Lunch break. I got off the metro train onto the platform to stretch my legs and then went to the Luxembourg Gardens to rest a little on a bench, as many others do, near the fountain and forget for some time about everything that is not connected with real life. A playful waiter brought a coffee and bounded towards a table at which a company of plump ladies sat. They had just raised and clinked glasses. It became clear they were Russian. They were having a very good time and laughing, and I mentally wished this moment would last for them as long as possible. The point is I was touched. On Thursday, the Monitoring Committee, here in Paris, welcomed Russian oppositionists for the first time – those who are not in the Duma, i.e., the blacklisted ones. They were Boris Nemtsov and Yevgeny Urlashov, the independent mayor of Yaroslavl which was dubbed “hot spot” during the elections. My European colleagues have got accustomed for many years to sitting at the committee sessions next to Russian “hawks,” the United Russia members, who call themselves opposition in the current Duma because they were elected to it, for example, on the “opposition leader” Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s party list. And now they saw an unusual specimen of Russians and began to mock, irrelevantly enough in my opinion, at them and flatter the “hawks” a little because they had got used to the latter’s shrill imperative voices. They asked: why are you taking to the streets, instead of debating in parliament? Why did you win, of all places, in Yaroslavl? Who allowed you to do so? Your opposition is headless, you are so different, and you don’t have a hero! And the “oppositionist” Slutsky asked: and who hinders you from developing civic movements?
The two guests would at first bend their heads and carefully write down all the one hundred questions, but then Nemtsov blew his top and said loudly: what a strange race of people you are! You ask why we are coming out on the streets, where we are beaten up. You perhaps do not know that the Russian parliament is not a place for debates, that it is full of people who are personally grateful to Putin and, just for this reason, they are MPs. We come out on the streets because the grassroots are, incidentally, the bearers of power, and they can only speak to one another if they come together – and they can only do so on the streets. For, ladies and gentlemen, Russia is a Eurasian Egypt. Is that clear? The ladies and gentlemen began to exchange glances, thinking whether or not they should scoff at the speaker but came to no conclusion. There can be different attitudes to Nemtsov, but nobody will deny that when he gets wound up, he is sure to break into a voluble text like this: “Gentlemen, whenever you are told that Russia is reforming, keep on smiling, please! The ‘party of frauds and thieves’ will never be able to change – under no circumstances.
It can only go extinct some time, as dinosaurs once did, but nobody can foresee when this cataclysm will occur. It may become left-wing or right-wing; if necessary, it will be social democratic or any other because this party is always about money and power rather than about an idea or an ideology. It has nothing but expensive gas and oil and, hence, it so far has everything. Are we allowed to develop civic movements? Yes, we are! For example, a movement in defense of animals if, of course, this does not hurt Putin’s dogs.” Yevgeny Urlashov, who beat the United Russia in Yaroslavl, said: “I don’t know how to explain to you why we won… Maybe, because strong people live in Yaroslavl. I held more than 250 meetings in courtyards in a 40 oC frost – and up to two hundred people would come to hear and speak to me. It is a very large figure, taking into account the biting frost. By all accounts, they no longer wanted to live a life like this. I would explain this to you as follows: it is the only place where the United Russia was made mincemeat of – so what is it now in Yaroslavl? You’re right: it is now the opposition! And I will do my best for the opposition to have its voice and place because the opposition is an asset in any country, for it keeps the situation healthy.” The new Russian mayor spoke out some absolutely non-Russian things. And then he suddenly said what only a Russian writer can usually say: “You are asking when we will have our heroes? The heroes will come out of the fog! You will not see them for some time… But they will soon come from the shadows.”
I do love him, no matter how things will go with him. Life is like a text – it has perhaps too little to learn from and can even seem a little bit funny. But whenever I hear texts of this kind, this lights a signal lamp in my brain: one more of ours, I can live on! This comes to your rescue when life comes again to the stage, where everything is hopelessly drab again, where the tracks of the train of your life run beyond the horizon which, as is known, you will never reach. “The heroes will come out of the fog.” When will this happen? Where should we look out from? Now we will have again to live a long life, and the secret of longevity is in a strong desire to know what will happen afterwards.
The two guests drew some applause and went. The “hawks” grinned, looked at each other, but kept silent. Moscow is going to see again a March of Millions on June 12. I think, for some reason, that they will be beaten up again, and a paddy wagon will take Nemtsov, Navalny and the company to the cooler. And there is no end in sight to this well-trodden Russian road. And our road has long been the same. So far, there is only a good text to relish – “The heroes will come from the shadows.”
It was good to get lost in thought at the Luxembourg Gardens. The silent sculptures of naked men sought my company, looking right into my eyes. The plump ladies had already emptied a nice-looking bottle of wine and partaken of fragrant steaks – they were now arguing about where to go to buy perfumes before flying home. We all had the pleasure of listening to a brass band – elegant messieurs in a uniform with broad stripes on the trousers were blowing some amorous story out of their golden trumpets. I came closer and read on the billboard that it was a French National Police band. What lovely and amicable policemen they were!
