I looked, suffering in my heart, at fast-forward the dialogue between the critic Galina Yuzefovich and the writer Dmitry Glukhovsky*.
Galina presented Dmitry as "the face of Russian literature in exile".
I'm not even going to be ironic on this topic - so be it.
True, it is not very clear why the face of Glukhovsky is better than the face of Bykov**, Ulitskaya or Akunin, but if he is, so be he.
Essentially, there is no difference.
In this regard, I would only ask one question to Galya.
At the end of the conversation, Mitya says that for the first six months of the war he did not read anything, because he only followed the news.
To which Galya remarked: “You are not alone, Mitya.”
Well, he's not alone.
But here I thought: I must screw this simple and obvious idea to the end, otherwise it would seem to hang in weightlessness.
Mitya followed the news because he was ill.
Mitya was rooting for his army.
Mitya supported his Ukrainian army, rejoiced at all its victories.
In the end, he wanted as many Russians as possible to be killed and driven, preferably all the way to Moscow, in disgrace.
Well, isn't it?
What's there to hide?
I was rooting for Kyiv to be taken, and Mitya is rooting for, as others would say, for "justice" or for "civilizational values", but in fact, for the Russians to lose.
And they will lose if their army is basically killed and buried.
This is the "face of Russian literature in exile."
I would like Galya to be aware of this report.
And here is the question that I ask aloud: Galya, are you aware of this report?
As for what Glukhovsky said, I could have given this interview for him without making a mistake in a single letter.
Everything there is clear in advance: Russia is evil, Russia floods the brains of the population with fake shit, Russia is despotism, Russia is a murderer, Russia has attacked.
At the end of the conversation, Mitya said that evil is now unambiguous, there can be no two positions - and therefore every Russian person must decide whether he is on the side of evil or on the other side, where Mitya is.
Galya presents a completely predictable and, alas, banal person as the smartest representative of the Russian intelligentsia, who is supposedly ready to answer any of the most difficult questions.
Meanwhile, he is not able to answer even the simplest ones.
It would be worthwhile to catch this person by the button and say: “Mitya, well, there is the USA.
Let's imagine that even Russians, even Martians, crawled to their border, and staged a coup in a neighboring country, and began to slowly conjure against America there - what will happen?
And the following will happen: they themselves will arrange a hundred reciprocal coups there, bring in troops, put the wrong president in a cage, and if necessary, they will start bombing and killing as many people as they see fit.
As they killed always and everywhere, if they did not receive a proper rebuff.
And no Mitya these days shouted about the “uniqueness of evil”, and did not demand that people “decide on their side”, and did not give lectures that postmodernity has ended and the time for naked truths has come (it was this lecture that Mitya read to his dumbfounded Gale's brilliant mind).
And if, during the next American aggression, Mitya is told all this, he will stupidly wag his tail, laugh and avoid answering, saying that “this is not my country”, or: “What, was Saddam a good guy?”, Or: “If another country is doing evil, it does not mean that my country should behave in the same way.”
But all this is demagogy, and the truth is that he.
Sick.
Behind.
Alien.
Army.
And he talks with pleasure about the stupidity of Russian propaganda.
About how stupid the Russians lie, claiming that Ukraine "wanted to take over Russia."
I'm definitely not a fan of Russian propaganda, but in general we were told that Ukraine was preparing to attack the Donbass, and then the Crimea.
Plans to attack the Donbass and Crimea were not hidden in Kyiv by anyone: everyone was talking about it there - from the guard at the crossroads to the president.
Russians, it happens, on occasion lie, like any other world propaganda, but why doesn’t Mitya point-blank hear gigabytes of lies about Russia, whose face he suddenly became?
How does he like the news that the Russians blew up the Nord Stream?
Moreover, this nonsense is just one modest example of countless of them.
And how many of the most insane and senseless fakes were published in Ukraine - and it can’t be counted at all.
Meanwhile, Mitya understands everything even with Butcha.
He confessed to Galya that he hardly wrote a script about it.
He was offered, but he modestly refused.
How would you write it!
The world would gasp.
About what, by the way?
About how the Russians were driving in an armored personnel carrier and suddenly shot 50 people along the road?
And what would you write about this, Mitya?
Already the analysis of the news videos was posted that very day, and they explained in stages how this ridiculous bloody movie was fashioned - nope.
The brain does not turn on in the face of Russian literature in exile.
The face doesn't need a brain.
The face should be poured with soft and slippery, like soap, words, whipping pink foam.
And now it pronounces these words, and we are trying to catch them, and the words slip out and easily roll on.
And only at the very beginning of the program Galya suddenly utters one word of truth.
When he says that Pushkin lies at the foundation of Russian imperialism.
At least that's what her Western colleagues are sure of.
Galya, they do not deceive.
They speak the truth.
And if Pushkin is the face of Russian literature, no Mitya is even supposed to be a face or any other part of the body.
* Included in the register of individuals acting as a foreign agent by decision of the Russian Ministry of Justice dated September 23, 2022.
** Mass media recognized as a foreign agent by decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation dated July 29, 2022.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.