Dear Russian People

 

Russki narod (Russian people)

I remember you now,

faces set hard 

against the coldest wind.

Who has more power?

You have risen before,

carried long the weight 

of a thousand deprivations.

Rise up again.

You can be stronger than us,

with our tatty tories, 

that pathetic piss of pride.

We watch too much.

But soldiers, listen

to grandmothers, children,

so many ordinary people:

don’t take the bait. 

For what stops war?

People, enough people, 

just saying no, 

I will not kill.

RF 2022

What to say about Ukraine? Should we say anything? Should we just listen? Ukraine is not a country I know (though of course we’re all getting to know it pretty well just now – its leader, its fighters, right down to the young child singing Let it go in the bomb shelter). Even if we sit fairly far away, this feels like a pretty instant war as it streams right to us, many tweets at a time. I’ve been doing the same as many of you – giving goods and funds and then trying to remember that other places and causes still need support too (and get forgotten when a major event like this happens and fills our news and minds). It’s still important to keep supporting work elsewhere, and to support work happening nearer to home too. So much to do, to think about.

I've never been to Ukraine but, in this particular conflict, the aggressor is a country I do know a little about and therefore it is Russia that I have found myself thinking and writing about in recent days. I studied Russian (with very little dedication) in the 1980s (language, history and literature). I also went to the USSR (Moscow and, what was then, Leningrad) a couple of times at around the same time. For the first trip I went to study Russian for a couple of weeks in 1987 (I was 20). The second time I was working as a tour ‘guide’, accompanying a group of North American teenagers and their teachers for a week or so in 1989. The ‘guide’ is in quotes because really my dashing Soviet colleague (a Natasha, I think, lots of blue eye shadow) did most of the guiding whilst I answered questions about hairdryers, translated the food, listened to complaints about the food. All the photos in this post are from my 1987 USSR visit. I had no time for photography the second time (and obviously no camera phone back then). My memory of the second trip is just running all the time (it was a cheapskate company,  Swedish I think, so everything was late or badly organised and this led to situations like all fifty of us running through an airport in Paris from our bus drop-off to the plane).

In 1988 I had the chance to spend more time in the USSR (a few months studying in the chosen Soviet town of Voronezh, I think it was) but the couple of weeks in ’87 had been enough and I declined. It was so grim and the people were so sad and bored and hopeless (and my other language was Spanish – some much more inviting locations). I am currently reading Cal Flynn’s Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape and one of the places visited in this book is modern-day Chernobyl. This led me to reread a 2019 article in The New Yorker by Masha Gessen about the difference between the TV show Chernobyl and the reality. In the NY piece the line “Resignation was the defining condition of Soviet life” jumped right out. I had seen bleak before (the North East of England in the ’80s wasn’t exactly the golden age of anything) but still, there was so little joy in the air in the USSR. I remember the public toilets were brilliant – plentiful and clean. It’s not exactly the stuff of dreams.

Over the years I followed changes in the USSR and then Russia from afar. To be honest, I haven’t wanted to rush back (and my Russian is very faint) but I’ve watched news and features, and documentaries where Scottish comedians or English actresses go out there and try to see what on earth Russia is all about. I’ve read long articles and threads about Putin and Pussy Riot and Russian influence and Russian money, about Syria and Russia, Facebook and Russia, Trump and Russia, Westminster and Russia. In particular I’ve read everything I’ve seen lately about Russians protesting this war on Ukraine. I know protesting there (like in so many places) is very difficult but I hope protests continue and grow and have some effect. I know the Russian authorities have long been good at keeping things from their people (many governments do this of course, if not all) but I’ve read that younger Russians are VPN-ready and seeing media from elsewhere too. I know most poems right now will be written about Ukraine – about loss and bravery, about hardship and pride – and many of them will be brilliant poems that will fill anthologies in the years to come. Still, I send this one out to Russia, to ordinary Russian people. Most of us have so little power but we have to do something. To better times.