By Anna Velichko
12.04.2014
Translated and edited by Voices of Ukraine

It has been almost a month since I came back from there. [I] spent two weeks. (I’ve got a father and an eldest daughter there, if someone doesn’t know).

Since then – I am silent even to myself about what I feel.

…We don’t see a lot of this from here. We see – what they write. And the writing is done either by paid assholes or by active lunatics…
I do not mean that everything is much better. Everything is much worse.

To us it seems one of two things:

• In Russia there is mass patriotic hysteria (in which case we hate that same eighty-something percent of Russians as aggressors);
• In Russia, the people will sooner or later not stand the pressure of Putin’s false system and will come out to the Red Square to pick out paving stones (it rarely seems like that – sometimes, when watching videos where Russians support Ukraine – but when it does seem to us like that, we feel hope and even a readiness to help…)

It is neither one nor the other.

Not among the masses.

There are many, very many, a whole grey world of frightened people, who do not know what to think, so they do not think at all. They don’t think pro-government, or anti-government. They think in terms of daily life: the prices have risen, the wages haven’t, how to survive, aha, today like this, and tomorrow like that. Why all of this has happened, the reason why they have to struggle, by and large – not many are interested in that.

They do not need to look for explanations. They do not need to dig deeper. The surface layer: fear in front of their former brother Ukrainians, who suddenly FOR SOME REASON went crazy and FOR SOME REASON started hating Russians – this is given by the TV. It really is fear, they have scared them with us, and their unwillingness to know or understand anything is a defensive reaction to fear.

They do not need to look for answers to “why.” [In order] to dig deeper – the desire to know the truth – you need motivation. And how can someone be motivated to learn something bad about themselves? To understand that it is your government that attacked, annexed, that murders – and that since this is with your silent support – then it is you who attacked, annexed, and who murders…

There is a vanishingly small number of masochists with such motivation, obviously – there are generally not many masochists in the world.

– We can’t take in your refugees by day and shoot at you by night, right? It is illogical!

These cute, good, calm people talk, explain (first and foremost to themselves) that there are “no Russian troops” in Ukraine. People who do not hate Ukrainians at all. Who simply do not want to dig deeper, so that they do not accidentally run into their own conscience…

Who did I expect to see when I went there? Aggressive monsters from the web, probably. And to see, instead of these monsters… normal people who are not motivated to THINK – was unexpectedly more difficult.

So there will not be a Maidan in Russia. Even if the overthrow of Putin’s regime were an easy and safe task – there still would not be a Maidan. Those few who organize protest actions will remain few. The rest – the rest are not even outraged by their actively fighting fellow citizens. The rest simply prefer not to know about them.

…..

..But both my father and my daughter understand everything correctly about is. They are probably from among the rare masochists. And because of this, it is somehow easier for me.

Source: Anna Velichko FB