Displaced, page 23
Mikhail isn’t taking part in this war. He used to be a war reporter for the newspaper Kommersant in the times of the legendary editor Andrey Vasilyev, but then his career picked up. He was the editor-in-chief of the TV channel Dozhd. Then he created his own studio. He wrote several books on history. And then the war began. And Mikhail left Russia three days later.
First, because he has a daughter. It’s obvious that by starting this war, Russia has robbed its citizens of their future, but Mikhail believes his little girl must have a future. His daughter benefits from the situation: Her long-divorced parents move into one apartment in Berlin to live with her—her mom and dad together, something she only dreamed about.
Second, because—as Mikhail formulates it—it’s impossible to breathe in a country where fascism has won.
Third, because it’s impossible for a journalist to remain silent in a country that has let fascism win. But to speak up is deadly dangerous. By speaking up during the first three days of the war, Misha has already secured a decent prison sentence. On social media platforms, he posted the anti-war petition signed by three hundred thousand people including celebrities like the actress Chulpan Khamatova and the writer Boris Akunin.
On the day of their departure, on the very day that Mikhail, with his ex-wife and daughter, got into a taxi in Moscow to go to the airport, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz closed German airspace to Russian planes. And all other European countries did the same. What could he do? Mikhail thinks that if they decided to leave, then they should leave, so on their way to the airport, he buys the first available tickets for his family—to Dubai, and from there to Berlin.
Mikhail says that on the third day of the war, Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, named for the poet Alexander Pushkin, looks like an airport after an apocalypse. Not apocalyptic, like the Kabul airport looked after the Taliban took control of the city and all normal Afghanis tried to flee. But post-apocalyptic—when everything is over, and the dead return home, without emotion, from the airport where they had tried to get on flights to Paris, Berlin, or London.
Mikhail settles down in Berlin better than many Russian journalists. He calls himself a lucky loser—it’s always like that with him, any personal or professional catastrophe turns out well, becoming an exciting adventure and opening up new opportunities. He writes a weekly column for Der Spiegel, finishes two books on history at the same time—one about the formation of Ukraine and the other about the collapse of the Soviet Union—and sets up an interview with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the only interview granted a Russian journalist since the beginning of the war.
The idea for this interview came from the Russian producer and visionary Ilya Khrzhanovsky. In Ukraine, Khrzhanovsky organized Babiy Yar, an enormous project that includes a museum, theater, and cultural center devoted to one of the most tragic pages of Ukrainian history—the mass extermination of Jews during World War II. Khrzhanovsky negotiates with the administration of President Zelenskyy. The idea is to show that Russians and Ukrainians can communicate. From this interview, it should become obvious to the Ukrainian audience that not all Russian journalists are shameless, propagandistic liars. And for the Russian audience, it should become obvious that the Ukrainian president is neither a Nazi nor a drug addict, as Russian propaganda presents him, but a rather charming person. He grieves, gets angry, seems puzzled, and almost cries on several occasions, and several times he utters something that no one could ever imagine coming from the lips of the Russian president, that he feels sorry for people. A politician who feels sorry for people.
Four Russian journalists conduct this interview before the Ukrainian army liberates the small town of Bucha, and the atrocious war crimes committed by the Russian troops are discovered—execution, torture, rape. And the impression created by the interview, that Russians and Ukrainians can communicate, is wiped out by the reports from Bucha. And the Russian journalists who conducted that interview, except for Ivan Kolpakov, the editor-in-chief of the Meduza media platform based in Riga, lose their jobs and become pariahs. Here are their names: Tikhon Dzyanko, editor-in-chief of the now shuttered TV channel Dozhd and a good friend of mine; Vladimir Solovyov, a former special correspondent for the newspaper Kommersant and also a friend of mine; and Mikhail Zygar, my friend and coauthor.
