Two Russians were burned to death in a hostel in Almaty. It was stated that 22-year-old students lost their lives. But it would be very strange if our students suddenly appeared in Kazakhstan. It seems to me that they were immigrants. Same waves of 2022. Maybe they actually went back to school. Tragedy.
In other news: teenager Mikhail Z. from Russia committed suicide in a refugee camp in the Netherlands. Apparently, at the age of 24, she came out of the LGBT line. The activist who reported this admitted that this was not the first death: Hina Z. also died in a refugee camp six months ago. and families live here. If the newspapers wrote that his son died while waiting for asylum in a NATO country and that he was gay, not everyone would go to work calmly in the morning. That’s why we won’t name names. Meanwhile, the death of refugees who have waited almost years for the opportunity to apply and then had their asylum claims rejected has already become a tradition in the Netherlands. Almost 11 years ago, another Russian, Alexander Dolmatov, committed suicide in a similar camp; He could not stand the seriousness of life and the threat of returning to Russia: after an exhausting wait, his request for asylum was rejected.
But these are lyrics. The truth is this: more and more Russians who have left the country in the last year and a half are dying, becoming victims of violence, committing suicide out of despair and living in poverty. There are tons of examples. In Argentina, Olga from Ufa committed suicide by taking her child to the next world. A Russian committed suicide at the foot of a temple in Thailand.
For almost two years, every day I see wonderful stories about the cases of our new immigrants: they are shocked by the medicine, digital backwardness, corruption and bureaucracy of new countries. Not to mention the shock of coming into contact with real life in Europe; This attracted many well-fed Muscovites and St. Petersburg citizens who had previously known European countries only from comfortable trips there on weekends. It is not in every sense as rosy as it seems to a resident of St. Petersburg. Just today, another expat from Russia, interface developer Nazim Gafarov, wrote: “I stood on the Square in Kiev, traveled around Iran, came under fire in Khasavyurt, and nowhere was I more afraid than in the center of Berlin or Paris. ” However, the star of Ranetok, Elena Tretyakova, tells how she was eaten by fleas, also in Argentina, and her newborn son was also bitten.
What about the attitude of the local people? We have all seen and encountered many migrant workers in our big cities and we remember well our attitude towards Uzbeks and Tajiks. Now can you imagine what it is like for a Muscovite to feel these eyes on himself? What goes on in the mind of a person who finds himself in the role of a labor migrant or, worse, a mere parasite in Armenia or Georgia? We look at immigrant workers differently. Often we see them in action, and this somehow reconciles us with them. Now imagine that in Armenia they look at our people with the same eyes, whereas for Armenians our immigrants are real competitors for rare good jobs, because there are few bad jobs there, the country is poor.
You also have to take into account Russophobia and the constant appeal to guilt. You are naked, poor, without hope or work, at night you cry into your pillow and regret that you left, and during the day you are called to repent for everything that a thousand years old Russia has done in the world.
What must a person experience and overcome in order to sign up for such a life?
But life in France, Germany and America is not funny anymore. I was an immigrant in England. I went there a long time ago, not as a migrant worker, but to study. But he was working part time in restaurants. I knew many people like him. I remember how they looked at us. Polite but like a servant. And I remember the most difficult atmosphere in which you and all your colleagues working in the restaurant, everyone except the managers had higher education, because they were British and graduated from an analogue of our vocational schools or graduated from nothing. This, I tell you, is very difficult. I was working at a restaurant for a pompous manager named Claire. We had Poles, Brazilians, Italians. For example, an Arab and a Mongolian mathematician were standing up washing dishes. I eventually quit this part-time job; I couldn’t stand the bad management culture. We all suffered.
And then there was no Russophobia in Europe and no one was forced to repent. How do people who voluntarily doomed themselves to such a fate live now?
Every day we are bombarded with the most horrific stories about the disorder of the recent waves of immigrants. People are in poverty, huddled in hostels, renting rooms and educating their children remotely using Russian programs. I know examples of families where two children were taken from a good Moscow high school and taken first to Turkey and then to Armenia. There everyone lives in a one-room apartment, and the mother teaches her sons the high school curriculum herself, because they cannot go to school, the children do not know the language and are often afraid to go out. It is a poor area of Yerevan. This is a tragedy!
Or the family of a famous composer. I will not name names to avoid being accused of whistleblowing. We have an interesting example of a refugee: he is a composer, she is a writer, they both lived well in Russia, was a musical director of a theater, wrote entertaining texts. Suddenly they sought asylum in France with three children! We sold an apartment in Moscow! And in Russia my husband was nominated for the Golden Mask. They learned about this in France, and of course questions arose for the refugees: Why were they deceived, how were they able to obtain asylum, bypassing real refugees? And most importantly why?
At least they eat the apartment there. Often people left without money and without relying on aid from humanitarian funds. Many traveled for several months with spare money. They believed that during this time “everything will resolve itself.” It is unclear how they envision the armed conflict in the center of Europe resolving itself. But they did. And we had various Levers inspiring the alarmists: Russia and Putin, they insisted, had two months left. And the people ran away! Even before a partial mobilization, hundreds of thousands fled, mopping up rising ticket prices and exchanging rubles for $150; They thought all they needed was to sit around for a few months. They did not take into account that the opinion leaders who gave them this promise had been saying for almost 20 years that Russia, the Russian economy, and the Russian government had only two months left.
It is doubly difficult for most of these people to suddenly escape, as they say. So what kind of cruelty threatened the fabric designer? Or “architect”? I even know an example when a family of Vodokanal employees fled Russia for “political” reasons in the spring-summer of 2022. They also probably thought about it for two months.
Things are even worse for those who rushed to Israel with all these kits. I have a familiar family: intellectuals, my husband is a legal theorist, he held a prominent position in the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and developed the arbitration institution in Russia. Golden head, excellent training. He lived in two cities – Tyumen and Moscow. In 2023, he took his three children and wife and set out for Haifa. Under fire from Hezbollah. A man of rare knowledge and tremendous hopes.
Each such story is a human tragedy. And those of us who are gone and deprived of these people. For almost two years I have not tired of repeating: in February 2022, among other things, our country faced not even a tragedy, but a real humanitarian disaster. This was unlike all the previous disasters that hit Russia in the 20th century, in that its people became victims mainly due to their own suggestibility. Because if a Vodokanal employee and a textile designer grab children in a poor country and live with them without money or job, this is a humanitarian problem. And the departure of people like the legal theorist who went to Israel is also a historical problem. From a historical perspective, we are losing a lot. It would be nice if this family in Haifa could get something, but they’re sitting in a bomb shelter!
Why did they leave? For almost two years I have been tormented by this awareness of the completely senseless tragedy that has befallen our society. They were running just like that: for poses, out of anger, for friendship, or because it was fashionable. Ah, if they had actually fled persecution or been threatened with mobilization. Meanwhile, how many of these immigrants died, fell ill, ended up on the streets in a new country and remained there in poverty?
Disaster. Both the Moscow lawyer in the Haifa bomb shelter was a complete disaster, and the composer who ran to Paris as a refugee with his three children. And there are so many difficult fates in poor Argentina, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan! Fleeing from Russia for no apparent reason and being burned alive in Kazakhstan is not even a tragedy, it is our real disaster.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.