An open letter to the people of Russia

Dear citizens of Russia

I appeal to you, the peace-loving Russian people, to ascertain the truth about the devasting violence being executed in your name against your Slavic brothers and sisters in the sovereign nation of Ukraine.  

We observe the Kremlin's merciless crack-down on independent journalism.  We are also aware of its withdrawal of any right for its citizens to protest against the President's misnomer - his "special military operation" - against Ukraine.  The Kremlin's censorious blockade on facts within Russia is in stark contrast to the free media reporting elsewhere in Europe of the daily slaughter currently unfolding in Ukraine before the eyes of the world.

Innocent people across Ukraine, including children and pregnant mothers are being killed by Russian soldiers in their own homes and even in hospitals; cities are being besieged and inhabitants deprived of access to food, water and medicines; nuclear power plants have been attacked and stolen from Ukrainian authorities; millions of women and children are being forced to flee from their cherished homes to neighbouring countries throughout Europe and beyond to try and stay alive; cities and towns are being annihilated making them look like the wastelands inflicted by the Kremlin on Aleppo.

Your European neighbours are responding to Ukraine's desperate plight with support for the humanitarian efforts of international charities coming to the aid of refugees displaced from their communities by invasive force of arms.  Your President's military project is a full-scale invasion of a sovereign nation whose independence arises from the overwhelming will of its people as expressed in a referendum in 1991 after the breakup of the USSR.

The Russian President lied to the rest of the world when saying that his amassing of almost 200,000 soldiers armed with lethal weapons around Ukraine's borders was not an invasion force; after he invaded, he lied again by saying that no civilian lives would be lost because his armory would not strike civilian targets.  Who is he deceiving when he denies his bombing of innocent women and children sheltering in Mariupol's theatre; who in Russia could support a regime hell-bent on trying to exterminate working people by, for example, cold-bloodedly killing dead 10 civilians queuing for bread in Cherniv?

Moscow's suppression of the facts may hoodwink many if not all of Russia.  The truth, however, will out, is out as more and more reputable reports of the atrocities emerge.  For example, eye-witness accounts complete with video evidence taken by an injured construction worker reveal harrowing and distressing details - innocent civilians murdered by Russian soldiers and injured people being deprived of medical attention in the dormitory town of Hostomel next to Kyiv.  The town's mayor Yuriy Prylypko was shot dead while handing out bread to starving residents (1).

Government's first responsibility in any civilised country is the protection of its citizens.  Why then is Russia's Government killing people in Ukraine which it regards as Russian territory?  

Has the Kremlin not learned from its own history of being invaded in 1941?  What about the enormous death toll (said to have been 800,000) during the almost 900-day Nazi siege of Leningrad (St Petersburg)?  Stalin reacted to Hitler's fatal Napoleonic mistake of invading Russia in the dead of winter with the reprinting of Tolstoy's 1812 War and Peace, drawing clear parallels to the French invader's ignominious defeat.  

How can the Kremlin expect people to accept its rewriting of history with a spurious claim to "denazify Ukraine?"  It was Nazis who murdered 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews in World War 2. President Wolodymyr Zelensky is himself Jewish. 

Ukrainians do not forget Stalin's own oppression of their country in the1932/33 famine.  During the "Holodomor" (which means "extermination by hunger") four million citizens of the then Ukrainian Soviet Republic perished (2).

Ukraine and its allies are aghast at the Kremlin's use of an antediluvian strategy in the twenty-first century.  Empires have been built and lost, the latter irretrievably so.  Relics of the past.  We have experience closer to home. A new book (3) by a Harvard Professor of African and American history identifies the character of British power back in the 19/20th centuries in 37 countries across four continents.  She describes the hypocricy of "legalised lawlessness," the methods by which the empire-builders spread the rule of law and then viciously bent it "to serve imperial purposes." 

To resort to the Latin phrase reductio ad absurdum by way of illustration, what would Russia think if Italy used the Kremlin's logic as a pretext to restore its Roman Empire?   Call it a special military operation and invade a few Mediterranean countries.  

 It is every bit as absurd as the Russian President's action against Ukraine.

