toni magni - interoperability infrastructure actor
2014-W11-2 2014-03-11 Tuesday
Texts from the Russian on Events in the Ukraine
http://elzizi.brillig.org/texts-from-the-russian-on-events-in-the-ukraine/
Below are links to texts translated by myself from the Russian, all related to events in Ukraine. I hope to expand the list with time.
The purpose of these texts is to bring forward voices - well-articulated voices, voices that strike me as reasonable and easy to empathize with, from within the experience of being a thinking, conscious, citizen of Ukraine or Russia at this moment.
They represent narratives, attitudes and perspectives that are not very well reflected in the coverage of this deeply traumatic period in the Western press. They also represent a sort of dialogue among like-minded people across this terribly artificial divide.
What is happening in Ukraine - Outlining, robustly and succinctly, why scientists, doctors, teachers, businessmen, workers and farmers poured into the Maidan. (February, 2014)
I have read the coverage ... - A letter to those citizens of the European Union that wonder why anyone would want to join that stagnant and uninspiring bureaucracy. (February, 2014)
Putin has lost his mind - A Russian political scientist diagnoses events, external and internal. (March 1, 2014)
Banderovites in Odessa - On demonstrations of the Jewish-Nazi-Muslim-Jihadists in Odessa. (March, 2014)
Russian Society reflected in the Light of the Maidan - An essay, and letter to the Ukrainian people, from an academic and poet in Moscow. (March 7, 2014)
The Horror of Deceit - A Russian explains lucidly why Russia invaded Ukraine and why sanctions and frozen foreign accounts and visa regimes are fantasies.
Letter to the Government of Ukraine from the Residents of Crimea - Citizens of Crimea are concerned about their fate under imminent transfers of power. (March 10, 2014)
These texts combine outrage and hope and tongue-in-cheekness and even, remarkably, some humor.
But it should be clear that what is happening is so unspeakably horrible to the thinking, conscious, empathetic people of Russia and Ukraine.
It is the inconceivable horror of civil war that is so far beyond words, and that is the pain that is the undertow in everything. The war with the self, with the brother, the eating of your own soul.
The following interview is not of a pundit or writer or journalist or poet, but, randomly, of a professional athlete - Aleksandr Shovkovski. He is the goalkeeper of Kiev's premier football team Dynamo. He tries to respond to a question about the current situation in Ukraine (it is worth noting with an absolutely lovely, highly articulate Russian diction) until he cannot respond.
In that he speaks for so many people.
Indeed, any affected person he is not speaking for is not worth speaking for.
Watch it even if you do not understand. The full translation is below:
You know, I really don't want to comment with respect to the political situation in our country. But the extremeness of the events occurring here, cannot leave any person who lives here ambivalent. I remember my grandfather, who always ... when lifting his first glass would pronounce a toast: may there never be War. We ... that, has remained ... had remained in my heart <eyes well with tears> ... excuse me <turns away>.
Elie Gurarie
elzizi 'at' brillig.org
ps. Thank you to Dr. Yevgeni Gayev in Kiev for sending several of these texts to me.
