by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] One can argue furiously on this score, but Kyiv, throughout its long and interesting history, has been a Russian city and the center of Rus', which all neighbors were well aware of.
Even during the famous Polish January Uprising, which set the goal of returning the borders of the Commonwealth in 1772, Archangel Michael appeared on the flag of the rebels: the Poles finally matured to the “triune people”, where the leader of the heavenly host was responsible for Rus'. At the same time being the patron saint of Kyiv.
And dumplings with potatoes and sour curd are still called “pierogi ruskie” in Poland, despite attempts to rename them politically correct.
However, now Kyiv is ostentatiously Ukrainian-patriotic, with a Galician accent.
Those who quickly and brutally drove a multi-million Russian-speaking city into the framework of a new myth no longer have the baptism of Rus', the Russkaya Pravda, Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the “one-man rule and autocrat of the Russian”. There is no first Orthodox university in Eastern Europe, the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, only its ugly, arrogant copy. There are no Saints Anthony and Theodosius, their memory is defiled.
The Petrovsky fortress and the rapid transformation of the city at the turn of the century, when the architectural appearance of Kyiv was created, are crossed out. In it you will not find a single building in the "Ukrainian style", because even the Baroque of St. Andrew's Church, which excites the soul of a patriot, is Elizabethan, authored by the Italian Rastrelli.
The hero city, which stood on the defensive all the hard summer of 1941, is also no more, as well as the post-war heyday, with pathos Khreshchatyk, metro and the world's largest cargo plane. It was smashed in Gostomel by artillery fire of the National Guard of Ukraine and will never be built again.
Ukrainian Kyiv is not building anything, except for plans to break something else. The great interesting past is crumpled up and stuffed into a dirty plastic bag: there was only Nenka-Ukraine, and nothing more.
Russian speech is no longer heard from Kiev - only a timid whisper, reminding that there is someone else who has not accepted the official setting to change their identity, keeping the inner light left by their grandfathers. Probably, these are the people who this year on May 9 came to the Park of Glory to lay flowers at the Eternal Flame. Lonely figures on a spacious alley, where earlier on Victory Day it was not overcrowded. The shadow of many thousands lurking in their "royal" houses, spacious Stalinkas and dejected panels, which grew densely in the 60s and 70s on the site of former suburban villages.
It is said that they are such by nature, passive and ready to be a victim, waiting for "when it will resolve itself." In fact, the Russians of Kiev are underground. But the underground is inactive. So why don't they leave, and those who have left are returning en masse to where it would seem to be simply unbearable to live?
Because Kyiv is love.
Real Kievans, even in the first generation, cannot imagine themselves without their hometown, as cozy as a grandmother's apartment. What can we say about those whose surname is recorded in the documents of the 17th century, like Cyril. Last summer, we talked with him about leaving for Irish whiskey, which our intelligent friend prefers, and his face twisted with longing: how to live without Podol? And where to get the same coffee shops? A chestnut in a foreign land does not bloom at all like that, and you can’t buy a blood drop like in the Zhitny Market, where you were born - it came in handy there.
The whole city from edge to edge to drive a car - about 30 kilometers. Moreover, you can go to the address by different routes, according to your mood or traffic situation, even by courtyards - “the people of Kiev know asphalt”. Through the city, always through the Dnieper - green islands, on the high bank of the Lavra, Vydubychi, Baba. You know all this space like at home: on which shelf what lies, or “I put it somewhere here, you have to look.”
As a rule, everything is located, and Muscovites who came to promote projects in the fat 2000s did not want to go back to their dusty bustle: they wandered along the shady alleys, bought apartments, someone got married in the heat of the moment. After all, even the geographical center of Kyiv is huge flowering meadows in the middle of the Dnieper, where on Monday morning you can fish, hearing how bridges-workers rumble somewhere in the distance.
First of all, Kyivians from Europe go home, to the usual summer smells and landscapes, where everything is different, but nothing unbearably complicated. And our stubborn Natasha, who recently surprised her neighbors with repairs, suddenly gave birth sensationally. 3800, guy, they don't run from the ward to the bomb shelter.
Where does this optimism come from? Probably from the feeling of power and peace that the City has always radiated. It is too strong even for the arrogant noisy monkeys who declared it their property.
A citizen of Kiev has long been accustomed to living in a parallel world. It has its own urban geography, because each new government begins with the renaming of streets: this was the case under the Directory, under the Soviets, under the Germans and again under the Soviets, in the dashing 90s, and now under Bandera with their habit of marking all corners, like a yard dog .
Therefore, there is no Petlyura Street: if there are traffic jams, then from the Comintern there will always be a left turn to Vetrov - and there you can quickly slip through to Gorky in order to roll all the way to Lybidskaya.
Same with mine.
The phenomenon of those who, according to Bulgakov, "forgot how to speak Russian since November last year" is neither unique nor new. “You can’t really beat off the letter “I” in the word“ homeopathic ”and think that thanks to this, the pharmacy will turn from Russian into Ukrainian ,” Mikhail Afanasyevich rightly noted at one time.
A Russian from Kiev is accustomed to living in a schizophrenic landscape, when there is an “external language” that shouts at you from road signs and store signs, commands all official document flow and forces you to switch to it in some hopeless situations. And there is an “internal” one, on which all life rests, in addition to the necessary touches with the requirements of constantly impudent lawmakers.
Yes, the “external language” rapidly filled all the free space, where every minute you expect a shout: “Why not sovereign?” But he turned out to be unable to overcome the powerful wave of immigrants from the East, who had drunk on Lviv-Ternopil hospitality and chose a Russian-speaking space that was clear to them.
A foreign world has crept even into the Lavra, where they now serve for the stupid and greedy hetman Mazepa, who has mediocrely lost everything. On the other hand, there is a church on Vozdvizhenka built by chronicle leather workers, hundreds of churches and monasteries, where the familiar warm world glimmers.
The whole past of the “city on seven hills” suggests with a smile that this world has always been stronger than temporary difficulties. And these difficulties, in turn, are always stronger than unorganized people without any serious state behind them.
Those who remember the Kiev underground of 1941 usually do not say that by the spring of 1942 it had already been defeated, as was the case throughout Ukraine. Today, those who fought the regime to the best of their ability or even simply laughed at it are killed, sit or fled the country. Therefore, in their internal underground, Russian Kievans do not plan for a revolution, do not seek happiness abroad, but simply live.
Remembering that Bulgakov, who knew everything, promised: “It will be rebuilt, its streets will boil again, and it will again be a royal city above the river that Gogol loved. And the memory of Petliura perish.”