2023-09-30 14:52:07
Of the great correspondents that journalism has had in the Soviet Union and then in Russia, Pilar Bonet (born in Ibiza, always on the newspaper’s staff The country, now retired) He has written an unusual, admirable book for the reader who wants to know what happened to those republics and to the Russia presided over by Vladimir Putin. There, in the midst of that reality, she has lived 34 years. The result is immense information, of which this new book is awesome journalistic and personal testimony, which not only includes what he has experienced as a journalist but also what he has come to know thanks to frequent dealings with people of all levels or conditions.
Written in the first person, with dialogues with people he met personally, whose identity he keeps largely under assumed names, and with data that is first-hand, Shipwrecked of the empire. Border notes (Gutenberg Galaxy) explains the suffering, silence and mystery that mark the existence of these successive faces, one of which is a country fighting, with all its strength, against a neighbor of which it was a brother… Ukraine is, therefore, in much of the plot of the work.
We spoke with Pilar Bonet in Madrid, during the days of promoting her book.
A book written in the first person: the journalist seeing what happens up close, they don’t tell her.
My intention was for other people to speak. It is my task to tell the experience, to explain the notes I have been taking.
Many protagonists you talk to tell you their stories and stay in touch with you. That is essential in a correspondent…
It is true that sometimes personal relationships are established and that allows us to go beyond the normal relationship between the one who asks and the one who answers: then they tell you more things.
It tells in the first person, then, what it would take others to perceive, surely…
I have been there since 1984. Historical times have passed, which are also personal times: you have seen many things up close, you have met many people. The accumulated experience, then, allows you to maintain your own perspective above all, so that it is not conditioned by that of colleagues who are supposed to represent other, more prestigious media. I have always tried to define my relationship with reality, whatever it may be, period. That’s where my work with people comes from: knowing that what they tell me comes from the reality that I must tell.
From the USSR to Russia, how much pain still.
The destinies of the 15 countries that broke away from the USSR were very diverse… Each one searched for themselves, one by one they reinterpreted themselves, and they even invented the past, something that ultimately everyone does, they search for each other. identities with constructions that never existed. As in families where there are little brothers, everyone tended to assert themselves against the eldest, which was Russia, the empire. The others tended to act in terms of decolonization, which does not mean that they were colonies before, although that was partly the case. It was, ultimately, a search for everyone. Global search, individual search, to work on a history, a biography that would allow there to be one’s own or collective space, an environment from which to act as a State.
Yours is a journalist’s look, but you appear, your compassion as a human being is there…
When I talk about Ukraine, for example. What moves me most in this case is the feeling of helplessness that Ukrainians experience. The feeling of being helpless, of being lost. That’s where that word comes from castaways what’s in the title of the book. And this, shipwrecked, is how people have remained. They have lost their points of reference, which may have been dictatorial or authoritarian and who, in the face of Russia’s attacks, go from being those who would shout “Ukraine, Ukraine!”, to speaking out in favor of Russia… These people do not even have the instruments to reflect on their condition, but the situation is so overwhelming that I don’t think they can be blamed for anything. They are simply lost, they don’t know where to go, and they go with whoever comes first.
“I don’t want to blame the West, because I don’t like to blame, it seems very stereotyped to me. But it does seem to me that they did not know how to treat these people, or it was not considered appropriate to do so”
USSR, Russia… They seemed to harbor a mystery, and now they seem to be the words of suffering…
Imagine that you are left without a country, you are left without your parents, you have lost your job, you have distanced yourself from your siblings… You had your life assured and suddenly everything is up in the air… In Russia all the roles have been turned upside down. An engineer who has gone to put rockets on the Moon becomes an oligarch’s taxi driver. I don’t want to blame the West, because I don’t like blaming, it seems very stereotypical to me. But it does seem to me that they did not know how to treat these people, or it was not considered appropriate to do so. It was thought that here, in those countries, nothing was happening, and now look what is happening… In a way what is happening reminds me of what happened with the Spanish loss of the colonies. I don’t know how long it took here to surpass 98…
Maybe until today…
Exactly. And why should we ask anything else of those who are living a familiar past, looking for a future that they cannot find?
What have been the main damages that these countries have experienced?
Each one has had a different experience. Russia, for example, has experienced the pain of going from being a global power to becoming a regional power, and that has led it to have the feeling of being ignored, harassed, with the impression that the whole world is against it. .
There are many people sensitive to propaganda, and not only in Russia, but also in the West. Because there are some clichés of thought that are comfortable”
Ukraine is now the great drama. What is your impression at this moment?
A true tragedy. They do not deserve, in any case, whatever they have done, what has happened to them, what they are going through. The invaders try to destroy them. You have to study what the Nazis did to understand what the Russians do with Ukraine. Resentment, frustration and war… Like what the Germans argued to stage that war, now the Russians do the same. There is a parallel between Hitler’s Germany and today’s Russia… It is the game of propaganda, and there are many people sensitive to propaganda, and not only in Russia, but also in the West. Because there are some clichés of thought that are comfortable. Although I believe that many of the people who initially supported Putin have had to remain silent in this war. And I think there is a lot of Putin hiding.
What mark did this book leave on you?
A feeling of tiredness. I wrote it in Ibiza, in our house; There was my sister, who said that the house was full of ghosts, which visited me while she was writing it. She was stuck in a kind of bubble, living all this very intensely, even though she was in the distance. While there, in Ukraine, those who were there lived under the bombs, of course living it differently. But I have experienced everything very emotionally. Now I see that I have to distance myself.
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