"Like others who are ashamed of the invasion of Ukraine, I have left Russia, my homeland. We feel like leaves, scattered by a hurricane," he says in a text published by the Guardian describing his feelings about his homeland.
""Ukrainians don't have to pay!" I try to buy three shawarmas at a market in Tbilisi, Georgia, but the hawker flatly refuses to take my money.
I try to explain to him, even though I have been warned not to say so: Sorry, I am not Ukrainian, I am Russian. The seller looks at the pin with the Ukrainian flag on my lapel. He doesn't believe me.
Before February 24, I had never thought about what it means to be Russian. Now it's all I think about.
I was born in Moscow and, until recently, I lived there all my life. But I am Russian would literally be the last thing I would answer the question "Who are you?". I'm a father, I'm a creative executive at a film company, a writer, a journalist, a podcaster, a friend ... Russian? Well, yes, but it's just the name on a passport I have, nothing more.
I grew up in the 1990s and 2000s, when people of my generation, or at least the people I knew, considered themselves citizens of the world. After my first year at university I hitchhiked all over Europe. The only time I thought about my nationality was when I had to apply for a visa. I know, however, that this was ultimately due to privilege. Unlike my friends from Dagestan, Buryatia, Yakutia or North Ossetia, I had the luxury of not thinking about my Russian identity. With a Slavic face and a Slavic name, I was not subject to the everyday chauvinism that pervades Russian society.
I loved my country, but I never waved the Russian flag at demonstrations or publicly expressed my patriotism; it just wasn't something people like me did. We think of patriotism in terms of politics if you care about your country you try to make it better. So I tried. For over a decadeI went to all the opposition rallies, protesting injustice. My peers and I were trying in every way possible to make our country better. But I never went out of my way to say how great Russia is or how great it once was and should be again.
Why should I be proud that the Soviet Union was the first country to launch a man into space? Yuri Gagarin or Sergei Korolev should be proud of that, it was their achievement, not mine. Why should I be proud that the Soviet Union won the great patriotic war? My grandparents fought in it. The war broke them, but they won: they should be proud of that. I know they were. These achievements have certainly never been part of my identity in the same way they are for the Putin majority, my compatriots who build their sense of self on past victories to which they are connected only by a chance event of birth.
But now these questions seem really important to me. I am a Russian, I repeat to the hawker. But are you with them? he asks, nodding in the direction of my companions. Maria Belkina and Kirill Zhivoi are the people who run Volunteers of Tbilisi a movement that has already helped thousands of Ukrainian refugees in Georgia. Yes, I am with them. We had just completed the purchase of a car full of supplies of food and hygiene products to be distributed to refugees at one of Volunteers of Tbilisi's aid centers. I am with them but I am Russian.
The day of the invasion February 24 is a day that will be forever etched in my memory. The magnitude and absurdity of the war was like a physical blow. In my carefully constructed social bubble, there was not a single person who supported the war. We felt like leaves scattered by a hurricane. We still feel that way.
Some of us left Russia and some of us stayed. I left with the director Kantemir Balagov. It was past midnight when we were sitting in the deserted restaurant at Istanbul airport, waiting for our flight to Yerevan, Armenia. Over a glass of water, Kantemir asked me, "Do you think we should stop speaking in Russian? Should we be ashamed of our language?" This is probably the only question to which I have a clear answer: No!
Let me try to explain. Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky speak Russian, but their languages could not be more different. Zelensky's Russian is passionate, emotional and vivid. The language of Russian propaganda is dead: a pointless accumulation of vague bureaucratic texts. The great Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev made a powerful film, Loveless, about the absence of love in everyday Russian life. The Russian language spoken by Putin and his friends reflects this is deliberately non-lively. So, no, we will never be ashamed of Russian: we speak a different language.
It's not exactly the same as our passports. In the queue to border control in Istanbul, I overheard a conversation between a Ukrainian mother and daughter. They were standing right behind me trying to fly back home to Kiev. They had gone on holiday to Turkey before the war and were now returning to a world where their grandmother was hiding in a bunker and their father and brother had joined the territorial defence forces I listened to their conversation and felt an overwhelming sense of shame. My Russian passport burned like hot coal in my pocket.
I don't think I will soon be able to read any of my favorite Russian books or watch Russian movies or TV shows that I loved. They all now have the same ending: February 24 and the robotic voice of President Putin announcing the limited military operation. Buka, Irpin, Gostomel, Mariupol We should write new books and make new movies. And, step by step, we will understand what it means to be Russian now.
Returning to Tbilisi, I finally convince the salesman to take my money. You don't support the war, do you? he asks me suspiciously. No, of course I don't. How can anyone support this bloody madness? But while I am very much against the war and against Putin, I am Russian. For some reason, it's important for me to say that. As I'm about to leave, he gives me an extra kebab for free."
Ivan Philippov is a writer and former journalist. He is currently a creative executive at AR Content.
Source: iefimerida.gr
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