Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Ukraine will be extremely painful
How do prophecies come true on the Ukrainian question of the author of the "Red Wheel"
More than once we have addressed the expert community to hot and eternal topics, and together we thought: how can we equip Russia? It is not by chance that we are now turning to the thoughts of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, until the last days - August 2008 — the former reader of the “RG”.
What the writer foresaw half a century ago is amazing today. In The Gulag Archipelago, he wrote: "It will be extremely painful with Ukraine." In those deeply Soviet years, he prophetically did not exclude the secession of Ukraine, but: “maybe each region will need its own plebiscite,” given the Lenin’s patterns that were used to cut lands that never belonged to historical Ukraine ... And a quarter of a century ago, I wondered: when in Western Ukraine they demolished the monuments to Lenin, why "Ukrainian nationalists with armor stand behind these sacred borders, granted by priest Lenin" ...
He saw the growth of dishonesty, the damage of souls, and the destructive passions around the Russian-Ukrainian issue. Fanatical suppression and persecution of the Russian language was called simply a brutal measure already in 2006 year.
He had no doubt that through the "color revolutions" the complete encirclement of Russia was being prepared, and then the loss of its sovereignty. These are thoughts in one of his last interviews.
What will happen tomorrow?
Read Solzhenitsyn today that he wrote yesterday.
Written in 1968, published in 1974 (ARCHIPELAG GULAG, Part Five, chapter 2):
... It pains me to write about it: Ukrainian and Russian are united in my blood, in my heart, and in my thoughts. But the great experience of friendly communication with the Ukrainians in the camps revealed to me how sad they were. Our generation cannot avoid paying for the mistakes of the elders.
Stomp your foot and shout "mine!" - the easiest way. Immeasurably harder to say: "who wants to live - live!" Surprisingly, the predictions of the Advanced Teaching did not come true that nationalism is withering. For some reason, he flourished in the age of the atom and cybernetics. And the time is right for us, whether we like it or not, to pay all promissory notes on self-determination, on independence, to pay ourselves, and not to wait for us to be burned at the stake, to drown and behead in rivers. Whether we are a great nation, we must prove not with the vastness of the territory, not with the number of trust nations, but with the grandeur of actions. And the depth of plowing what remains for us minus the lands that will not want to live with us.
Ukraine will be extremely painful. But you need to know their total heat now. If it has not been settled over the centuries, it means that it has become prudent for us. We are obliged to give the decision to them - to the federalists or the separatists, who will convince anyone of them. Do not give in - madness and cruelty. And the softer, more tolerant, the more explanatory we will be now, the more hope to restore unity in the future.
Let them live, try. They will quickly feel that not all problems are solved by the department. (Due to the fact that in different regions of Ukraine there is a different ratio of those who consider themselves to be Ukrainian, and who are Russian, and who do not consider it to be anyone, there will be many difficulties. Maybe in each region you will need your own plebiscite and then preferential and caring attitude to everyone who wants to move. Not all of Ukraine in its current formal Soviet borders is really Ukraine. Some left-bank regions are definitely to Russia. And the Crimea has attributed Khrushchev to Ukraine with oak. And Carpathian (Chervonnaya) Rus? Check it on her: demanding cn to be kind to yourself, how will the Ukrainians to the Carpathian Russians be just?)
April 1981. From a letter of the Conference on Russian-Ukrainian relations in Toronto to the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
Dear Sirs!
Thank you so much for inviting me to the conference. Unfortunately, for many years the intensity of my work does not allow me to travel and take part in public events.
But your invitation gives me a reason and the right to express some thoughts in writing.
I completely agree that the Russian-Ukrainian question is one of the most important contemporary issues, and in any case is decisively important for our peoples. But I think that the heat of passions, the temperature that swells around it is destructive.
... In the current heightened passion - is there an emigre disease, loss of orientation? .. And if your conference starts a thorough dialogue about Russian-Ukrainian relations, you should not lose sight of it for a minute: relations between nations, not between emigrants.
... I have repeatedly spoken and I can repeat that no one can hold anyone with herself by force, violence can not be applied to any of the disputing parties either to the other side, or to one’s own, or to the people as a whole, or to any the small minority included in it - for each minority has its own minority ... In all cases, local opinion must be recognized and exercised. And therefore, all questions can truly be resolved only by the local population, and not in distant emigrant disputes with deformed sensations.
