Mikhail Shishkin writes:

My dearest one,
They stole the language from us. We spoke and corresponded with you in the language of great Russian literature. Now, for the whole world, Russian is the language of those who bomb Ukrainian cities and kill children, the language of war criminals, the language of murderers. They will be tried for crimes against humanity. I would like to believe that all those who prepared and participated in this war, who supported it in one way or another, will be put in the dock. But how can one go to trial for a crime against language?

My father went to the front when he was 17 to avenge his brother who was killed by the Germans. After the war, he hated Germans and everything German all his life. I tried to explain to him: “But Dad, there is great German literature! German is a beautiful language!” These words had no effect on him. What will we be able to say after the war to the Ukrainians whose homes were bombed and looted by the Russians, whose families were killed? That the great Russian literature is beautiful? And that the Russian language is so wonderful?

Do dictators and dictatorships breed slave populations or do slave populations breed dictators? Ukraine was able to escape from this hellish circle, to escape from our common, monstrous, bloody past. For this reason it is hated by Russian impostors. A free and democratic Ukraine can serve as an example for the Russian population, which is why it is so important for Putin to destroy you.

In Russia, we had neither de-Stalinisation, nor the Nuremberg trials of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. The result we see: a new dictatorship. A dictatorship, by its very nature, cannot exist without enemies, which means war. [Continue reading…]