Convoy: If Russian Patriotism is a Threat to Business - So be it (Izvestia, Russia)
"Yesterday
I heard a charming, cynical phrase: 'The humanitarian convoy is a threat to
large Russian businesses. Because it is interfering with the internal affairs
of Ukraine, it irritates the West, and now no one wants to do business with our
businessmen. We cannot be trusted.' … The interests of business and the
interests of the nation very often do not coincide. When the mood, passion, love
and indignation of the people boil, then, of course, one must sacrifice the
interests of business. The priority of business is a liberal fashion, carried
to the point of an absurdly vulgar economism. All
movements of humanity are explained by the economy, but this is a great lie, a
big mistruth."
Writer
and politician Eduard Limonov on the cynicism of
those trying to expose Russia's humanitarian convoy to Ukraine.
The boundaries between states never completely cut people
off from one another.
Let's say, for example, that Mongols live not only in
Mongolia, but in our Russian Buryatia and Tuva. These are all - Mongol tribes. And our esteemed
Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu, paradoxically, comes from the same tribe as the
commander for Genghis Khan, SubetaiBahadur. You might
recall the Battle of the
Kalka River, when for the first time Mongols defeated the Russian princes.
This is a trap, a hook I have caught you on, so you will
read on with interest.
Let's turn to the Donetsk and Lugansk
regions, toward which a Russian humanitarian convoy consisting of 280 trucks is
dashing at great speed. Is this a great patriotic notion to gain the moral
advantage over the Kiev authorities, where a militant revolutionary-nationalism
bubbles, which is ruthlessly destroying everything alive in Donbass? Their
missiles are roaring across the sultry sky this hellish summer, and the Kiev
revolutionaries have forgotten any humanity.
Yet we go to Donbass with sugar, medication, water, flour,
pasta, canned food and baby food. We will rise again.
Already in Russia, there are clever people who are
searching, spying, peeping through and exposing - exposing a humanitarian
convoy, of all things! It has arrived!
It fell to some anonymous soldier to inform that "KAMAZ"
lorries and other trucks of the humanitarian convoy
were military - but painted white (he saw this), and a howl went up on the social
networks.
Although, what's the difference? It is clear that they were
painted so as not to frighten the Kiev revolutionaries with khaki. They made
the convoy white so it wouldn't be bombed.
It is
appropriate here to refer to the bearded little anecdote, "do you want
a ride, or do you want to play checkers?" There is a deeper foul and
underlying motive.
These spies
and incriminators have a purpose: to hurt the Russian authorities - because
they are authorities and are Russian.
Forgotten are
the ashes of bombarded homes, the thousands of civilians killed, the children
carried out on stretchers, the crying women and the elderly. Everything
referred to as democratic principles and principles of humanity, taught to us
so didactically before the war, has been forgotten. Only a hatred of authority,
and therefore hatred of the uprising in Donbass, remains.
The postulate
pushed forward consistently is "We have nothing to do here; it is
Ukraine."
When administrative units were formed within the Soviet
Union, including the USSR, no one thought that the border of the southern
Russian region of Donbass would be split in two, and would fall under separate
states - Russian and Ukrainian. Because at the time, there was only one: the
USSR.
Now, with rage and foaming lips, they want to subjugate
Russian Donbass. Yes, Ukrainians live there, but they are not a majority.
Moscow liberals scream that it isn't Russians speaking the
language of wheat.
Here, the famous nationalist of the 1990s comes in my mind, Alexander Barkashov.
When I went to him and asked - I think it was in 1996 -
whether his people of the Russian National Unity Party
in Kokchetav would help the Russian uprising to
separate the region from Kazakhstan, Barkashov told
me calmly: "Those are not real Russians, Eduard,
they have been all mixed up like people in a prison."
Today, liberals have actually taken Barkashov's position by saying that those speaking in
Donbass aren't Russians. This is Ukraine, so therefore Russia should wash its
hands.
So, as it happens, that Russian state
was more honest, compassionate, humane and democratic, than the liberals.
But liberals agree with much more
cynical things.
Yesterday I heard a charming, cynical
phrase: "The humanitarian convoy is a threat to large Russian businesses.
Because it is interfering with the internal affairs of Ukraine, it irritates
the West, and now no one wants to do business with our businessmen. We cannot
be trusted."
This is quite simply wrong.
I want to say that the interests of
business and the interests of the nation very often do not coincide. When the
mood, passion, love and indignation of the people boil, then, of course, one
must sacrifice the interests of business.
People and their mood is the
priority.
The priority of business is a liberal
fashion, carried to the point of an absurdly vulgar economism.
All movements of humanity are explained by the economy, but this is a great
lie, a big mistruth.
Upwellings that result in the movement of humanity have always been
about passion.
Love and hate.
We love our heroic Donbass, and you
who don't love it are in the vast minority.
And for that, you will pay.
You will still be throwing stones.
Because you,
who have set your sights on the love of the people, are pygmies.
*Eduard Limonov is a Russian writer and political dissident, and
founder of the National Bolshevik Party. An opponent of Vladimir Putin, he is
one of the leaders of The Other Russia political bloc.