THE PRESIDENT’S SPEECH
In a café on the beach in Jūrmala, Latvia, I’m sitting with Andrey Vasilyev, the above-mentioned editor-in-chief of the newspaper Kommersant. Of course, you can’t call Andrey a refugee or an exile. He’s an émigré, and a very wealthy émigré at that. He’s telling me a story about an alternative path—how everything could have gone in a different direction, and how the lives of my refugee characters could have been very different.
At the beginning of the 2000s, when Russia was still a relatively free country, Andrey was probably the highest paid editor-in-chief of what was clearly the most influential newspaper in the country. I worked for him as a special reporter, and it was the happiest time of my professional life. Then freedom in Russia came to an end, and Andrey was laid off, but with a huge “golden parachute”—an unbelievably generous compensation package. He shrugged his shoulders, bought a house on the seaside, and began to lead the life of a retiree. Then, together with the artist Mikhail Yefremov and poets Dmitry Bykov and Andrey Orlov, he created a project known to all democratic protesters in Moscow: The Citizen Poet. The project is long closed, Yefremov is in prison (from where he proclaims his support for the war), while Bykov and Orlov are in exile. Andrey again left for Jūrmala to do nothing, but . . . his heart remained in Russia.
“Ha-ha-ha! What are you talking about, Panyushkin?” Andrey gulps his mojito, his fifth, I think. “I don’t have a heart!”
He’s a cynic and a drunk, but everyone who’s ever worked with him knows that Vasilyev is a genius.
Perhaps with that in mind, not long before the war began Ilya Khrzhanovsky came to Vasilyev with a crazy idea: to write a speech for President Zelenskyy that could stop the war. And Vasilyev agreed.
“Can you imagine, Panyushkin,” after downing his sixth mojito, “I took it upon myself to stop the war, for real.”
“You failed,” I answer.
“Oh well!” Vasilyev throws up his hands, perhaps in dismay or perhaps to summon the waiter.
He spent weeks thinking about this speech, then wrote it in three hours, finishing it on February 24, at 4:00 A.M.
“But by that time,” Vasilyev says, “there were two double bourbons inside of me. I thought I’d sleep it off and edit the speech in the morning, with a clear head. So, I went to sleep. An hour later, the war began.”
The speech that Andrey Vasilyev wrote for Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a desperate attempt to stop the war, was never delivered. I’ve read that speech. In it, President Zelenskyy suggests having a referendum about giving Donbas to Russia—to give them Donbas, “and let Putin choke on it.” Then he announces his resignation after the referendum. And finally, he says that he’s not sorry to leave the presidency behind, but he feels sorry for the people who will die fighting for the independence of Ukraine. He feels sorry for the Ukrainian people, but he’s sorry for the Russians too.
Even if it had been delivered, I don’t think this speech would have stopped the war. Putin wants more than the Donbas; he wants the entire “Russian world.”
We’re sitting in a café on the beach, and along the shore a famous Russian actor passes by. He’s practicing Nordic walking, in an attempt to ward off aging, I presume.
“Are you staying here for long?” Vasilyev asks, calling the actor by name.
The artist turns around:
“It’s looking like I’ll be here until the end of my life.”
7 This is a quotation from Revelations 8: 6-7.
THE FINAL CHAPTER
We’re Leaving
“Since the start of the special military operation, 264 planes, 145 helicopters, 1711 unmanned aircraft, 363 anti-aircraft missile systems, 4278 tanks and other combat armored vehicles, 794 rocket salvo-fire systems, 3284 field artillery weapons and mortars, as well as 4785 special military vehicles have been destroyed.” Summary of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation on the territory of Ukraine, August 9, 2022.
IN G-MINOR
“Are you saying goodbye?” my mother-in-law asks.
