To My Russian Friends

My dear Russian friends: some of you very old friends, some of you more recent ones, some of you I do not know personally, friends of the spirit and the mind. Times are hard for you too right now.

I have been communicating with many of you, over the past month. Like the lives of every single Ukrainian, yours, never simple, are being completely overturned.

Many of you are fleeing Russia. And many of you have expressed to me feelings of guilt, of shame, over what your country is doing to your neighbour. Over what is being done to Ukraine in your name. 

Some of you, the activists, have been under the hammer for a long time, and have been bracing for the final stroke. On March 4th I wrote to Aleksandr Cherkasov, a very old friend from Memorial. "I’ll tell you a bit later," answered Sasha in his usual laconic tone. "Right now after the search we are wandering through ruins. — Gutted computers. — Cracked safes".

Others amongst you, cultural figures, artists, critics, writers, are stunned by the sudden collapse of your fragile world. None of you like Putin and his regime of thieves and fascists, most of you hate them.

But let us be honest: except for very few of you — those working with Memorial, Novaya Gazeta, Ekho Moskvy, Meduza, Navalny’s organisation and a handful of others — how many of you ever did anything to resist that regime? Other than perhaps joining the demonstrations, when there were any? Could it be, then, that your feelings of shame and guilt are not just abstract? Could they also be due to your own apathy, your long indifference to what was happening around you, and your passive complicity, which you must feel now in your bones and in your soul?

It wasn’t always like this. For a while, back in the 90s, you had a measure of freedom and democracy, messy, bloody even, but real. Yet 1991 turned out like 1917.

Why is it that every time you finally have your revolution, you end up so afraid of the "time of troubles" that you run straight back under the skirts of a Tsar, whether his name be Stalin or Putin? No matter how many he kills, it seems safer to you, somehow.

Why is that? True, mistakes were made. Instead of raiding the KGB archives and exposing them to the light of day, like the Germans did with the Stasi, you let yourselves be distracted by Dzherzinsky’s statue, and allowed the KGB to lie low, regroup, rebuild, and take over your country. When you were offered a choice between the looting of the country or the return of the Communists, you didn’t fight to impose a third choice, and acquiesced to the looting.

In 1998 your economy collapsed, and that was pretty much the end of mass demonstrations for more social justice, or against the war in Chechnya. Survival became the main concern. 

Then they brought in Putin. Young, bold, aggressive, promising destruction to the terrorists and an economic turnaround. Few of you bought it, but you either voted for him, or didn’t vote at all.

And when he started levelling Chechnya for the second time, most of you closed your eyes and turned your back. I remember those years very well. I was working down in Chechnya, providing aid to the innumerable victims of Putin’s "anti-terrorist operation," travelling through the ruins of Groznyi and Katyr-Yurt and Itum-Kale and so many other towns.

Sometimes, I came back to Moscow for a break and I partied with you, my friends. We drank, we danced, and then I would try to tell you about the horrors I was seeing down there, the tortured civilians, the murdered children, the soldiers selling back the bodies of the dead to their families. And you would say to me: "Jonathan, we’re fed up with your Chechnya." I remember those words so very well.

And I would rage at you: "Guys, it’s not my Chechnya, it’s your Chechnya. It’s your fucking country, not mine. I’m just a stupid foreigner here. It’s your government bombing one of your cities, killing your fellow citizens." But no, it was too complicated, too painful, you didn’t want to know.

Then came the great economic boom of the mid-2000s, fueled by rising oil prices and Putin’s willingness to allow some of the stolen money to cascade down to the middle class.

Many of you made money, some of you lots of it, and even the poorer ones among you got new apartments and better jobs. Prices rose but that was alright, Moscow was aglow, glittery, chic, fun.

When opponents were murdered — Yuri Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaïa, Aleksandr Litvinenko, and others — you expressed horror and shock, but it hardly went further.

When Putin, after two terms, handed the presidency to his prime minister and took his seat, you barely noticed, as far as I could tell. When Russia, a few months into Medvedev’s presidency, invaded Georgia, most of you ignored it, or stayed quiet.

And for years after, how many of you did I run into on the ski slopes of Gudauri, hiking around Kazbegi, or enjoying the cafés and steam baths of Tbilisi while your army occupied part of the country? Not that we, here in the West, did much either, if anything. A few complaints, a few sanctions; but what were egregious violations of international law in comparison to the lure of Russia’s oil, gas and internal market?

At the end of 2011, though, you, my Russian friends, did wake up. When Putin switched seats with Medvedev again, putting himself right back into the president’s chair, many of you decided that was one dirty trick too many, and you came out en masse to protest.

Navalny became a household name and for six months you filled the squares, finally putting fear into the regime, rocking it on its heels. Then it struck back. First it organized counter-protests; then it passed more repressive laws, and started filling up its jails. Thousands were arrested. Some got very long sentences.

And the rest of you gave up, and went home. "What could we have done?" I heard this so often, and still hear it now. "The State is so strong, and we are so weak."

Well, look at the Ukrainians. Look at what they did, two years after you. Once they occupied Maidan, in their rage at a pro-Russian president who had betrayed his promise of more Europe, they never left it.

They formed a tent city, entirely self-organized, and willing to defend itself. When the police came to try and break it up, they fought back, with sticks and iron bars and molotov cocktails. At the end, the police opened fire. But instead of running, the guys on Maidan charged. Many of them died, but they won. It was Yanukovich who ran, and Ukrainians got their democracy back, their right to choose their leaders and throw them out when they don’t do the job. 

