле (1522-1560) в переводе В. В. Левика: Поэзия народов мира / Сост. В. В. Левика, С. А. Небольсина, В. В. Столбова, С. А. Макуренковой; Вступит. ст. Г. Кружкова. – М.: Дет. лит., 1986. С. 126.
[lvi] Цит. статья Горького «О кочке и о точке» (1933): http://gorkiy-lit.ru/gorkiy/articles/article-117.htm.
[lvii] Никонов-Смородин М. З. Красная каторга. – София : Изд-во Н.Т.С.Н.П., 1938. Цит. по электронной версии книги, опубликованной проектом «Воспоминания о ГУЛАГе и их авторы» по адресу: https://vgulage.name/books/nikonov-smorodin-m-z-krasnaja-katorga/.
[lviii] Там же.
[lix] Цит. по: Венявкин И. Соловки: что Горький видел и что скрыл // Arzamas. [Б. д.] URL: https://arzamas.academy/materials/316.
[lx] Никонов-Смородин М. З. Указ. соч.