... I am especially hurt by such fierce intolerance of the discussion of the Russian-Ukrainian issue (destructive for both nations and useful only for their enemies) that I myself am of mixed Russian-Ukrainian origin, and grew up in the joint influence of these two cultures, and never I saw and did not see the antagonism between them. I often had to write and speak publicly about Ukraine and its people, about the tragedy of the Ukrainian famine, I have many old friends in Ukraine, I always knew the sufferings of the Russians and the sufferings of the Ukrainians in a single series of sub-communist sufferings. In my heartfelt feeling there is no place for the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and, if God forbid us, it would reach the edge, I can say: I will never, under any circumstances, neither I go nor my sons commence Russian-Ukrainian skirmish, no matter how insane their heads were to us.
Note: Published in Russian thought, 18.6.1981. In Russia, the text was first printed in the magazine "Star", 1993, 12.
Written and published in 1990 ("How can we equip Russia?):
Word to Ukrainians and Belarusians
I myself - almost half Ukrainian, and in the early years I grew up with the sounds of Ukrainian speech. And in the mournful Belarus, I spent most of my front-line years, and to the shrillness I fell in love with her sad poverty and her meek people.
I appeal to those and others not from the outside, but as my own.
Yes, our people were divided into three branches only by the terrible misfortune of the Mongol invasion and Polish colonization. This is all - the falsehood invented recently, that almost from the 9th century there existed a special Ukrainian people with a special non-Russian language. We all together expired from the precious Kiev, "from where the Russian land began to eat," according to the chronicles of Nestor, from which Christianity was revealed to us. The same princes ruled us: Yaroslav the Wise divided the sons of Kiev, Novgorod and the entire stretch from Chernigov to Ryazan, Murom and Beloozer; Vladimir Monomakh was both a Kiev prince and a Rostov-Suzdal one; and the same unity in the ministry of the metropolitans. The people of Kievan Rus and created Muscovy. In Lithuania and Poland, Belarusians and Little Russians were conscious of themselves as Russians and fought against opolyachenya and okatolychenya. The return of these lands to Russia was then recognized by all as a reunion.
Yes, it is painful and shameful to remember the decrees of the times of Alexander II (1863, 1876) to ban the Ukrainian language in journalism, and then in literature, but it did not last long, and it was from those mind-blowing ossifications in the administrative and church policies who prepared the fall of the Russian state system.
However, the vain-socialist 1917 Rada of the year was compiled by an agreement of politicians, and was not elected by the people. And when, stepping over from the federation, announced the withdrawal of Ukraine from Russia - she did not interrogate the popular opinion.
I already had to answer the emigrant Ukrainian nationalists, who insist that America "communism is a myth, not the communists, but the Russians want to seize the whole world" (and now the "Russians" have already seized China and Tibet, and 30 has been in law for years US Senate). Communism is a myth that both Russians and Ukrainians have experienced on their necks in the dungeons of the Cheka with 1918 of the year. Such a myth that the seed in the Volga region even sown seed and gave 29 Russian provinces to drought and the endangered famine 1921-22 of the year. And the same myth treacherously pushed Ukraine into the same merciless famine of 1932-33. And together, having transferred from the Communists the general knuto-factional collectivization, are we really not connected by this blood suffering?
In Austria and in 1848, Galicians also called their national council - "Head Russka Rada". But then, in the seized Galicia, with Austrian subtraction, a distorted non-popular Ukrainian language was developed, which was written in German and Polish words, and the temptation to wean the Carpathians from Russian, and the temptation of complete All-Ukrainian separatism, which among the leaders of the current emigration erupts in disastrous ignorance. "was ukrainets", then already irresponsible heat: Communism is not so lively, Muscovites have already perished!
We would not share the pain for the death throes of Ukraine in the Soviet era. But where does this swing come from: to cut off Ukraine by living (and the one where the old Ukrainian nature was not, like the “Wild Field” of nomads - Novorossia, or Crimea, Donbass and almost to the Caspian Sea). And if the "self-determination of the nation" - so the nation should determine its own destiny. Without a popular vote, this cannot be resolved.
Today, separating Ukraine means cutting across millions of families and people: what a mixture of people; whole areas with a Russian advantage; how many people find it difficult to choose from two nationalities; how many are of mixed origin; how many mixed marriages - yes, nobody has considered them “mixed” so far. In the thickness of the main population there is no shadow of intolerance between Ukrainians and Russians.
Brothers! Do not be this cruel section! - this is the darkening of the communist years. Together we have been overwhelmed by the Soviet era, together we have fallen into this pit, and together we will get out.
