It’s still fascinating to watch the MATERIALIZATION of an IDEA…
From the first cautious hints and predictions, from public mentions by particularly brave liberals that “most of Russia is inhabited by non-Russian peoples who have the right to self-determination” – through a colossal symbolic turning point (we have not yet properly appreciated it!) – the entry of Ukrainian troops into the land of Kursk – to a precisely formulated slogan, on the T-shirt of first the Ukrainian president, then a Lithuanian athlete, and now, literally the day after the scandal in Budapest – a specific map of a particular year begins to circulate on the Internet: the next step in the overgrowth of the idea with “meat”! Now it sounds like a plan.)
Now sit down, and I will tell you a story that was told to me first-hand in Lviv. So, in the dark and sad Shcherbytsky-Brezhnev times, there was a famous psychic healer named Gavrilo, who was feared by the entire city and the surrounding area, and both the cops and the KGB, because while he was being led to the cell, he managed to tell the guards everything about their past, present and future, and mystical fear for an atheist scoundrel is something that neither Brezhnev nor Andropov could protect against… So Gavrilo was locked away from trouble, so that he would not be an eyesore to his superiors, as a guard at a factory somewhere, and he continued to live as he pleased – he received the sick and suffering people who flocked to him. He said what and to whom he considered necessary.
The man who told me this story was a student at the time and was doing an internship at that factory in the spring of 1983 – when Andropov had already become the General Secretary, police raids began on people in shops and cinemas (why not at work?), and it became clear that some terrible, ghetto dictatorship was being prepared – and the frightened students, rushing out of the shop for a smoke break, were feverishly discussing – what will it be like now, and how to live in, and how to escape from such a state?.. And then an old guard stopped near them (they didn’t know who he was) and said (I quote verbatim, as I was told):
– Guys, don’t worry about that: that state will soon disappear so quickly that you won’t even notice it. There will be a Ukraine and a Russia separately, but they will still drag us into the Union, there will be a big war, but not for long, – and in the end, so much of that whole Russia will remain, that it will be visible from a balcony in Moscow. I won’t live to see that, but you will see it later. (c)
It was, I repeat, 1983: the first public voicing of the idea, known to me. The guys remembered it).
Now all that remains is to watch how it will be realized: the process is as exciting as the progression from the first idea in the creator’s head (here it would be correct to capitalize – Creator) to the finished work.
All in good time!
Oksana Zabuzhko
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