“Should Petya go to war?” Rita hasn’t been able to get the thought out of her head for months. Even after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the end of mobilization a few days ago, he did not budge. “No, Petya is not going to battle,” Rita decided. Just as she has decided that as a family they will turn their backs on their country. “Finally.”
The doctor, who for security reasons does not want to give her last name, is standing on this sunny autumn day on the New Arbat in Dom Knigi, the city’s only state-run bookstore and the country’s largest bookstore, looking for Hebrew textbooks. “I don’t want to emigrate unprepared. I want to learn at least a little about the language.” She flips through the thin pages, looking at the Russian transcription of the Hebrew letters. There are not many Hebrew books here.
When Rita was still a child, the family wanted to emigrate to Israel. Also as a teenager, as a student and later as a mother. She always stayed. She started demonstrating when demonstrating was still possible in the country. But now she wants to protect herself, she wants to protect her child from ever-increasing indoctrination, she wants Petja, her husband, to stay with them.
His military booklet says “unfit”, but that is no guarantee. «Emigration was not my plan, I love my country. However, for almost nine months I have not recognized it. Better the uncertainty abroad than the uncertainty here,” says Rita. She is not yet 40 years old.
war in every home
Russia’s summer of repression has given way to an autumn of unrest. With the mobilization, the war moved into every living room. Although officially declared over, military commissars continue to send draft messages. Putin did not sign a decree before the end. He doesn’t think that’s necessary, “and period”. The army gets more soldiers that way.
In addition, conscripts have been drafted since the beginning of November. After only three months of basic service, the army is allowed to hand over the recruits documents as contract soldiers and send them to the front after signing.
Some still hide in the forest to escape the grip of the state. An IT specialist from southern Russia who calls himself “Adam, the logical forest ranger” describes his life as a digital recluse in the wilderness on the Telegram channel of the same name. This way he feels safe for the conscripts.
The 23-year-old filmmaker Robert from Moscow is also hiding – within his own four walls. He does not believe in rest. “The state has lied to us time and time again. ‘Special Operation’, ‘Partial Mobilization’, ‘Partial Martial Law’. He’s going to keep fooling us, and he’s pretty good at it. Very few of us really know what is happening in Ukraine.” He does not open the door to anyone, if it is not arranged, he has his food delivered at home. “It has become impossible to make plans.”
Almost two months ago, Robert unsuspectingly went to a drawing office and handed in his papers. “Doing his duty”, as he puts it. “I was stupid.” He condemned the war from the start, went to demonstrations and always escaped the authorities. But then came the Powestka, the concept note. He took a certificate from his psychologist, convinced it would declare him unfit for combat. The doctors on site wanted to investigate further. “Anti-aircraft gunner,” says his military booklet. A category that is currently in high demand.
For two hours he had to go from one examination to the next, from one conversation to the next. Robert stuttered, couldn’t stand on one leg because everything was spinning, things fell out of his hands. The doctors eventually confirmed a nervous breakdown. He can only vaguely remember the day, says Robert. He spent two weeks in a neurological clinic. The Powestka is still on his desk. The date is long gone.
A man must defend the fatherland
But the fatherland, the state tells its citizens, the propagandists ruin it daily on television and repeat it on the street, must be defended. A man is not a wimp, a man must pay his debt to his fatherland. Women also pray for such principles.
At mass weddings, couples have said yes in recent weeks. To make it easier to deal with the authorities in case of injury or death. Immediately after the ceremony, soldiers took the men to the bus to the training camp. The students are now missing their teachers and public transport is missing its drivers.
The first to be mobilized today return to Russia in zinc coffins. An IT specialist from Moscow, for whom a lawyer fought with the authorities with seven complaints and achieved nothing. A St. Petersburg lawyer who should not have been summoned at the age of 40. A 24-year-old from the Sverdlovsk region of the Urals, who is survived by a woman and his one-year-old child. After the death of a mobilized Moscow city government official, his superior wrote that the authorities should stop lying. authorities, of which it is also a part.
Many people from the city council in the capital are now secretly quitting their jobs and never coming back. Colleagues later find their resignations in the desk drawers, find their unwashed coffee cups. In some departments, up to 30 percent of employees are said to be missing, reports the Russian-language online medium “Wjorstka” (Layout).
IT specialists in particular are lacking in a city whose mayor has been focusing on digitization for years and has successfully pushed through. But such issues are not part of the official discourse. Instead, the mayor promises immediate kindergarten places for the families of those who have been mobilized, wants the wives of those called up to enter the labor market “unbureaucratically” and offers free psychological help to those left behind.
Schedule until evening
The unpredictability that exhausts you has lasted for almost nine months. The news – of repression, of arrests, of slander – also of celebrities, they hardly affect anyone anymore. Ksenia Sobchak, Putin’s goddaughter and challenger in the 2018 presidential election, fled to Lithuania because she is on trial in Russia? Alla Pugacheva, the Soviet pop diva whose songs can still be sung by everyone in the country, emigrated to Israel and was subsequently publicly humiliated as a traitor?
No one is holy in the land anymore, no one is safe anymore. Everyone got the message, most of them keep their mouths shut and lead a life where “you can only plan until the evening”, as they say with half amusement. They don’t laugh about it.
“Prisposobilis”, they explain. “We adapted.” Adjusting to the higher prices, the fact that some medicines are missing, that many shops, even in the best locations, are empty and the windows say “for rent”. That they have to take out loans to buy winter clothes, that after car accidents they have to wait months for spare parts, for which they pay exorbitant amounts of money. They have adapted to fear and uncertainty being their constant companions.
Shops are reopening
Life goes on, what’s the problem? The Ikea logo will be removed from the store walls? “We have the furniture manufacturer Hoff,” they say. Zara closed? A few months later, the stores reopen under “New Fashion” and with new retailers.
Starbucks cafes are now called Stars Coffee, McDonalds fast food restaurants are called Lecker und Punkt, KFC Rostiks. Where Lego used to be, you will now find “The World of Cubes” shops, plastic construction sets are also available here. Mail order companies such as Wildberries, a kind of Russian Amazon, also continue to offer products that have long since disappeared from the shops. Nespresso, Adidas, Armani. “Prisposobilis”.
In the Dom Knigi, the Moscow bookshop on New Arbat, on the first floor, next to the stairs, new editions of George Orwell’s “1984” lie next to the equally dystopian “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin, the first book to be published in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, novels by writers who speak out against the war and who have left the country are disappearing in other Russian shops. Some books are labeled “foreign agent”. The surveillance state wants to control everything, rewrites history, distorts reality. “1984” is very real outside the Dom Knigi. (aargauerzeitung.ch)
Soource :Watson
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
