Perm ONLINE

Robert Latypov

On Cold, Stubbornness, and One Awkward Word

The first “Returning the Names” in Perm took place on 26 October 2014. Cathedral Square in the city centre, a cold that was fierce even by Ural standards, a piercing wind off the Kama. I remember putting up the action’s banner with the volunteers — and thinking that everything could fall apart. Few people would come. Those who did would be irritated — “why do we need this.” Maybe Stalinists would show up to provoke us. That day the cold sounded almost like an order: stop, don’t do anything foolish, spare the people.

It turned out the opposite. The line to the microphone did not thin out. People came up one by one, read out a list of names of executed and nearly forgotten victims of the terror. They also named their own dead relatives. These were powerful feelings — for everyone, including us, the organisers. That walk of Permians onto the square became the event of the day and a reason for quiet pride among the participants in themselves. And then — already a shared question and demand: won’t this happen again? Why only once? The list of the executed is so large. Cold and fear no longer stopped anyone. A kind of ethical bar arose, without which public city life would seem to be missing something — and would already be dishonest.

The Perm authorities have never particularly helped us hold this action — but there are plenty of examples of how they hindered, delayed, intimidated, forbade. And the current Russian trends have long been clear to everyone. Nevertheless, we go on. I call this stubbornness for myself — and I don’t confuse it with the notion of “fanaticism.” The fanatic does not see the risks, or does not want to see them — he simply cannot stop, because the idea has replaced reality for him. The stubborn person, by contrast, weighs everything: the risks, the costs, the pressure, the limited resources — and still decides to go on. Stubbornness, in this case, preserves reason and judgement where fanaticism loses them.

Every year people take part in the “Returning the Names” — in different cities, countries, and continents. Because here they do not hear a lecture about the past — they hear themselves. Something that has long sat inside each of us as an unspoken answer to the evil and absurdity around us, here, for some reason, suddenly takes shape and finds a voice. And there is also the feeling that you are not alone with this. That you are part of something larger than your own personal anxiety or outrage. Part of a history that is not yet finished, that we have not yet dealt with. That is worth a great deal.

Russians are not the first, nor the only ones, to be burdened with such a terrible and “inconvenient” memory. Spain lived for almost forty years under a pact of silence after the Franco regime. Turkey still does not recognise the Armenian genocide. Japan long stayed silent about what it did in Asia during the Second World War. France spent decades building the myth of itself as a “nation of resistance,” passing over the collaborationism of the Vichy regime. The Poles had to endure a genuine shock from the book about Jedwabne — when it turned out that one must speak of oneself not only as a victim. And this is not always about state violence against “one’s own” — sometimes it is about what the supposedly “good ones among us” did, criminally, to “others.” It seems the hardest thing is not simply to recall the fact of a terrible past, but to take on responsibility, even without being personally involved or guilty.

I am convinced that this still awaits Russia — and perhaps sooner than some think. Reflection on the terror of the past century may recede, or has already receded, into the background before reflection on today’s criminal war — simply because it will be felt more sharply by those who live to see the moment when it becomes possible to speak of it openly in the country. And it seems important to me that the bar for such a conversation — honest, without embellishment — has already been set by the “Returning the Names” and other civic initiatives like it.

I will say one more awkward thing, for which colleagues may perhaps reproach me. The “Returning the Names” is a spectacle. In the good sense of the word. The meanings of the action remain unchanged and only deepen with each year. But its presentation, the remote format, the broadcast — all of this is built professionally and with talent. With good “picture” and sound. With the quiet chant of the video clips — “shot, shot, shot” — which strikes the viewer’s mind and at the same time resonates in their soul. With well-known people speaking live about the present day — simply, without pathos, with dignity. Respect for memory does not require dullness — it requires authenticity. And authenticity can very well be staged and presented with talent.

Every year before the action I wonder: it seems everything has already been said — why again? And then I discover that there is always something new to express and to say. Because the context around us changes, and in some ways we ourselves change. And this does not frighten me, but quietly gladdens me. It means the “Returning the Names” is alive. Not a frozen ritual, not a duty, not a tribute to the past. But a conversation among contemporaries, one that is relevant and that continues.

If you recognise yourself in these words — come. You are expected.