I’m sitting in the living room of our house in the suburbs of Moscow and quietly playing the piano. The music is by John Williams from the movie Schindler’s List. The piano is a Diederichs. In the nineteenth century, the Russian instruments made by the brothers Diederichs were the finest in the word. But the company didn’t survive the Revolution, and the piano factories were closed. Any Diederichs piano is therefore of pre-revolutionary origin and so a witness to a time before Russia began destroying itself. I restored this instrument, as if pulling a thread through the previous century, which was so ruinous for Russia, to repair the fabric of time. I restored this instrument, and now I’m playing it for the last time.
“Are you saying goodbye?” says my mother-in-law.
“Yes, I’m saying goodbye.”
This last chapter is about me. And it’s about feelings. For three months now, I’ve been writing about people leaving their homeland, and now the time has come for me to do the same.
To be honest, this farewell has been postponed for quite some time. The war began on February 24, but we’re leaving in May. During the first week of the war, I, as well as many of my friends, could find no peace of mind. I couldn’t figure out what I should do in a world in which my country attacked the neighboring country where my first wife was from, and my second wife, as well. We’re constantly asking one another why this particular war is so intolerable. There have been other wars—aggressive and barbaric in the same way and no less cruel. Russia has been killing people in Afghanistan, and in Chechnya, and in Syria. How were we able to lead normal lives with that in the background? And why are we incapable of leading normal lives now?
I’ve formulated an answer for myself. I was able to write about those previous wars conducted by Russia because I was a newspaper reporter. I could go to the frontline and send my reports back to the newspaper. I could talk about how people were dying, how mothers were searching for their lost children, about the smell of a blown-up house, how the barely detectable sweetish odor of decaying bodies mixes with the smell of smoke and dust. About how people were changing, how violence is becoming the new ethical norm because “everybody does it.” I could write about all of this, and it gave me the strength to survive.
But the Ukrainian war of 2022 differs from all other wars in that the first thing the Russian government did was to prohibit us from even using the word “war.” When we left in May, the repressions hadn’t reached the level of the deputy Alexey Goryunov. In July, he’ll get seven years in prison for calling the war a “war” during a meeting in his municipality and for expressing his disagreement with this war. But even at the end of April, critics of the regime were reported missing to INTERPOL—Alexander Nevzorov, Nika Belozyorskaya . . . And special wartime criminal cases (with prison sentences extended by many years) are being prepared against Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin.8 And the possibility of speaking up is shrinking day by day.
In the two months since the war began and before we left, my friend Irina Vorobyova, a journalist for the radio station Ekho Moskvy and for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta stopped over twice. She came the first time when Ekho was closed, and the second time when Novaya was closed. My friend, a hematologist, came over and told us there were still drugs for his patients but because of the sanctions, his scientific research had ended and wouldn’t be possible again any time soon. Another friend, a geneticist, said that genetic research had become impossible. I asked both if they were ready to give interviews about the state of Russian medicine—no, they weren’t ready. After such an interview, they’d be forced to quit, but by keeping quiet, they’re still able to treat children.
We’re surrounded by silence. Two of my school friends fell out because one thinks the war is just, and the other believes it’s criminal, so they stopped talking to each other. Before the May holidays, my kids’ teacher, whom they adored, wrote in the school chatroom that the children should prepare for a patriotic demonstration. They gave the kids military caps and carnations, so they could march with pride. Every student received a flower. And every one of them had to bring a hundred rubles to school to pay for the carnation. And we didn’t object, we didn’t protest in the school chatroom against the government trying to brainwash our children, that our children were being lied to and were being taught how to lie. Only my mother-in-law made a sarcastic comment about the announcement, “It seems a bit steep: a hundred rubles for a carnation. In the cemetery, they’re half the price.”
We’re surrounded by silence. Our get-togethers are now like funerals. All our conversations have been reduced to commemorations. At that time, the producer Alexander Syomin, one of the most talented people I know, organized a concert at the House of Actors in Moscow. Sasha wrote a sad minimalist piece of music for a string quintet; the musicians performed and then, in the intermissions between the movements, Sasha read ads from the stage—classified ads about renting, selling, and buying that people had posted on the Internet before the start of the war and after. The audience fell silent, and it felt like a gathering of conspirators.