And for two centuries - what a lot of outstanding names at the intersection of our two cultures. As formulated by MP Dragomanov: "Indivisible, but not mixable." With friendliness and joy, the way of Ukrainian and Belarusian culture should be open not only on the territory of Ukraine and Belarus, but also on Great Russia. No forced Russification (but no forced Ukrainization, as from the end of 20), unrestricted development of parallel cultures, and school classes in both languages, as chosen by the parents.
Of course, if the Ukrainian people really wished to separate - no one would dare to hold it by force. But - this vastness is diverse, and only the local population can decide the fate of their locality, their region, - and every newly formed national minority in this locality must meet the same non-violence towards itself.
27 October 1990 of the year. Answer to Svjatoslav Karavansky
Dear Svyatoslav Iosifovich!
Deeply respecting you for all the overwhelmed and for your steadfastness in trials, I am glad to hear your soft voice now, despite the fact that your countrymen, from the rostrum of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to distant émigré newspapers, were the only ones to withdraw from my article that I: Great Russian chauvinist, a colonialist, a henchman of imperial tyranny and a "smoking imperialist" ("Homin of Ukraine", 10.10.90). Such obviously deliberate deafness and dishonesty are amazing, but they are also alarming: what do they want to cover up with this literal growl?
To you - I can appeal with the hope of mutual understanding, which they refused me.
Your historical arguments, starting with the share of the reflection of the Tatar invasion (if you think Chervonnaya Rus is not Rus), could be answered extensively, but they all completely overlap with the strongest argument you don’t cite beyond its clarity: what if the hearts of Ukrainians Today offices are thirsty - there’s nothing to argue about. Enough of this movement of hearts! - and I said exactly that in my article. And I wrote about this in the Archipelago (Part V, ch. 2), so my current appeal is not at all "unprecedented." However, you didn’t say that with such a thirst I don’t argue with the separation of Ukraine ...
But - in and out of Ukraine.
Now, when monuments to Lenin are being felled in Western Ukraine (they are dear to them there!), Why do Western Ukrainians most passionately want Ukraine to have exactly the frontier borders granted to it by father Lenin when he was looking for -to convince her for the deprivation of independence-and she killed the former Ukraine’s New Russia (Yugorossia), Donbass (tearing the Donets basin from Don “counter-revolutionary” influences) and large parts of the Left Bank to her from the century. (And Khrushchev with a blunder "presented" and the Crimea.) And now the Ukrainian nationalists are armor behind these "sacred" Lenin borders?
I write in the article (as if no one has read): “Of course, if the Ukrainian people really wanted to secede, no one would dare to hold it by force. But this vastness is diverse, and only the local population can decide the fate of their area, of their region.” And for that I am a "smoked imperialist"? And those who prohibit the will of the people and even for some reason are afraid of him, those are democrats and freedom-lovers, right ??
In such an enraged situation, it is impossible to discuss the most complicated question, where our two nations have grown together in millions of families, in hundreds of places.
And another argument that, to my amazement, you also bring: that the choice of children's language should not be a “whim of parents”, but the government of the republic should decide. This is an astounding argument. Then the choice of the Christian faith, the baptism of children - all the more should not be a "whim of the parents", but wait in that state instruction? “Non-Ukrainians are free in their choice,” you write; will only the number of schools be cut off? And Ukrainians are not “free to choose.” So - again, violence?
No, this dictate is not necessary, let any culture grow, as it naturally is.
Note: Svyatoslav Karavansky, a long-time prisoner of the GULAG, a Ukrainian, wrote "An open letter to Alexander Solzhenitsyn" ("Russian thought", 19.10.1990) after publishing the article "How do we arrange Russia?" The answer of the writer is published in the "Russian thought", 2.11.1990. In Russia, the text was first printed in the magazine "Star", 1993, 12.
7 October 1991. Appeal (to a referendum in Ukraine)
With stunnedness, our peoples are chosen out of communism that has finally collapsed. People are deservedly waiting - and how long can we wait? - decent, not painful life. But for now we are in a chaos of mischief. So far, people have not given arable land, nor even small plots. And before primitiveness, our industry is running. And - the whole environment of life is poisoned. In the meantime, some dodgers have time to quietly sell or permanently mortgage our riches that have survived, our future, and what will remain for us? and, most importantly, our children? And for those who work, everything around is only more expensive and more expensive, the wall. And what a general increase in conscientiousness, what a spoil of souls!
