The times in which we live make us reflect

The times in which we live force us to reflect and look for answers to difficult questions. Often, in order to understand how we can live with what is happening, we need to turn to someone else's experience, which is far from always relevant, but sometimes can play a therapeutic role, and maybe even become something more.

On vacation, I took two books with me: Gaidar's "The Fall of the Empire" and his biography from the ZhZL series. In Gaidar's biography, the second chapter is called "Partisans of the 68th". Perhaps this part of the book best conveys the mood that took place among completely different, but reasonable and thinking people of that time. You can swear at the Soviet intelligentsia as much as you like, but the fact is that many of us differ little from it, adjusted for the times. Both they and we are the intellectuals of their time, or at least we claim to be. Both they and we want a different future for their country. Both they and we often hoped that yes, there were many shortcomings, but everything flows, and everything changes, but there is hope for the changes that have been made. Both they and we are often strong in words, but at the same time, as a rule, weak in deeds.

The events of August 20-21, 1968 were experienced by the Soviet "creative class" as a real tragedy. And this is not surprising, given that only 12 years have passed since the 20th Congress of the CPSU, liberalization in Czechoslovakia (Prague Spring) was generally viewed positively by the intelligentsia, and no one believed in the return or some kind of reincarnation of Stalinism. Physicists and lyricists, the sixties, the romantics of socialism with a human face.

And then - the introduction of troops into Czechoslovakia. For many, it was a blow akin to what many faced on February 24, 2022.

August 21st. Wednesday. It is terrible that we are powerless and helpless. Today is the blackest day of this year - Czechoslovakia is occupied by its "brothers", Soviet tanks trample its land. Members of the government, along with Dubcek, were taken away in armored vehicles, or maybe they are no longer alive. Yesterday at eleven o'clock Inna and I discussed Czech problems, and today, unfortunately, my gloomy forebodings came true, because of which Inna was so angry with me. Today I was already crying and even Dima. For the first time in five years, broadcasts from BBC radio, Voice of America, and others began to be jammed. We did hear something. The Prague radio worked all night, it informed the population about the "intervention of five friendly states" led by the troops of my homeland. About 20 Slovak students were killed, there are wounded...

This entry belongs to Yulia Nelskaya-Sidur, the wife of the sculptor Vadim Sidur (other entries can be found here:). According to economic journalist Otto Latsis, Timur Gaidar (Yegor's father) wanted to "flop in protest." Well, Yegor himself, in an interview with Pozner, answered the question of when he became "non-Soviet", answered:

I actually became truly non-Soviet in August 1968, when I was 12 years old.

The Soviet Union collapsed 23 years after the events that are now 54 years old. I don't know how long all that we are seeing now will last, but I think that 02/24/2022 was the same turning point for many as 08/21/1968. Powerlessness, disbelief in the effectiveness of "pin pricks" - pickets, distribution of leaflets, and so on - all this has already happened. But the USSR is no more. And this, I think, is the most important lesson of history.

Grigory Bazhenov 2022-08-21