Exhibition: Berglind - WHO IS AFRAID OF A RUSSIAN ДOLL?
Berglind - WHO IS AFRAID OF A RUSSIAN ДOLL?
Preview: Friday 15 July, 6.30 – 9.30pm.
A cutting-edge art exhibition by Berglind, an Edinburgh based artist
Part 2: Dear Gorby.
Dear Gorby,
At the last Russian presidential elections in which you, the Darling of the West, dared to participate, you received just 0.51% of the vote. So, when I am expressing my opinion about you now, this isn't just my opinion. It is an opinion of the majority of my people, whether you like it or not.
Westerners, as a rule, have no idea about our life - neither before you, Gorby, not under you, nor after. I met people in the West who were trying to tell me what life was like in the country where I have lived for 17 years – while they have never even been there. Unlike these people, I really have the right to compare both systems as I have lived for 13 years in the West now, in several countries.
But I noticed that many people here also simply do not want to know how we did live in the USSR. It might destroy the whole vision of the world that they are receiving from childhood on. It is therefore far more convenient to dismiss everything that doesn’t fit into their mental picture created by the media and the schools, as “communist propaganda”.
I do not like you, Gorbi, just as many millions of my compatriots. Why should we like you? Our population is diminishing with 1 million per year. Premature deaths, an enormous amount of murders, civil war, emigration, human trafficking and homelessness are your heritage. In Moscow there are about 50.000 homeless children – something we didn’t have even during the darkest days of WWII! There are 3 to 5 millions of such children in the whole country. The same as the whole population of some European countries!
What should I like you for? For the freedom of speech? Who cares? It never existed anywhere anyway. All the mass media of the world today is under the USA’s strict control and vigilant eye. They tell us what to think, they tell us what to believe and they tell us what the news is and what news is the news. Where I live now people don’t really care about the freedom of speech, they are so wrapped up in the X-Factor that they wouldn’t notice if an aircraft had hit their building.
Freedom of movement? It is only for those 3% of the Russia’s population who are spending their holidays on Bahamas now – while millions of Russians can no longer afford to visit their parents in theneighbouringUkraine once a year. And when we, finally-free-to-move people, come here to the West, we are not welcome, unless we come with the stolen millions, of course.
What about women’s rights? Before you, Gorby, all the ways in life, except, perhaps, for prostitution, were broadly open for our women. It is thanks to your “democracy and freedom” that Russian women now get fired first, have to sleep with their boss in order to keep their jobs and when being hired have to sign contracts that they will not get pregnant for the next 3 years.
There is a big difference between “democracy” and “demuckracy”.
Today our women and children are being sold into sex-slavery in the West – as much as 50.000 of them per year. This is also your heritage, Gorby. This is, certainly not “democracy”, not even “demuckracy”. This is a classic form of modern genocide. If I were you, I’d wake up in cold sweat every night and think about all of those who perished after your “reforms”. If I were you I would think about lives of all those who died in the civil armed conflicts, those who drank himself to death to escape reality which was terrifying, or those who had to sell a kidney to be able to buy food for their kids, those young girls who cut their veins because they were sold abroad just like cattle to satisfy sexual fantasies of well-fed distinguished Western gentlemen with thick wallets, - they are on your conscience. But you have been too busy writing your books and giving lectures around the world about “human values”. Do you know that in some parts of the former USSR nowadays they already operate you withoutanaestheticsif you can’t pay in dollars?
Please, don’t bother us with definitions of “democracy and freedom” in general any more. A politician should be judged by this, very straightforward criteria: has the life become better for the majority of his people because of his politics or not? But you just keep talking about “freedom”. In fact, we already had it all in the USSR - free adequate medical care, free and very good education, low rents, job security, paid maternity leave, the list can go on and on and on - and we have given it all away for an empty promise of “freedom”. That is, freedom for those who can pay for it - a bunch of oligarchs - and slavery for the majority who work to feed them.
I wonder if you sometimes think about those who have lost everything because of the “reforms” for which the West is so grateful to you, Gorby: work, security in life, opportunity to study, basically, any form of a decent life for a human being for themselves and for their children. You are clearly not a democrat. You have destroyed every such opportunity in your home country – my country - and have not built anything decent in return.
Do I, actually, have to like you? You have taken away from me the very thing freedom is impossible without - the freedom to make choices. I like living in the West. But I doubt I would live here, in Britain, or in any other country if I had a choice – if you, Gorby, wouldn’t have made, with your politics, survival for any decent human being in my own country impossible.
So, for the sake of “demuckracy and prugress”, please, try and stop your pathetic, desperate attempts to rise from your political grave.Why won’t you just keep entertaining your Western friends with singing “Kalinka” to the balalaika or dance on the table? Or, even better: why won’t you consider ageing with grace? You have fallen so much in price since your prime anyway.
Bye, Gorby,
Berglind, your ex-pat.