By the end of February, hundreds of people were writing to me almost daily calling me a scum, a filth, a bitch. To promise me a drone attack on my village. Threatening my face, photographing me and showing my daughter how pitiful and despicable her mother is. And why ? Because I stayed in Russia, I didn’t rush to deny my nationality, my culture and my history.
I was promised a trial in The Hague and the gallows for writing that, despite what I may have thought of the Russian authorities in the past, I would never wish for the death of our soldiers. Subsequently, the protagonist of one of my journalistic investigations, although unrelated to Ukraine or the army, tried to put me on the list of targets for sanctions. They sent me open letters, which I refused to sign, and they once again promised me the gallows.
And a few other odds and ends: that our compatriots in exile were going to come back and judge us, that we were going to mold in the gulag, if we didn’t die of hunger first. Our dear fellow citizens who withdrew their savings at the rate of 150 rubles [il est aujourd’hui à 52 roubles] for 1 dollar and fled without looking back to Tbilisi, Yerevan and Istanbul calling us louts, certain that soon in Russia the abacus would replace the computer, which we would drive in Lada Jigouli after several years on the waiting list.
Scattered across the four corners of the world, our fellow citizens campaigned for a boycott of Dostoyevsky, disavowing their national distinctions and making donations to the Ukrainian army, living as if Russia no longer existed or that its end was imminent. The Russians of the interior were not left out. They demanded that the exiles be deprived of their nationality. Let their houses be confiscated. “Don’t let them come back!”, “Dismiss the theater troupes!”, “Damn them!”
A month later, the two camps have lowered their tone, doubt has set in. Another month and, on both sides, the crisis of nerves took over. In the third month, the “bastards” from here relaxed a bit, because in the end nothing had collapsed, and the Russians “enlightened” from there broke down when they saw with horror the losses suffered.
Clearly, most Russians of all political persuasions behaved in February and March as if Russia, at least in its current form, would no longer exist in April. Each one built his plans, his attitude, his strategy of interaction with the other and with power, starting from the idea that everything was falling apart. But some have chosen to flee, and others to stay in their homeland, heroically or not. Some took their children out of school on the eve of exams, exchanged all their savings for currency on the black market and left for Petaouchnok. Some thought that Russia was finished and that it was necessary to save its skin. Others also thought that the end was near, but, wise, freedom-loving and just, counted on returning in a month to celebrate this announced death.
Stay in our heroic self?
They took a one-way ticket to God knows where. Have rented an apartment in the suburbs of Tbilisi or Istanbul for a month or two. To finish in May in a roommate or a hostel, feeding on the glory of free-thinking.
Those who remained exhibited equally bizarre behavior. As if the curtain would come down any moment