But in this catastrophe, at least now, with our own hands, we would not have piled up new injuries for people, new injustices for the future. Here, after the barricades in Moscow, after the Moscow August collapse of communism - for the first time a real opportunity has opened for the republics to become separate states ... God grant each new state to get on its feet safely. (The confederation of independent states is an empty sound, it cannot live.) However, it will not be good if the very first steps of independence are accompanied by the suppression of parts of the population - the newly formed national minorities. Complaints are already rushing from different places - where there is mass violence, where people are dismissed from work on a national basis, and then will minorities not be deprived of the right to teach their children in their native language, like the Communists were deprived? Our common, bitter Soviet experience convinced us enough that no state sense can justify violence against people. Everyone should be provided with an unrestricted quiet life.
It is great that a referendum was appointed in the territory of the former USSR. But only if it will be held fairly. And I urge everyone on whom it depends and who can influence:
- that the question in the bulletin should stand quite clearly (not like in the past March in the USSR), giving the voter true freedom of choice, without vague distortion;
- so that, according to world standards, there would be neither pressure on the voters, nor falsification, and, if possible, observation of neutral commissions;
- for the result of the referendum to be taken into account separately for each region: each region must decide for itself where it belongs.
Different regions have completely different historical origins, a dissimilar composition of the population, and the fate of the region’s inhabitants cannot be decided by a weighted average of the vast 50-million republic. Those who in Lviv and Kiev finally bring down monuments to Lenin - why are they worshiped, like sacred, fake Leninist borders, at the bloody dawn of Soviet power in many places drawn only in order to buy stability to the communist regime? With Ukraine’s determination to fully secede, to which its right is certain, such a gross vote count within these boundaries may be irreparable for the fate of many millions of Russian people. And create stressful zones for the future.
Provide an undistorted free vote — and everyone will submit to it. Give true freedom to all of you - and then, whatever the result, it will be respected self-determination, and we warmly congratulate Ukraine on the resumption of its state and cultural path.
We should always be neighbors. We will be good neighbors.
Note: On the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR, a referendum on its sovereignty was appointed on December 1 on December 1991. Text printed in Trud, 8.10.1991
From an interview with V.T. Tretyakov for the weekly Moscow news"(printed on 28 / Apr / 4 May 2006)
V.T .: Personally, I believe that if the three main subjects of the Euro-Atlantic (Christian) civilization, namely the North American Union, (Western) European Union and Eastern European (Russian) Union (or the United States, the United States and the United States of Russia) will not enter into a strategic alliance between themselves (with supranational bodies), then our civilization will sooner or later disappear. What do you see as the salvation of the Euro-Atlantic civilization, if it needs it?
A.S .: Alas. The global political process is not moving in any direction you want. The United States places its occupying troops in one country after another. This is the actual situation in Bosnia for 9 years, in Kosovo and in Afghanistan - for 5 years, in Iraq it is 3 for a while, but it will be delayed there for a long time. NATO's actions and individual US actions differ only slightly. Clearly, seeing that today's Russia does not pose any threat to them, NATO methodically and persistently develops its military apparatus - to the East of Europe and to the continental coverage of Russia from the South. Here and open material and ideological support for "color" revolutions, the paradoxical introduction of the North-Atlantic interests - in Central Asia. All this leaves no doubt that the complete encirclement of Russia is being prepared, and then the loss of its sovereignty. No, Russia's accession to such a Euro-Atlantic alliance, which leads to propaganda and the violent introduction of ideologies and forms of today's Western democracy to different parts of the world, would lead not to the expansion, but to the decline of Christian civilization.
V.Т .: What is your attitude to what is happening in Ukraine? In this regard, what is your attitude to the problem of the division of the Russian nation (the largest divided nation in modern Europe)? Should Russia, albeit not politically, but at least intellectually, raise the question of the reunification of the Russian and Russian lands in the case of the obvious withdrawal of Ukraine by the Ukrainian elite to the European Union and especially to NATO?
A.S .: What is happening in Ukraine, even from the falsely constructed wording for the 1991 referendum (I already wrote and talked about this), is my constant bitterness and pain. The fanatical suppression and persecution of the Russian language (which in previous polls was recognized as its main more than 60% of the population of Ukraine) is simply a brutal measure, and even directed against the cultural perspective of Ukraine itself. - The vast expanses that never belonged to historical Ukraine, like New Russia, Crimea and the entire Southeast Territory, are forcibly squeezed into the current Ukrainian state and its eagerly desired entry into NATO. For all the time of Yeltsin, not one of his meetings with the Ukrainian presidents has done without surrender and concessions on his part. The Black Sea fleet from Sevastopol (never, under Khrushchev, not surrendered to the Ukrainian SSR) is a base, malicious abuse of the whole Russian history of the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries.
Under all these conditions, Russia in no way dares indifferently betray the multimillion Russian population in Ukraine, renounce our unity with it.
