12 of June - Russia Day
Today is June 12, Russia Day, aka Independence Day. On this day, 32 years ago, the first Congress of People's Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the RSFSR, which then finally gained independence and subsequently became the Russian Federation. We had a chance to become a prosperous democratic country. But, alas, we lost that chance ten years later when Vladimir Putin became president of Russia.
The authoritarian regime began to "tighten the screws" more and more. As a result, at the moment, civil activists, trade unionists, and opposition figures are being suppressed. It is possible to receive a giant fine just for a solitary picket with a poster. The parliament, instead of a branch of state power, has turned into a rubber stamp, printing laws to protect the state policy of the Kremlin and has essentially become only a loyal appendage of the government. Citizens' rights and freedoms are infringed, and those who fight for them are branded "libtards," "agents of the US State Department," and "national traitors" by the pro-government "media. Public discussion in the media has been replaced by a syncretistic imperial propaganda agenda based on nostalgia for a "lost empire" represented by either the USSR or Tsarist Russia, as well as constant talk about the decaying West and Russian so-called greatness.
But greatness is not measured in the number of missiles or square meters of territory. A great country is a country where the state belongs to its citizens, where their well-being grows, where people's rights and freedoms are respected, where there is quality education and medicine, where equal opportunities for all are realized. A great country is a country where people from other countries want to move to, a country they envy. A great country is a country that is respected in the international arena, but not out of fear of military might. A great country is one whose citizens abroad will be protected and respected. A great country is the one that brings progress, democracy and humanism into the world, that pushes forward the development of human civilization.
And that is the kind of great Russia we need to build. And that is why we need the European way of development, because it is Europe that is in the vanguard of progress, that European countries have the most developed democratic institutions and institutions of the welfare state, the highest living standards, the best working conditions, and the best protected human and civil rights and freedoms. We are convinced that a rejection of the European way of Russia's development would be equal to a rejection of the democratic way of its development.
Therefore, when you are called a "Russophobe", "agent of the State Department", "traitor", "pawn of the West", etc. for your European and democratic position, remember: it is very patriotic to strive for such a path of development of Russia. And the traitors and Russophobes are precisely those who reject true popular power, thus taking the country away from its legitimate constitutional bearer of sovereignty - the Russian multinational people. Therefore, to build a great in a literal sense European Russia, we need to take it back. To give the country back to its legitimate people power. And just this is a manifestation of real civic patriotism, not leavened, not blind, not nationalism, but real civic patriotism.
We have made for you a selection of quotations from the great Russian thinkers about what true love for the country is.
"To love one's motherland means to ardently wish to see in it the realization of the ideal of humanity and to promote it to the best of one's ability. Otherwise, patriotism will be simulacrum, which loves its own only because it is its own, and hates everything alien only because it is alien."
- Vissarion Belinsky, socialist, literary critic, publicist
"The pseudo-patriots, who phrasefully describe their love for their dear, glorious, great fatherland, prove only that they have nothing to do but phrases... Of course, these gentlemen have no trace of the patriotism so indefatigably proclaimed by their words. They are ready to exploit, as much as possible, their fellow countryman, no less, if not even more than the foreigner; they are just as easy to deceive and ruin him for their personal views, ready to do any nasty thing, harmful to society, harmful, perhaps, to the whole country, but beneficial for them personally".
- Nikolai Dobrolyubov, Russian literary critic, poet, and revolutionary democrat
"A patriot is a man who serves the Motherland, and the Motherland is first of all the people themselves."
- Nikolai Chernyshevsky, theorist of utopian socialism, writer, materialist philosopher
"I served the Fatherland as long as it needed the service of its citizens, and did not want to continue it when I saw that I would serve only the whims of an autocratic despot; I wished to better serve mankind, I chose the title of judge... Now is the age of civil courage, I feel that my vocation is higher - I will shed my blood, but for the freedom of the Fatherland, for the happiness of my fellow citizens, for the removal of the iron scepter from the hands of autocracy, for the acquisition of legal rights for oppressed humanity - these will be my works. If I succeed, you cannot doubt the reward for them: the happiness of the Russians will be the best distinction for me."
- Kondrati Ryleev, the Decembrist poet, one of the five executed participants in the December Uprising
"I have not learned to love my Fatherland with my eyes closed, with my head bowed, with my lips locked. I find that a man can only be useful to his country if he sees it clearly; I think that the time of blind amorousness has passed, that now we owe the motherland the truth first and foremost. I love my Fatherland, as Peter the Great taught me to love it. I confess to being alien to this blissful patriotism of laziness which adapts itself to seeing everything in a rosy light and to carrying on with its illusions.
- Peter Yakovlevich Chaadayev, Russian publicist, "Christian philosopher", supporter of the European way of development of Russia
True love for Russia in the face of Putin's criminal war is, of course, unconditional support for Ukraine in that very war. Putin's defeat is a victory for the real Russia, a European country. Ukraine will be the grave for Putin's regime, but the new birth of Russia, where power will belong to the people. A Russia that will return to Europe. This is the only way to end the wars on the European continent.