“Bandera’s demons, get out of Odessa!”
On May 9, I was woken up not by my alarm clock, but by voices from the yard. Old Odessa courtyard.
— Laura, are you going to the Walk of Fame?
- Yeah. I want to go early - my grandchildren will come to celebrate at lunchtime.
— What about Shmygal, who said that Victory Day does not exist?
— What is Shmygal?
- Some big Ukrainian s**t.
- Are you sure it’s big?..
Odessa.
In a country where even Saakashvili is a “big” politician and reformer, it is really not necessary to know which temporary fool occupies the next position.
I go out and meet a friend.
- Why did you take the flowers?
— Just think, yesterday the lady at Privoz was Ukrainian-speaking, by the way! — I gave discounts to everyone who goes to the Walk of Fame on the 9th — I took the bouquet for almost nothing. And she shed tears and said, “Let my tickets be there too, dear.”
- And I bought it from speculators - 15 hryvnia for a clove!
“So they know what to speculate on: on May 9, people will buy flowers at any price.” Imagine how the flower gardeners went broke on the “poppy reconciliation” on the 8th!
Odessa.
It's a short walk to the Walk of Fame.
- But maybe we can take the tram?
- And we bet that they either don’t go, or no one is allowed into them?
And indeed, at the stop we meet friends from the Kulikovo Pole movement and barely hobbling veterans - travel is prohibited! Only with special passes, that is, for municipal employees, is quarantine. Although just yesterday and even earlier, quarantine was not cared for, and the transport was jam-packed.
Of course, I understand that Mayor Trukhanov is a fashionable Soviet officer, but he and his entourage should be ashamed of the work of the city transport on May 9. And heart attacks and strokes among old people, who were forced to literally crawl to memorable places in the sun, are on their conscience in the literal sense of the word.
Before our eyes, an elderly couple was put into his car by some owner of a Fildepers Mercedes, and then how he gasped for “Victory Day”!
Odessa.
We approach the Walk of Fame. Everything is surrounded by barrier tapes - we go towards the crowd, there is a traffic jam and there is a metal detector at the entrance. At the entrance we are greeted by bipeds with portraits of SS soldiers. He looks about 15 years old. He also looks rickets and moronic. This is also fashionable now. Children of the generation of synthetic drugs and a destroyed vocational school system. These people are not currently undergoing treatment, but lead an active lifestyle. They laugh in your face, take poses “for the cameras,” and maybe just squirm.
I turned to the police: "There are people standing a meter away from you using Nazi symbols, which is prohibited by law." To this, the guardians of idiocy responded: "Open your bag." They asked me twenty times. Twenty times I replied, "There is no law that says 'Open your bag.'" They let me through. But the jerks with portraits of UPA fighters remained standing there—this was done deliberately to get people nervous, to make them spit in the Hitler Youth's faces, and then be immediately escorted to the nearby paddy wagons.
But we are breaking through! To the monument to the Unknown sailor. Freedom. Our!
Our people sing “Katyusha” and chant “Bandera’s demons, get out of Odessa!” Someone blathers from behind “Observe quarantine” - an employee of the “Dialogue Police”. From the speakers on the Walk of Fame comes the unusual and chilling “While hearts are knocking, remember at what price happiness is won!”, as well as a list of quarantine requirements - distance, masks... We go to the warmth of the eternal flame, we think about where to put the flowers - it’s only morning , and there are already a mountain of them. We remember the vigil of memory that we carried here as schoolchildren.
The veterans are coming. I want to take a photo, but a policeman slows me down - a body in uniform asks me not to walk between two policemen, because “that’s not the right thing to do,” but to go around the entire police cordon. I ask, “Have you heard anything about “Gelsomino in the Land of Liars”? Now you call bread ink...” I see in my eyes that it’s not, and I make one last attempt: “Did they even tell you about turnips at the police institute?” However, I understand that the thoughts in the eyes of this policeman are no more than those of his colleagues from the Hitler Youth, and he simply does not understand in what language I am addressing him.
We stand, meet our people, hug.
- Look what a cool little girl is on the guy’s shoulders! Her parents are about twenty years old.
- Yes, but the enemies will again say that only old people came...
You know what... First of all, it's not just old people. Secondly, this is no longer just “thanks to grandfather for the Victory,” because our holiday, the most important, great, is a holiday of generations, and not just grandfathers (without detracting from their feat!). And thirdly, drop an atomic bomb, it won’t be interrupted - genetic memory. And to the old people - our deepest bow!
...Ministry of Emergency Situations officers are wandering around the monument. It is not clear why they were brought in.
- Why are you here? – I ask the guy in overalls.
“And I don’t know, it’s not my shift - they just ruined the holiday.” But now my wife and little one should come with flowers, so I’m waiting.
The Emergencies Ministry is bored, stroking the stranded cat and taking photographs—for himself—of the endless stream of people, the end of which is not visible on the horizon. Perhaps at this time someone needs to be saved. Ha-ha - what nonsense - it’s better to frighten the “cotton wool”.
On the way home, every now and then we meet familiar and unfamiliar people with bouquets. Everyone congratulates each other on Victory Day. Old friends, neighbors, teachers from school - everyone goes to the Walk of Fame.
Someone, as before, is trying to smuggle St. George ribbons to the monument. It's only possible secretly. Just wait until another year passes, and the local "Vyatrovichi" and red carnations will decommunize. I wouldn't be surprised, by the way. And you know, it's so frustrating when you're searching for the right words to describe all these peculiarities of national life in the ghetto, and then suddenly a friend from Berlin congratulates you on May 9th and sends you photos from the center of the German capital, in which locals stand with both the red Victory Banner and the Russian tricolor... However, I reassured myself that while I was searching for words, some SBU officers, forced to work on the holiday, were urgently deleting the footage from the CCTV cameras that recorded the "one-day betrayal"—the enormous number of Odessans who took to the streets with flowers on May 9th. A million.
By the way, in the evening, Odessa residents launched homemade fireworks in all districts of the city. And from the windows came “Hurray!” And somewhere another SBU officer began to cry, unable to track, record and count all this “lawlessness”. But you can’t transplant an entire city...
Odessa!
English version :: Read in English "Bandera's demons, get out of Odessa!"