Russia, the land that gave to the world the likes of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky. I remember as a teenager getting myself completely immersed in Russian and Soviet literature, the writers would bring the mysterious, far away, cold, beautiful land right into the doorsteps of my imagination. I can still feel shudders of joy and anticipation remembering the short stories of Chekhov, the depth and intellect of Dostoyevsky, the grandness of Gorky and Tolstoy’s stories. There used to be a few Russian libraries in the nineties Kathmandu, of which I used to be a regular visitor and borrower. From them I learnt to write myself, express my thoughts in a way I never knew existed. It helped create a new me, a mini writer who wanted to publish a collection of his own works, poems and stories and so forth. In high school we used to enthusiastically study Russia’s history, the revolutions, War and Peace, geography. The largest country in the world spanning multiple continents, so many time zones, Siberian forests, the Tundra, Vladivostok – Moscow Trans-Siberian train, the Red Square in Moscow, St Petersburg.
But what has happened recently in Ukraine completely blows my mind, a completely different Russia, bitter, angry, divided, occupier, brute, hopeless, scared, bully, fear mongering and worst, threat to the world. This is far far away from the great minds Russia had and still possess. This is Russia that seems to be hijacked and altered to bring out the worst by a maniac stuck on his own ideological mad house full of fears, suspicions and terror. Yes they do have valid security concerns because of the attitude of the West and expansion of NATO, but why Ukraine? Go hit the West if that is what is your concern and if you have the galls. The price Ukrainians are having to pay for basically just to survive the onslaught of one of the most powerful military turned schoolyard bully and having to die fighting for their freedom with unprovoked attack from the Russians cannot be justified in this century, their hurt will never heal, it will surely sow seeds of contempt for tomorrow.
The situation that brought Russia to this corner of history surely has many contributing factors. But the main architect definitely is their current president, who has stolen the narrative of the Russian history and moulded into his own ideological footprint. Putin seems to be erudite on one version of history where everything revolves around Russia, whether it is good or bad, and sovereignty and safety of others do not matter. He has repeated this with many smaller neighbours around his country, so who will be next if he is not stopped? Russia’s neighbors have valid reason for fear and are scrambling to join NATO, another long lasting threat to the world peace.
Russia of great power, brain power, literature and civilisation seems to have vanished and replaced by a powerful bully. Or has the bully just came to surface? We hope when the war in Ukraine ends eventually, it would be a different nation that would find its virtues and peace.
Ravi Tandukar 