We took our children to that concert. As I was listening to the music and to Sasha reading the ads, I thought about how I would explain the meaning of those ads to our kids.
“January 2022. For rent, an apartment in Mariupol. First line building, a sea view, two bedrooms, spacious kitchen-living room, built-in appliances. Daily and long-term rents possible.”
You know, kids, Mariupol used to be a resort city. People would go there on vacation, to swim in the sea, to eat fresh fish. Now Mariupol is destroyed, there are no longer houses on the seashore. And those two bedrooms and spacious kitchen-living room are probably in ruins.
The musicians played. Sasha kept reading. He didn’t explain anything; he just read the ads.
“March 2022. Belgorod. For sale: two used rugs in good condition.”
You see, kids, after capturing Ukrainian cities, the Russian soldiers were looting, stealing everything they could get their hands on, even small things—irons, teapots, washers, rugs. And later, when they returned to Russia, they tried to sell these used goods.
Sasha read, and the music played. In the concert program, there was a line in a small font: “** ***”
Do you understand, kids, what that means? Everyone in Moscow understands—it means “NO WAR,” kids. We’re even prohibited from saying “No war.”
The day after the concert, someone sent a report about the performance to the FSB, the post-Soviet version of the KGB: Alexander Syomin organized an anti-Russian action at the House of Actors—they played music and he read ads. The word “war” wasn’t mentioned, but it was implied. And the program with the little stars was included.
At about the same time, I got the idea for this book, and it became easier to breathe. With each new chapter, with each new interview I conducted for this book I felt, on the one hand, that I could still be useful, while on the other hand, I understood more and more clearly that this book couldn’t be published in Russia. It’s not even because of the danger of prison time facing the author of a book about refugees. The problem is: I’d never find a publisher.
If I stay in Russia, no one will ever know about the characters in this book—about Alla who sees a castle in her dream, about Denys who drives from Mariupol on flat tires, about Danya whose brother perishes in the war, about Nadezhda Ivanovna who listens to her dog howling . . . Silence will envelop them and me. And the saddest thing of all is that we will gradually get used to that silence. First, we’ll get used to being silent about us starting this war. Then we’ll get used to the thought that we probably didn’t start the war, and if the war was started, it wasn’t us who started it. And finally, even if we manage to preserve our memory and avoid Stockholm syndrome, we will surely be unable to protect our children from the false belief instilled in them by the government that we were the ones who were attacked, as they’d like the entire world to believe.
That’s why we’re leaving.
It goes without saying that the way we’re leaving our homeland can’t be compared to how the Ukrainian refugees—tortured by hunger, cold, and bombardment—are leaving their homeland. Yes, but it’s possible to run away from bombs; humanitarian organizations can feed the hungry, and Rubikus volunteers can place the frozen in the warm houses of host families. But what can you do with the feeling of guilt? With the burning feeling of guilt and shame of being a citizen of the aggressor country? What can you do with the fact that the people I live with call evil good and darkness light?
It’s also sad to see how easily the old people, who back in Soviet times were trained to accept the lies, have resurrected that peculiar skill of seeing lies as the truth. Like my father, for example.
LOST OPPORTUNITIES
My wife’s small car is loaded to the roof with our children’s toys. We sold my car to pay off debts. My in-laws will live in our house for now, but only until the winter. In winter, my wife’s parents refuse to live in the suburbs, and I don’t know what will happen then.
The children hug their grandma and grandpa. They’re eleven, ten, and five years old—two girls and one boy. My mother-in-law is crying. The children are crying too as they get in the car, but soon they’re distracted by a territorial dispute of their own. It’s not enough space for all of them in the back seat, and my younger son is trying to find a seat for Hagi-Vagi, his favorite toy—a plush blue monster with a toothy smile from ear to ear.
