Welcome in The New North Korea
My stepdad is dying. Dying of autoimmune disease and in the hospital back in Scotland right now, with probably only a few days to live. A man I love very much, who has been in my life for a third of it. And my mum is struggling at his bedside, while I am sitting on the Estonian side of the border from Russia, thinking what I can possibly do to make a difference in this war and to protect my friends? I feel rage, burning intense rage, at what the dictator is doing. And will continue to do. He will not stop. Unless he is stopped. But as much as I want to fight and as horrible it is to admit, but there is little a foreign citizen can do about from within the country-I would just be used as propaganda and delegitimised and made an example of- and it seems clear that maybe the only people that can stop him, if World War 3 is to be avoided, is the Russian people, in Russia.
I started teaching English in Saint Petersburg 8 months ago. And it became a home unlike any other place that I had been. I loved it and loved the people. And got rooted into many different communities.
Initially, I was struck by the shyness and uncertainty of the adults I was teaching. A strange nervousness in them. A reluctance, and fear, to ask questions or speak out in the classroom, even though my lessons were fun and interactive, and I had had lots of success with them before. In 6 years of teaching students all around the world, it was very odd and unusual for me.
And I also noticed, as I moved around the city, the common feeling of cynicism in the locals. A pessimism, like a cloud above their heads. Even of a Godlessness in them. Again and again I met them, people of various ages from 20 to 50, with a dark sadness in their eyes, an edge of frustrated despair knitted deep in their brows, that would often come out of them vocally only when they were drunk.
The number 2 question that I got after “Where are you from?” Was “WHY ARE YOU HERE?!” Many were visibly surprised that I could want to be there at all, when they were all wanting to go the other way, and get out! Young people especially.
But as the months went by, I was bowled over by their kindness and warmness, at their attempts to make me feel comfortable despite my extremely limited Russian. People inviting me into their homes. Or randomly buying me drinks then disappearing somewhere never to be seen again. Or telling me to wait where I was, while they ran off to look for an English speaker for me to talk to, so that I didn’t feel uncomfortable. And so many many other situations that make me have to say that they are some of the biggest warmest-hearted human beings I have ever met in my life.
But the cynicism and sadness, and the pessimism, and fear of speaking out, had reason. I had thought it was all because of something left over from the Soviet Times- the trauma that their parents went through and had been passed down to them, or that they had experienced themselves when they were young children. But in fact, it was still going on then. And is still going on now. They ARE almost still in Soviet times in that they are living under the direction and shadow of a dictator.
I went to two street protests which were quickly shut down. The people holding placards grabbed by fascist soldiers and dragged into the back of waiting police vans. Some more violently than others. I was only 5 yards away from one child-faced-17-year-old as he tried to run desperately from 6 burly soldier fascists, his eyes full of fear. He got caught, -and was pulled away through the air into the waiting van. Around him the crowd of bystanders remained quiet, some videoing on their cameras, others twitching nervously, but the reluctance to express what they felt was palpable, their fear hovering in the air, while it took everything within me to hold myself back from reaching out for the boy and trying to help him get away.
That fear is in the people now. They protested 2 years ago for Navalny, the only opposition leader who stood up against the dictator, and they were shut down then and they are shut down now. Navalny was made an example of, poisoned, then locked up in a prison on false charges, in a political system and lawlessness that could only have been created by a former leader of the KGB.
A great many Russians do not want this war. They have lost college and university places, their businesses bust, lost opportunities, the ability to travel. I have friends who have studied hard in things like International Tourism for 5 years, and for what? They ask me.
But the fear is there and it is real. Go to a protest and you risk being beaten or locked up, for up to 15 years. Or losing your job, or being kicked out of university. Simply for being against war and asking for peace.
The movement desperately needs leadership and organisation. Without Navalny that was lost. And the groups are so scattered that each time a small protest starts, the fascist police instantly shut it down. Sometimes all it takes is a gathering of people to assemble- they don’t even have to say or do anything- the police beat them up and drag them away to disperse them.
It is chilling, brutal tactics, brought out by an evil, tyrannical, despotic government that is in so many ways the same as the Stalinist regime from the 1930s and 1940s. And unfortunately, unless the Russian people can do something- can gather the collective courage and the organisation to do it together- THEN THINGS WILL ONLY GET WORSE. It has been going this way for years. Before the dictator started on the Ukrainians, he had started on the Russians. The country is turning into North Korea.
Some Russians are supportive of the dictatorship though. Mostly old people, or ignorant or naive people, or those that get hand-fed their news by the state media. And of course the brainwashed members of the army, who actually believed that they were going in to liberate Ukrainians from…from what..nazi robot aliens or something?!
And while there is absolutely every reason for any Russian to point fingers back at the west, saying, “Who are you to tell us not to invade a country?” which is a very valid point. But the fact is it is not just about a war, or an empire. It is about fighting fascism! Or else allowing it to happen to you.
Some other Russians claim that they are neutral. Say that they “Don’t pick sides.” Do the Ukrainian people get a choice to pick sides? They fight, or they die and let their country be taken over. And Russians can’t sit on the fence either. Unless they choose fascism. Because the longer they are silent, the more the government will break them down and walk all over them.
Some cannot admit their real feelings to themselves. So they sit on the fence and in repression, pushing all those negative thoughts deep down where they hope to ignore them. To let all that emotion out and realise and admit to yourself that what is happening is really wrong, what your government is doing is wrong, and that you have the power and choice to do something, but that you could suffer for it, your family could suffer for it, is a hard thing to do. So many of the population remain in a cowed silence, while the country walks further into fascism.
I really really love Russia. I love the Russian people. Including the many who came up to me in the street in the days after the invasion, crying and telling me that they are ashamed of themselves and ashamed of their country, but that they didn’t want this, it is the government and him. And I feel for them and love them and really want them to be okay. I have left so many close friends there who I worry about every day. But after so much analysing, I realised that unless I can get to the dictator myself, then there is nothing I can do as a foreign citizen. This has to be fought and won by the Russians in Russia. And I hope to God that they can, and he falls, and freedom and free will wins. Or some very dark times are ahead.