More than once we have addressed the expert community to hot and eternal topics, and together we thought: how can we equip Russia? It is not by chance that we are now turning to the thoughts of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, until the last days - August 2008 — the former reader of the “RG”.
What the writer foresaw half a century ago is amazing today. In The Gulag Archipelago, he wrote: "It will be extremely painful with Ukraine." In those deeply Soviet years, he prophetically did not exclude the secession of Ukraine, but: “maybe each region will need its own plebiscite,” given the Lenin’s patterns that were used to cut lands that never belonged to historical Ukraine ... And a quarter of a century ago, I wondered: when in Western Ukraine they demolished the monuments to Lenin, why "Ukrainian nationalists with armor stand behind these sacred borders, granted by priest Lenin" ...
He saw the growth of dishonesty, the damage of souls, and the destructive passions around the Russian-Ukrainian issue. Fanatical suppression and persecution of the Russian language was called simply a brutal measure already in 2006 year.
He had no doubt that through the "color revolutions" the complete encirclement of Russia was being prepared, and then the loss of its sovereignty. These are thoughts in one of his last interviews.
What will happen tomorrow?
Read Solzhenitsyn today that he wrote yesterday.
Written in 1968, published in 1974 (ARCHIPELAG GULAG, Part Five, chapter 2):
... It pains me to write about it: Ukrainian and Russian are united in my blood, in my heart, and in my thoughts. But the great experience of friendly communication with the Ukrainians in the camps revealed to me how sad they were. Our generation cannot avoid paying for the mistakes of the elders.
Stomp your foot and shout "mine!" - the easiest way. Immeasurably harder to say: "who wants to live - live!" Surprisingly, the predictions of the Advanced Teaching did not come true that nationalism is withering. For some reason, he flourished in the age of the atom and cybernetics. And the time is right for us, whether we like it or not, to pay all promissory notes on self-determination, on independence, to pay ourselves, and not to wait for us to be burned at the stake, to drown and behead in rivers. Whether we are a great nation, we must prove not with the vastness of the territory, not with the number of trust nations, but with the grandeur of actions. And the depth of plowing what remains for us minus the lands that will not want to live with us.
Ukraine will be extremely painful. But you need to know their total heat now. If it has not been settled over the centuries, it means that it has become prudent for us. We are obliged to give the decision to them - to the federalists or the separatists, who will convince anyone of them. Do not give in - madness and cruelty. And the softer, more tolerant, the more explanatory we will be now, the more hope to restore unity in the future.
Let them live, try. They will quickly feel that not all problems are solved by the department. (Due to the fact that in different regions of Ukraine there is a different ratio of those who consider themselves to be Ukrainian, and who are Russian, and who do not consider it to be anyone, there will be many difficulties. Maybe in each region you will need your own plebiscite and then preferential and caring attitude to everyone who wants to move. Not all of Ukraine in its current formal Soviet borders is really Ukraine. Some left-bank regions are definitely to Russia. And the Crimea has attributed Khrushchev to Ukraine with oak. And Carpathian (Chervonnaya) Rus? Check it on her: demanding cn to be kind to yourself, how will the Ukrainians to the Carpathian Russians be just?)
April 1981. From a letter of the Conference on Russian-Ukrainian relations in Toronto to the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
Dear Sirs!
Thank you so much for inviting me to the conference. Unfortunately, for many years the intensity of my work does not allow me to travel and take part in public events.
But your invitation gives me a reason and the right to express some thoughts in writing.
I completely agree that the Russian-Ukrainian question is one of the most important contemporary issues, and in any case is decisively important for our peoples. But I think that the heat of passions, the temperature that swells around it is destructive.
... In the current heightened passion - is there an emigre disease, loss of orientation? .. And if your conference starts a thorough dialogue about Russian-Ukrainian relations, you should not lose sight of it for a minute: relations between nations, not between emigrants.
... I have repeatedly spoken and I can repeat that no one can hold anyone with herself by force, violence can not be applied to any of the disputing parties either to the other side, or to one’s own, or to the people as a whole, or to any the small minority included in it - for each minority has its own minority ... In all cases, local opinion must be recognized and exercised. And therefore, all questions can truly be resolved only by the local population, and not in distant emigrant disputes with deformed sensations.