Putin really didn’t like Maidan. It was a bad example. So he grabbed Crimea while everyone was still off-balance. Some few of you also protested that, but to no avail. So many were enthused! 91% of Russians approved the annexation, I believe. "Wonderful, wonderful! Crimea is ours!" your fellow citizens chanted, suddenly drunk on imperial glory. I’m not just talking about the poorer people out in the ravaged recesses of the country where the limit of politics is vodka and potatoes, but about some of you, my friends, personal friends.

Writers. Editors. Intellectuals. It was the same with Donbass. Novorossia, New Russia. Suddenly there was a new myth, and some of you who had despised Putin and his clique suddenly turned around and worshipped him.

I don’t know why, as we quickly stopped talking after that. As for the others, those of you who remained my friends, you mainly stayed silent. "I’m not interested in politics," you would say. And you would go back to literature, or films, or IKEA catalogues, or enjoying the brand-new parks the mayor of Moscow had been seeding the city with since 2012, with their bean bags and free wifi and hipster cafés. Yes, Donbass was far, and Moscow was cool, and getting cooler still.

Syria you barely even noticed. Anyhow they were all terrorists, right? Daesh or whatever. Even the Moscow editor who published my book on Syria then criticized it in an interview, saying I understood nothing about what was happening in Syria. Well, at least I had been there, watching children the age of my own being shot in cold blood by regime snipers in the streets of Homs. The only Russians that went there were your army, who, in 2015, started bombing thousands of civilians and practicing for their next serious war.

Many of you, I am sure, know the famous words of Pastor Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

How many of you spoke out for the Chechens, the Syrians, or the Ukrainians? Some of you did. But far too many were silent.

Some, it is true, are speaking out now, people like Dmitry Glukhovsky, Mikhail Shishkin, Mikhail Zygar, Maksim Osipov, others too. Most speak from outside the country, a rare few from inside, like Marina Ovsyannikova, taking the risk of being sent to join Navalny in his Gulag.

As for the rest of you, you understand what country you live in, better than most. And so I’m sure you understand this: when Putin is done with the Ukrainians — but even more so if he is unable, as looks likely, to finish them off — he will come for you.

For all of you, my friends: for those who have courageously but mostly individually gone out to protest, and for now have gotten only light sentences, but soon will get much stiffer ones.

For the thousands of you who have signed petitions, who have expressed your disapproval on social networks (maybe only with a black square on Instagram), or who have spoken out in private to your colleagues at work. The days when one got ten years of deprivation of liberty for a joke, or even twenty-five, are not that far in the past, and now they are also in your future, most likely. And who then will speak out for you? Who will be left?

The Ukrainians, now even more than in 2014, are setting a terrifying example for Putin’s regime: they are showing that he can be fought, and that if one is clever, and motivated, and courageous, he can even be stopped, no matter what his overwhelming superiority on paper.

Of course, nearly no one in Russia is aware of this, apparently, or even that there is a war on. But you, my friends, know what is happening. You read the foreign news on the internet, you all have friends or even relatives in Ukraine whom you message.

And Putin knows that you know. So be careful. You know where this is heading. The days of the good life in return for your silence are over now. Your elections are a joke, your laws, except for the repressive ones, aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, your last free media is gone, your economy is collapsing faster than I can write, you no longer even have credit cards to buy a plane ticket out, if there are flights left. Now Putin won’t just want your silence, he will want your acquiescence, your complicity. And if you won’t give it him what it he wants, you can either try to leave, somehow, or be crushed. I doubt you see any other choice.

Yet there is one. Which is finally to topple this regime. It probably would take less than you think, in the current situation. Think about it. The spark won’t come from you: with the economic collapse that is about to hit Russia, it will most likely come from the provinces, from the lesser cities; there, when prices soar and salaries are no longer paid, all those people who voted for Putin all these years, because they wanted bread and peace, will come out onto the streets.

Putin knows this, and he fears them far more than he fears the intellectuals and the middle class of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg — you, my dear friends. But if each city demonstrates on its own, as already has occasionally happened, it will not be difficult for him to move and suppress them. Things will need to be coordinated, organized. The mob will need to be turned into a mass. You have this magnificent and magic tool called the internet, which the regime can hinder, but which can be made to work regardless of almost any circumstances.

Navalny’s organisation has been dismantled, but others can be formed, more informal ones, more decentralized. You are very numerous, you are millions. The Moscow police can handle thirty thousand people in the street, a hundred thousand. More than three hundred thousand, they would be overwhelmed. They would have to call in the army, but would this army fight for Putin, when it came down to it? After what he has made them do in Ukraine, what he has done to them?

There will be terrible danger, of course. Some of you will be afraid, and those of you with children will be terrified of something happening to them. This is natural, it is normal. I, too, in your place, would be afraid. In Syria, and now in Ukraine, Putin sought to show you, by example, what happens to a people who dare to defy their khozein, their master and owner, who dare not only to ask for freedom but actually to try and take it. Yet if you do nothing, so many will be lost anyhow. And you know it.

One of your sons will make a joke on a video game chat, and will be arrested; one of your daughters will express her indignation on internet and will be arrested; a dear friend of yours will make a mistake and will die in a dank cell under the sticks of the police. This is what has been happening for years now, and is what will continue to happen, on a greater and greater scale. So you have no choice. If you do nothing, you know how it will end.  Now is the time for your own Maidan. Be smart, be strategic, and find a way to make it happen.