At the snap of your fingers

The Russian statehood fed and fed its own culture, fed it with breast milk and cream, blew on the crown of the head.

And suddenly yesterday I realized that almost all these people are the best of the best!

- they hate her.

Some aloud, others silently.

Well, almost everything, except, as a rule, old shots - still Soviet manufacture.

For the first time, this discovery happened quite a long time ago, back when Chechnya was, and then, when Georgia was, it was confirmed and, when Crimea happened, it was fixed.

It’s time to remember this discovery, but they still don’t remember it in any way and are surprised every time.

"Oh, that's how it really is!"

Let me remind you how it was in the sphere of culture and media in the past eight years.

Perhaps you don't know, but this is curious: I personally went to these places and I know all the dead ends.

I will not paint in colors the ridiculous fact that on the eve of 2014 I wrote columns in eight glossy magazines and was disconnected from all at once - for my position on Kiev and Donbass.

These are trifles, I still know how to embroider, I survived.

In all these years, if you remember, a few artists and a few musicians have come to Donbass.

I will not list their names - but these are, in fact, units.

We, being in Donbass, invited many people.

I will not name everyone, but I will only remind you of whom I personally invited: the Aquarium group.

The group flatly refused.

But now this group as a whole opposed the war.

But we called the group for the same!

So that she stops the bombing of Donetsk!

Alexander Zakharchenko personally approved and endorsed the invitation.

But those bombings were bombings.

In the Donetsk Art Theater, I remember, there was no director in 2014.

They asked me to help find it, and I invited my friend director to this position.

He seemed to be thinking seriously and was about to agree, but his son, a famous artist, said: “Father, if you go to work there, my professional career here in Russia will end.

I won't be given any more roles."

And the director did not go.

Because his son did not deceive him.

Young Russian actors and actresses told me more than once or twice: “Zakhar, I would like to come to you in Donetsk, but the chief director, artistic director and director of my theater immediately told me: “Write a letter of resignation and get out.”

I remember that in 2015 I prepared a collection of poems about the Donbass tragedy.

It was a wonderful and bright book, but I was strangely refused to publish it by all the leading Russian publishing houses.

It is indecent to publish such books.

Then we made a performance of Donbass poetry, but we were not allowed into any Moscow theater.

This list of ridiculous defeats is too long to give, the more it will seem that someone is settling scores here.

No.

I don't settle scores.

I boast.

I have stopped translating into foreign languages, because even Russian agents do not dare to work with me.

I, like most of the writers who supported the Donbass, flew out of all premium processes and a week ago, climbing for some reason on the website of the Journal Hall, laughing out loud, found that not a single thick literary magazine over the past eight years had even mentioned the name mine.

And this is 20 editions!

I died for them in 2014.

No, that's great, I thought.

I am proud of this concentrated inattention.

I'm not sad.

I do not care.

But I care when Yunna Moritz, the great Russian poet, says that she cannot publish her new books.

Why?

Because in her own country, where there are many publishing houses, she is persona non grata for these publishing houses.

I care when the great Russian poet Yuri Kublanovskiy calmly reports that since 2014 he has been driven into the “liberal ghetto” for the same reason.

I don’t care when the largest music radio stations from year to year drive in circles exactly those who are now unbearably ashamed, and all my comrades who came to Donbass with concerts admit that shadow bans operate against them - radio, network , festival.

Old songs are played by old stars who visited Donbass, but not a single one of the many songs of the Donbass resistance over the years has been in the rotation of any Russian radio.

It's out of the question!

Despite the fact that these are really popular songs.

The conversation is always short: “Oh, do you have a song (poetry, play, movie) about Donbass?”

- and the doors and shutters of decent salons, magazines, channels, portals immediately close in front of you.

Naive people think that the imperialists and militarists have occupied everything in Russia.

In fact, at best, they occupied Solovyov's television studio.

The Russian culture is occupied by completely different people.

Over the past 24 hours, you have seen all these soul-saving lists of those who are “against the war”, but you have not even been shown a short list of those who understand and accept what is happening from the culture.

Do you know why they didn't show you?

Yes, because they don't exist.

Almost all of them are afraid!

They will eat their own if they vote!

How they almost ate the wonderful poet Kushner for a cycle of poems about the Crimea at one time.

And what awaits us now?

They will now wait out this nightmare (and this is a nightmare).

At the same time, none of them will refuse either the position or the salary as a sign of protest.

And as soon as everything is over, everything will start from the same place.

They will continue to quietly stifle everything that was "for the war."

Everyone who thinks how to combine their pro-Donbass, pro-Russian position and their creative career is painfully disoriented.

For eight years now I have been receiving letters and SMS with the following content: “I am with you mentally, but I can’t say it out loud, you understand.”

In our country, even the bravest representatives of the artistic world, those few of them who were really ashamed, sent humanitarian aid to the Donbass secretly.

Secretly!

If only no one knew!

But to write: "Forgive me, Ukraine" - in blogs, imitating extraordinary courage, you can openly.

Because it just looks like a "slap in the face of public taste."

In fact, you are giving a signal to the powerful of this world: “I am with you, I am yours!

I'm not with them!

See?

And they see.

... Three weeks or three months will pass - and, being somewhere in Tavrida, I will again see on the stage one after another all those who were "ashamed" today and yesterday.

And none of those - singing or playing on stage - who today dared to support their own army.

Our state, which sometimes strikes too furiously at Soviet values, has such a high support of the people even in these difficult days, because three-quarters of the country was born and grew up a long time ago: on the same textbooks, on those books, on those ideals.

It is good that this monstrous misfortune that happened to the fraternal people was decided to be rectified today.

There is still time for that today.

Today there is still the support of the majority.

In 30 years - with these idols and with this culture - the state would not have even a tenth of this support.

At the first danger, culture would have surrendered itself and surrendered our state with you.

With the click of a finger, in an instant.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.