... I am especially hurt by such fierce intolerance of the discussion of the Russian-Ukrainian issue (destructive for both nations and useful only for their enemies) that I myself am of mixed Russian-Ukrainian origin, and grew up in the joint influence of these two cultures, and never I saw and did not see the antagonism between them. I often had to write and speak publicly about Ukraine and its people, about the tragedy of the Ukrainian famine, I have many old friends in Ukraine, I always knew the sufferings of the Russians and the sufferings of the Ukrainians in a single series of sub-communist sufferings. In my heartfelt feeling there is no place for the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and, if God forbid us, it would reach the edge, I can say: I will never, under any circumstances, neither I go nor my sons commence Russian-Ukrainian skirmish, no matter how insane their heads were to us.
Note: Published in Russian thought, 18.6.1981. In Russia, the text was first printed in the magazine "Star", 1993, 12.
Written and published in 1990 ("How can we equip Russia?):
Word to Ukrainians and Belarusians
I myself - almost half Ukrainian, and in the early years I grew up with the sounds of Ukrainian speech. And in the mournful Belarus, I spent most of my front-line years, and to the shrillness I fell in love with her sad poverty and her meek people.
I appeal to those and others not from the outside, but as my own.
Yes, our people were divided into three branches only by the terrible misfortune of the Mongol invasion and Polish colonization. This is all - the falsehood invented recently, that almost from the 9th century there existed a special Ukrainian people with a special non-Russian language. We all together expired from the precious Kiev, "from where the Russian land began to eat," according to the chronicles of Nestor, from which Christianity was revealed to us. The same princes ruled us: Yaroslav the Wise divided the sons of Kiev, Novgorod and the entire stretch from Chernigov to Ryazan, Murom and Beloozer; Vladimir Monomakh was both a Kiev prince and a Rostov-Suzdal one; and the same unity in the ministry of the metropolitans. The people of Kievan Rus and created Muscovy. In Lithuania and Poland, Belarusians and Little Russians were conscious of themselves as Russians and fought against opolyachenya and okatolychenya. The return of these lands to Russia was then recognized by all as a reunion.
Yes, it is painful and shameful to remember the decrees of the times of Alexander II (1863, 1876) to ban the Ukrainian language in journalism, and then in literature, but it did not last long, and it was from those mind-blowing ossifications in the administrative and church policies who prepared the fall of the Russian state system.
However, the vain-socialist 1917 Rada of the year was compiled by an agreement of politicians, and was not elected by the people. And when, stepping over from the federation, announced the withdrawal of Ukraine from Russia - she did not interrogate the popular opinion.
I already had to answer the emigrant Ukrainian nationalists, who insist that America "communism is a myth, not the communists, but the Russians want to seize the whole world" (and now the "Russians" have already seized China and Tibet, and 30 has been in law for years US Senate). Communism is a myth that both Russians and Ukrainians have experienced on their necks in the dungeons of the Cheka with 1918 of the year. Such a myth that the seed in the Volga region even sown seed and gave 29 Russian provinces to drought and the endangered famine 1921-22 of the year. And the same myth treacherously pushed Ukraine into the same merciless famine of 1932-33. And together, having transferred from the Communists the general knuto-factional collectivization, are we really not connected by this blood suffering?
In Austria and in 1848, Galicians also called their national council - "Head Russka Rada". But then, in the seized Galicia, with Austrian subtraction, a distorted non-popular Ukrainian language was developed, which was written in German and Polish words, and the temptation to wean the Carpathians from Russian, and the temptation of complete All-Ukrainian separatism, which among the leaders of the current emigration erupts in disastrous ignorance. "was ukrainets", then already irresponsible heat: Communism is not so lively, Muscovites have already perished!
We would not share the pain for the death throes of Ukraine in the Soviet era. But where does this swing come from: to cut off Ukraine by living (and the one where the old Ukrainian nature was not, like the “Wild Field” of nomads - Novorossia, or Crimea, Donbass and almost to the Caspian Sea). And if the "self-determination of the nation" - so the nation should determine its own destiny. Without a popular vote, this cannot be resolved.
Today, separating Ukraine means cutting across millions of families and people: what a mixture of people; whole areas with a Russian advantage; how many people find it difficult to choose from two nationalities; how many are of mixed origin; how many mixed marriages - yes, nobody has considered them “mixed” so far. In the thickness of the main population there is no shadow of intolerance between Ukrainians and Russians.
Brothers! Do not be this cruel section! - this is the darkening of the communist years. Together we have been overwhelmed by the Soviet era, together we have fallen into this pit, and together we will get out.
And for two centuries - what a lot of outstanding names at the intersection of our two cultures. As formulated by MP Dragomanov: "Indivisible, but not mixable." With friendliness and joy, the way of Ukrainian and Belarusian culture should be open not only on the territory of Ukraine and Belarus, but also on Great Russia. No forced Russification (but no forced Ukrainization, as from the end of 20), unrestricted development of parallel cultures, and school classes in both languages, as chosen by the parents.
