thirty six: defeated

In the Vereshchagin Hall at the Tretyakov Gallery hangs the greatest painting about the war in Russian (and maybe in the world) art, «Defeated. Requiem».

The picture shows an officer and a priest reading a prayer for the dead. They stand on an endless cemetery among, as at first it may seem, thousands of graves. But looking more closely at the first plan, suddenly you see that these are not graves, but people.

An immense field, densely lined with the dead bodies of Russian soldiers.

On February 24, 2022, my country began a senseless war with Ukraine. And I found myself in a state ruled by crazy old men. Old men who do not know the language of culture.

And the most painful is when the same category and in the same language of the aggressor is thought of by your own people.

In order not to be sent to this war, not to go to jail or to be killed, I had to leave my country. To go into the unknown and with almost no money.

Now I am an emigrant.