On Saturday, long-time Soviet dissident and anti-Putin campaigner Valeriya Novodvorskaya died in Moscow from reported toxic shock. She was a hated critic of Putin, so it still remains to be seen how natural her death was. Her last blog post on 4 July is below, with translation by The Interpreter. Why are the Russian people silent? This is not the Russian people. This is a crowd with the world view of maniacally-depressive slaves. Where have you seen the Russian people in any large numbers? I saw them on 15 March, 50,000 people who came to defend Ukraine, which Soviet TV continues to remember with hatred ever since. This was the Russian people. The rest are the Soviet people. For Soviet people, the selection was normal: rising from their knees, “we’ll show them,” poverty, destruction, the beloved leadership giving the boot — they have the right to crush everyone, and not let anyone go anywhere. We don’t need anything, what we need, we’ll grab ourselves if it isn’t tied down. Normal Soviet psychology. Why were they silent when people were driven to Magadan, when they were dekulalified? They had grown accustomed to being silent. And those who didn’t want to be silent were destroyed in 70 years of Soviet government. Now there are only separate individuals, freaks, Boris Nemtsov, Kontantin Borovoy, who aren’t affected by the patriotic radiation of Ostaninko’s TV towers. But the Black Hundreds — that’s not the Russian people, but its shame. The Russian people still need to be invented somewhere. And newfound respect for veteran Russian singer Alla Pugacheva, who has firmly joined the anti-Putin ranks with numerous tweets supportive of Ukraine, slamming Russian interference in its internal affairs, and this one where she says If a million people come out at Novodvorskayas funeral and dont go home, Putin is screwed. Come on Russians!
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 23:29:56 +0000