Of course, if the Ukrainian people really wished to separate - no one would dare to hold it by force. But - this vastness is diverse, and only the local population can decide the fate of their locality, their region, - and every newly formed national minority in this locality must meet the same non-violence towards itself.
27 October 1990 of the year. Answer to Svjatoslav Karavansky
Dear Svyatoslav Iosifovich!
Deeply respecting you for all the overwhelmed and for your steadfastness in trials, I am glad to hear your soft voice now, despite the fact that your countrymen, from the rostrum of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to distant émigré newspapers, were the only ones to withdraw from my article that I: Great Russian chauvinist, a colonialist, a henchman of imperial tyranny and a "smoking imperialist" ("Homin of Ukraine", 10.10.90). Such obviously deliberate deafness and dishonesty are amazing, but they are also alarming: what do they want to cover up with this literal growl?
To you - I can appeal with the hope of mutual understanding, which they refused me.
Your historical arguments, starting with the share of the reflection of the Tatar invasion (if you think Chervonnaya Rus is not Rus), could be answered extensively, but they all completely overlap with the strongest argument you don’t cite beyond its clarity: what if the hearts of Ukrainians Today offices are thirsty - there’s nothing to argue about. Enough of this movement of hearts! - and I said exactly that in my article. And I wrote about this in the Archipelago (Part V, ch. 2), so my current appeal is not at all "unprecedented." However, you didn’t say that with such a thirst I don’t argue with the separation of Ukraine ...
But - in and out of Ukraine.
Now, when monuments to Lenin are being felled in Western Ukraine (they are dear to them there!), Why do Western Ukrainians most passionately want Ukraine to have exactly the frontier borders granted to it by father Lenin when he was looking for -to convince her for the deprivation of independence-and she killed the former Ukraine’s New Russia (Yugorossia), Donbass (tearing the Donets basin from Don “counter-revolutionary” influences) and large parts of the Left Bank to her from the century. (And Khrushchev with a blunder "presented" and the Crimea.) And now the Ukrainian nationalists are armor behind these "sacred" Lenin borders?
I write in the article (as if no one has read): “Of course, if the Ukrainian people really wanted to secede, no one would dare to hold it by force. But this vastness is diverse, and only the local population can decide the fate of their area, of their region.” And for that I am a "smoked imperialist"? And those who prohibit the will of the people and even for some reason are afraid of him, those are democrats and freedom-lovers, right ??
In such an enraged situation, it is impossible to discuss the most complicated question, where our two nations have grown together in millions of families, in hundreds of places.
And another argument that, to my amazement, you also bring: that the choice of children's language should not be a “whim of parents”, but the government of the republic should decide. This is an astounding argument. Then the choice of the Christian faith, the baptism of children - all the more should not be a "whim of the parents", but wait in that state instruction? “Non-Ukrainians are free in their choice,” you write; will only the number of schools be cut off? And Ukrainians are not “free to choose.” So - again, violence?
No, this dictate is not necessary, let any culture grow, as it naturally is.
Note: Svyatoslav Karavansky, a long-time prisoner of the GULAG, a Ukrainian, wrote "An open letter to Alexander Solzhenitsyn" ("Russian thought", 19.10.1990) after publishing the article "How do we arrange Russia?" The answer of the writer is published in the "Russian thought", 2.11.1990. In Russia, the text was first printed in the magazine "Star", 1993, 12.
7 October 1991. Appeal (to a referendum in Ukraine)
With stunnedness, our peoples are chosen out of communism that has finally collapsed. People are deservedly waiting - and how long can we wait? - decent, not painful life. But for now we are in a chaos of mischief. So far, people have not given arable land, nor even small plots. And before primitiveness, our industry is running. And - the whole environment of life is poisoned. In the meantime, some dodgers have time to quietly sell or permanently mortgage our riches that have survived, our future, and what will remain for us? and, most importantly, our children? And for those who work, everything around is only more expensive and more expensive, the wall. And what a general increase in conscientiousness, what a spoil of souls!