The lingering memories of brutal imperialism - death, destruction, famines, slavery and more - continue to burn, even when its days are claimed to be confined to history.  Even if a peace deal is cobbled together tomorrow, the President of Russia's contemporary attempt to subjugate and recolonise Ukraine is and will continue delivering a long-lasting legacy of suffering, devastation and a future of resentment at the savagery of the 2022 empire-builders.

Your President's actions are wrecking the lives of everyday people in Russia as well.  For example, Mikhail Kasyanov who was your Prime Minister from 2000-04 predicts (4) that "more thousands" will flee the mother country as a result of the President's threat to cleanse itself of "traitors and scum," as the Russian President now describes his domestic opponents.  

Apart from the regime's curtailment of access to protest and to independent media, we see footage of the commercial damage being done to the economies of Russia and Belarus from sanctions imposed by democratic nations.  As the days proceed the impact of sanctions will worsen normal life in Russia as it becomes more and more of a pariah state, friendless and isolated from its European neighbours.

Those same sanctions affect the countries imposing them, such as in rising food prices and big hikes in energy costs.  We have to take some of the pain too.  A positive outcome, however, is that dearer gas and coal will hasten the climate-change imperative to wean Europe off its addiction to fossil fuels. 

The severe sanctions imposed on Russia's oligarchs also benefit the west.  A new book (5) shows how the City of London became "Londongrad," "butler" to the oligarchs, becoming the money-laundering capital of the world.  Shell companies are used by oligarchs and kleptocrats to disguise their wealth.  As the author explains, officialdom's attitude was that "if we were to stop the business here, it would move to other centres with a consequent loss of earnings for London."  Thanks to your President, sanctions will result in an overdue ethical reform of the west's financial system.  Russia's loss becomes Europe's gain.

The whole world looks on, distraught at the misery being inflicted on Ukraine.  It is equally distressing to see that a great country like Russia, whose culture and people we admire, is being misled by an autocrat.  His nation has become popular with international travellers over the last thirty years.  My wife and I spent about ten wonderful days with some friends on a guided excursion to visit Moscow and St Petersburg seven years ago.  

We stood in awe at fabulous onion-shaped domes atop historic Cathedrals, we visited palaces and museums, not to mention ornate metro stations.  It was a lifetime's privilege to attend two superb ballet performances, one in the Bolshoi (Don Quixote), the other in the Mariinsky (Giselle) theatre (6).  This was a terrific holiday.  

On arrival in Moscow, our mature guide welcomed us when she said - "this is not a scary country - tell your friends to come."   Given the current state of war, her remarks now appear eerily prophetic.  That said, because she was so warm and welcoming, we took her advice.

Culturally, I'm wondering what Russia's pre-Communist era writers would make of the actions of the country's current leadership.  Among Leo Tolstoy's many quotable lines, I found one that might help. This quotation reminds me of the brave television editor Marina Ovsyannikova who interrupted the news programme to protest with her hand-written banner about the war in Ukraine.  The Tolstoy quotation aptly says that:-

        "If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war."

The Tolstoy line that I'll close with, however, seems to answer the Russian President's assertion which denies Ukraine's very right to exist.  It also echoes President Zelensky's subtle rebuke to the Russian invader when he addressed the U.K's Parliament quoting Shakespeare's to be or not to be speech.  Tolstoy said that:-

            "If you want to be happy, be"

If and when Ukraine reasserts its sovereign right to continue to exist, the world will be happy. 

©Michael McSorley 2022

 

References

1. "Dispatch from Kyiv - they told me they came to protect us. Ordeal of a Russian sniper's victim" The Observer 20 March 2022 Emma Graham-Harrison & Isobel Koshiw

2. "Ukraine is being wiped out with a history of lies" Ben Macintyre The Times 5 March 2022

3. "Legacy of Violence: a History of the British Empire" by Caroline Elkins.  Review by Tim Adams The Observer 13 March 2022 "The brutal truth about Britain's past"

4. BBC 2 Newsnight, interview of the former PM by Mark Urban 16 March 2022

5. "Butler to the World: How Britain became the servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals" by Oliver Bullough. Review by Simon Nixon, The Times 12 March 2022 "How Britain became a dirty paradise for kleptocrats." Book of the week

6.  https://michaelmcsorleytravel.blogspot.com/2015/05/moscow-and-saint-petersburg.html