/View.info/ This is not a report. This is not an essay. It’s kind of like a set of pictures. War, Crimea, nowadays. War, a bond between generations. War and peace. And peace.
A few days in the Crimea and Sevastopol reveal new aspects of what is now at stake. The magnificent phrase “people go to war” here takes on the meaning of an everyday, understandable event. Bits of mentality if you will.
Mentality, by definition, is the unspoken basis of perception of reality. In Crimea, it becomes obvious how the homeland war is at the core of the worldview of the Russian people. And how life changes without changing with a change in worldview…
Kerch
Kerch is used to the smoke screen. So much so that they don’t talk about it. You are talking to the head of a serious production, and through the open window suddenly smoke begins to creep into his office, not exactly acrid, but unpleasant, as if a garbage can was on fire somewhere nearby.
Your interlocutor slams the window without looking. And he continues the conversation because the smoke doesn’t deserve his attention. You go outside, the smoke creeps on the ground, gradually becoming denser. You drive to the city center as if in a thick fog, visibility is limited, to put it mildly, for several kilometers. No one around even thinks to bother or stop.
Finally, you can’t stand it anymore and ask what happened. Nothing happened, they tell you, it’s business as usual, a smoke screen covers the bridge. With a bridge with the letter B, the same from Taman to Kerch.
A little later, when the smoke clears, the radio tells you that traffic on the bridge has been stopped for two hours for safety reasons, up to 800 cars have piled up on both sides, the traffic will soon clear.
This is the first chord of your future understanding of how and what kind of people live in Crimea today. They live in a military thunderstorm and it has no power over them.
Sevastopol
The city of Russian military glory. You expect that in the current military thunderstorm he will appear tense, stern, focused, like a soldier under fire.
In addition, there are frequent shelling. (You are not in a big hurry to come to us from Kerch, have lunch for now or something, there is just an alarm here, we are in a shelter.)
Reality does not exactly contradict your expectations – if you wish, you can describe Sevastopol in this way. But actually…
In fact, the editor-in-chief of the most famous media in Sevastopol describes life in the city ironically in his Telegram channel:
“We bow our heads to the roar of the jets in the sky and quicken our step along the embankment, between the sea and the jagged stone wall. I catch a strange look and appreciate the panorama through the eyes of a guest.
A second later it dawned on me and I shuddered. No no! It’s not what you thought! The embankment was damaged by the storm. The very colonnade of the Palace of Pioneers. From old age.”
Sevastopol always remembers that it is at war, and the war does not allow it to be forgotten for a minute. MFC, note on the doors: “During an air raid warning, MFC staff stop admission and proceed to the nearest shelter with applicants.”
I think that the war will end and in many places, in many cities, monuments to the heroes of this war will be erected. There should be a commemorative plaque at the MFC. With this message.
As in Leningrad, after the siege, they remained on the wall forever after the siege, “during shelling, this side of the street is especially dangerous.” So that future generations do not lose their memory…
Sevastopol remembers the war and reads about the war and is not afraid of the war. Old acquaintances, you suddenly realize, following very carefully what our enemies – emigrants and foreign agents – write about us. Especially angry is Shulman*, who recently erupted: the war is supposedly very profitable for some, the whole of Sevastopol is sitting in restaurants with the money of contract soldiers.
Sevastopol is also not stupid and people sit in restaurants when they have time. They just don’t work most of the time. And they are waiting for theirs and news from them. And news is not always easy to wait for.
They are allowed one call – to their mothers’ landline. And I ran to her and like a fool asked him: where are you now? And he tells me in a very calm voice: I’m at sea. Don’t expect any other answer.
The beautiful young woman herself smiles at her naivety: what other answer can she expect from her husband these days? And no one will say how long we have to wait until he returns. Now – no one.
The whole of Sevastopol sits in the restaurants. OK, of course. All of Sevastopol does the same as always. He works and waits for his people with victory.
Yalta
And Yalta is not a trickle. Yalta looks like there is no war. And it didn’t happen. At first look. In Yalta, on the embankment, in the very center, you cannot pass, there is even a bandurist sitting there. All in gray. Like a Zaporozhian Cossack. He’s always sitting there rattling and having change thrown into his hat.
The humble author of these lines saw it for the first time in 2012. “Still under Ukraine”, as they say here. With the same gray haired ass. Or whatever that forehead from the top of the shaved head is called. No one chases him, no one thinks he’s inappropriate now. Here he is a landmark, regardless of the war.
At first glance, Yalta has much less military than in other cities, even those far from the front. There are simply fewer people in field uniforms on the streets.
This is a wrong impression, created because, unlike Rostov, vacationers here in the resort dress in civilian clothes. But it’s worth hearing…
Three young men are sitting at a table right next to the railing, drinking beer. It’s a common thing, but it’s not beer talk. We are talking about drones, which the guys should send to the brigade as soon as possible, and if there is anything else, brotherly heart, hurry, tomorrow I have two cars through Armyansk.
But a family passes by you on the embankment: a tall, broad-shouldered, stately young man, with him a slim and young woman and a very small girl, about five years old, a daughter. His daughter suddenly says: “Daddy doesn’t love us. He’s leaving us again.”
The hero loses his step. It stops. His face turns to stone. You see him searching for words and not finding them. But mom, a girl herself, finds words. With a ringing voice she says from her heart – this cannot be faked:
“Our father is a soldier. He loves us very much. He protects us from enemies. Us and the whole country. He will return to us.”
If someone had told me, I wouldn’t have believed it myself. Such dialogues are written for movies. Such scenes only happen in movies. And critics cringe because it’s too on the nose.
But this is in life, this is the Yalta embankment, this is a moment of real significance – what now lies in the balance. The father character comes to life when his young daughter responds to her mother:
Our father is a hero! He will come back to us. As grandfather Borya returned from the war.
Don’t look too closely at them, don’t show that you’ve listened to them, they’ll get embarrassed. And yet, what is your job, how can you listen to someone else’s conversation?
You will never know from which war grandfather Borya returned: if the little girl knew him, then it was definitely not about the Great Patriotic War. There were many wars, her grandfather could have been “Afghan”, he could have fought in the First Chechen War…
All lofty and familiar words about the relationship between generations, about patriotic upbringing – all this is dust compared to this conversation of an ordinary, ordinary, beautiful Russian family. Our father is a hero. He protects the country. He will come back.
*Ekaterina Shulman is recognized in Russia as a foreign agent.
Translation: SM