But in this catastrophe, at least now, with our own hands, we would not have piled up new injuries for people, new injustices for the future. Here, after the barricades in Moscow, after the Moscow August collapse of communism - for the first time a real opportunity has opened for the republics to become separate states ... God grant each new state to get on its feet safely. (The confederation of independent states is an empty sound, it cannot live.) However, it will not be good if the very first steps of independence are accompanied by the suppression of parts of the population - the newly formed national minorities. Complaints are already rushing from different places - where there is mass violence, where people are dismissed from work on a national basis, and then will minorities not be deprived of the right to teach their children in their native language, like the Communists were deprived? Our common, bitter Soviet experience convinced us enough that no state sense can justify violence against people. Everyone should be provided with an unrestricted quiet life.
It is great that a referendum was appointed in the territory of the former USSR. But only if it will be held fairly. And I urge everyone on whom it depends and who can influence:
- that the question in the bulletin should stand quite clearly (not like in the past March in the USSR), giving the voter true freedom of choice, without vague distortion;
- so that, according to world standards, there would be neither pressure on the voters, nor falsification, and, if possible, observation of neutral commissions;
- for the result of the referendum to be taken into account separately for each region: each region must decide for itself where it belongs.
Different regions have completely different historical origins, a dissimilar composition of the population, and the fate of the region’s inhabitants cannot be decided by a weighted average of the vast 50-million republic. Those who in Lviv and Kiev finally bring down monuments to Lenin - why are they worshiped, like sacred, fake Leninist borders, at the bloody dawn of Soviet power in many places drawn only in order to buy stability to the communist regime? With Ukraine’s determination to fully secede, to which its right is certain, such a gross vote count within these boundaries may be irreparable for the fate of many millions of Russian people. And create stressful zones for the future.
Provide an undistorted free vote — and everyone will submit to it. Give true freedom to all of you - and then, whatever the result, it will be respected self-determination, and we warmly congratulate Ukraine on the resumption of its state and cultural path.
We should always be neighbors. We will be good neighbors.
Note: On the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR, a referendum on its sovereignty was appointed on December 1 on December 1991. Text printed in Trud, 8.10.1991
From an interview with V.T. Tretyakov for the weekly Moscow news"(printed on 28 / Apr / 4 May 2006)
V.T .: Personally, I believe that if the three main subjects of the Euro-Atlantic (Christian) civilization, namely the North American Union, (Western) European Union and Eastern European (Russian) Union (or the United States, the United States and the United States of Russia) will not enter into a strategic alliance between themselves (with supranational bodies), then our civilization will sooner or later disappear. What do you see as the salvation of the Euro-Atlantic civilization, if it needs it?
A.S .: Alas. The global political process is not moving in any direction you want. The United States places its occupying troops in one country after another. This is the actual situation in Bosnia for 9 years, in Kosovo and in Afghanistan - for 5 years, in Iraq it is 3 for a while, but it will be delayed there for a long time. NATO's actions and individual US actions differ only slightly. Clearly, seeing that today's Russia does not pose any threat to them, NATO methodically and persistently develops its military apparatus - to the East of Europe and to the continental coverage of Russia from the South. Here and open material and ideological support for "color" revolutions, the paradoxical introduction of the North-Atlantic interests - in Central Asia. All this leaves no doubt that the complete encirclement of Russia is being prepared, and then the loss of its sovereignty. No, Russia's accession to such a Euro-Atlantic alliance, which leads to propaganda and the violent introduction of ideologies and forms of today's Western democracy to different parts of the world, would lead not to the expansion, but to the decline of Christian civilization.
V.Т .: What is your attitude to what is happening in Ukraine? In this regard, what is your attitude to the problem of the division of the Russian nation (the largest divided nation in modern Europe)? Should Russia, albeit not politically, but at least intellectually, raise the question of the reunification of the Russian and Russian lands in the case of the obvious withdrawal of Ukraine by the Ukrainian elite to the European Union and especially to NATO?
A.S .: What is happening in Ukraine, even from the falsely constructed wording for the 1991 referendum (I already wrote and talked about this), is my constant bitterness and pain. The fanatical suppression and persecution of the Russian language (which in previous polls was recognized as its main more than 60% of the population of Ukraine) is simply a brutal measure, and even directed against the cultural perspective of Ukraine itself. - The vast expanses that never belonged to historical Ukraine, like New Russia, Crimea and the entire Southeast Territory, are forcibly squeezed into the current Ukrainian state and its eagerly desired entry into NATO. For all the time of Yeltsin, not one of his meetings with the Ukrainian presidents has done without surrender and concessions on his part. The Black Sea fleet from Sevastopol (never, under Khrushchev, not surrendered to the Ukrainian SSR) is a base, malicious abuse of the whole Russian history of the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries.
Under all these conditions, Russia in no way dares indifferently betray the multimillion Russian population in Ukraine, renounce our unity with it.
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