Maxim Shevchenko
Marina Ovsyannikova, a former employee of Russian state television’s Channel One, was seen hoisting an anti-war placard, its message addressed personally to the President of Russia, on Sofiyskaya Embankment, directly across from the Kremlin. In today’s Russia the very text of the poster is grounds for criminal prosecution, so I will not reproduce its video or photo. Some time ago, Ovsyannikova had also gone on the air with another anti-war message, after which she was forced to quit.
But anchorwoman Ksenia Sobchak, for many still the face of the liberal opposition, condemned her, declaring the demonstration on the embankment to be nothing more than an ostentatious gesture to the public. Sobchak’s style of argument here amounts to little more than outright meanness. Indeed, Sobchak herself has also attended a protest, though only one. Boosted by the support of the presidential administration and by the benevolent protection of someone higher up, she marched in Grozny in 2018 with a placard in support of human rights activist Oyub Titiev - for which we thank her.
This is what the game allowed in 2018 - Sobchak met with Titiev, she met with an opposition candidate (one who dared challenge Putin himself!) in the city of Vladimir, where Svetlana Orlova - impeccably loyal to the Kremlin - was then the governor, she attended meetings of the United Russia party youth, and she was allocated the best halls.
Today times are different, and the games are over. But it still would be better for Ksenia not to speak in such a tone. It doesn’t suit her.
Ovsyannikova, meanwhile, has gone straight to prison, in spite of children and a career in the free West, because her soul is screaming and her heart is torn to pieces. Because in her, as in many other people born in the Soviet Union, a cold-blooded, intellectual understanding of what is happening simply will not do: the cities that for people of my generation (Marina is somewhat younger) were ours, that were family, are now burning and writhing in pain.
For Russians born in 1991, Ukraine has been a different state all their lives, Ukrainian cities and villages are the lands of the imaginary “khokhols.”
For many Ukrainians of the same generation, Russia is the “country of katsapia,” where “orks” and “Muscovites” live.
Mutual dehumanization, depersonalization.
The masters of capital (made up of former communists and Soviet security forces) - who, judging by the powerless and bitter lives of both, cares about neither Russians nor Ukrainians - generally regards these epithets as cards to play in geopolitical games, of much less concern than the manipulation of the finances of gas pipes, steel factories, grain ports and of their own status. This is typical of these kinds of gods on Earth. I’m not interested in them at all.
Further down, there are still quite a few people in uniform who conceal their thoughts behind epaulettes, behind their devotion to the state, and their sense of duty. But not everyone is able to calmly repeat the soothing mantras of propaganda, or to hide behind the state.
Ovsyannikova, for example, who was born in Odessa, who survived the beginning of the Chechen war in Grozny as a child living with her mother, and who has close relatives in Ukraine, is not capable of this. She has been subjected to unprecedented pressure and defamation both in Russia, where she was called a traitor, and in Ukraine, where, as en employee of state television and Channel One, her motives were questioned.
In fact, she was left no place on Earth, so she has emigrated to that imaginary USSR, where Odessa, Vinnitsa, Kremenchug, and Donetsk with Mariupol (then it was called Zhdanov) were not simply dots on the map, occupied by “Banderas” or “katsaps,” but living cities, with working factories, children in schools, and where one could visit from Moscow during the summer holidays. Her pain and grief are sincere. The scale of the ongoing tragedy is too vast to fit in her mind. She cannot remain calm. She is like an open wound. That she should be thrown into prison or prosecuted for this offends any sense of order or justice.
Her behavior is absolutely Russian, and sis in keeping with the spirit of Russian culture and Russian ethics. Did not Dostoevsky himself demand that we answer whether the harmony of the world was worth a child’s tears? Is there a true Russia outside of this question?
Hence the torment, hence the sincerity, hence the march, hence the placard, for which she met with a prison sentence.
All we can do is ask for mercy.
Ms. Ovsyannikova was so much more than a media figure, compelled to express a heartfelt rejection of the Ukraine war. Her personal history, love of family are strong reminders of what makes us human, and never immune to the inhumanity of conflict. Sadly, though, Russian and Ukraine leadership could not choose any other path to determine the future of Donetsk and Luhansk Republics. The West simply does not care. I would hope that Ms. Ovsyannikova remembers that her actions are not reviled, and her love of country was never in doubt! Thank you for your contribution!
It's terrible that Ovsynnikova is shunned by both the mainstream in Russia as well as the established liberal opposition.
I agree completely that her protest was an act of genuine dissent and a gut response to the situation. It doesn't matter a jot that she worked in state TV for years, if anything it makes her recent actions even more powerful. That's what redemption is.
Dissent without some sort of major sacrifice is so often simply a pose