The use of children in foreign policy is not a new technique, but invariably leading to tragic consequences.
In 1212 the so-called Crusade of children took place. There are many versions of this event, but one of the most common tells us that the shepherd Stephen from northern France had a vision: Christ in white clothes ordered him to gather nearby children and send them to Palestine to free Jerusalem at last.
It seemed like two groups of children. French children went to Marseille, German - somewhere in Italy. Those who went to Italy went through the Alps, suffered terrible deprivations, and eventually faced categorical rejection from the local population, who still remembered the outrages of Frederick Barbarossa. Somewhere in Italy, the traces of the German juvenile crusaders are lost. There is evidence that there were about 30,000 people. At the same time, when they talk about children from France, they call the same figure. This gives some reason to believe that these, apparently, were the same children who had been walking around Europe for a long time. Some of them must have managed to grow.
Adults - stupid and, undoubtedly, unscrupulous people - believed in the infallibility of children, from which they derived the child's invulnerability to arms of troops, which, it was believed then, occupied Palestinian lands.
The detachments of the Crusader children, collecting other doomed minors along the way and receiving the approval of adults eager for the trophy shrines, reached the sea, and there they realized that nobody had thought about the ships. But there were good people - good adults, local merchants, serious business men. These business men gave their ships to the children and said that the children would be taken directly to the promised land, where the troops would fall in front of them, and the guardians themselves would give away the shrines that the young crusaders would deliver directly to the Holy See.
The children were taken to Algeria, where they were sold into slavery by prior arrangement.
Whenever children are dragged into politics, into conflicts, into wars — into adults, in general, they do things — every time there is a tragedy.
Children should not be used as a shield, ram or shell. And it doesn't even need any reasons or explanations. It is simply part of the natural self-preservation mechanism of a developed society.
Therefore, when we hear that the authorities of our neighboring Ukraine, represented by the National Public Broadcasting Company, prohibit all artists who after 2014 went to Russia to take part in Junior Eurovision, I want to ask: who do they want to punish?
Russia? Not letting your own children perform at the song contest? Not Russian children, and their own - Ukrainian? Well, I am sure, Russia is having difficulty, but it will also contain this blow.
Yourself? To a certain extent. But here you should not overestimate the value of song contests: if the representatives of Ukraine do not win them, you will surely win prizes at chess tournaments, film festivals and the Olympics of the future.
Ukrainian children, for sure, will also somehow sort things out - they will find social elevators more reliable. And yet for them hurt. I will not hypocritically exaggerate the degree of my sympathy for them. Not specific children bother me here - after all, they are not mine. This civilization rift worries me here.
It is common for human culture to separate children into a separate protected group. Children can not be exploited, children can not be involved in sex, children can not fight. This, again, is simple, but self-evident rules that allow developed society to preserve itself.
In the Soviet film based on the stories of Vasily Shukshin “Call Me into the Light, Far”, the hero Stanislav Lyubshin repeats: “Children are sacred. Children are children. ” And it needs no explanation, clarification or justification. This is clear to everyone. Like the fact that a deer is an animal, Russia is our fatherland, death is inevitable. These are immanent concepts, archetypal.
Children, of course, are not so innocent as to be invulnerable in crusades, but also not so guilty as to make them a weapon and at the same time a victim in a war invented by adults.
And if the tragedy that follows the exploitation of children in inciting hatred is inevitable, then at least it can be a subject of discussion in establishing connections. Remember at least Samantha Smith and Katya Lycheva. Yes, the fate of the first tragic and accidental cut short. But on the other hand, both of these schoolgirls with great success managed to demonstrate to the residents of two warring empires that there, overseas, live not monsters with their heads, but ordinary people, including schoolchildren.
It’s pretty easy for children to explain that something they encounter is good. Especially if you explain it with an example from the reverse. Say, the Ukrainian schoolchild on all channels says that Russia is an aggressor and an occupier, and he sings a duet with a Russian peer at the song contest, and everyone sees: yes, no, normal guys. The same. The younger people are, the more they have in common, the higher the chance that they will avoid hating each other.
But there are adults who just deliberately make children hate. And forbid them to sing. First, those whom they consider to be their enemies, and then at home.
Sorry for the country that is afraid of their children.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.