SPECIAL ADDRESS They say that more o�en people remember the ‘bad’ than the ‘good’. Not me. I remember well what has been pleasant and surprised me, but what I did not like is le� in almost inaccessible depths of my memory. That is the ins�nct of ‘self-preserva�on’. It works in a special way; we protect our psyche from the bad memory and support it with a good memory. In our memory, we idealize the past and nostalgia sets in even for �mes, which we would not even wish upon our worst enemy. Following the events of the recent past and actual �me in which we live today, I have a strange feeling that if deporta�on is not forgo�en, it repeats itself. Crimean Tatars know this terrible word be�er than others do. Deporta�on. The struggle of the deported Crimean Tatars to return to their homeland in Crimea lasted almost 50 years and ended in victory. It was historical memory that turned out to be the main engine of this process which included not only the psychical return of the Crimean Tatars but also the restora�on of Crimean Tatar lives in villages and towns occupied by migrants from other regions of Soviet Union. If in 1944, Moscow deported the en�re popula�on of people with military force, in 2014, 70 years later also with the help of military forces Moscow annexed the en�re peninsula part of Ukrainian territory along with the previously deported Tatars. In the new era, we see history repea�ng itself. In April 2014 almost a�er annexa�on, Russia’s President Pu�n signed a document on measures to rehabilitate Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Crimean Tatar and German people and provide state support for their revival and development. In which the tragedy of Crimean Tatars was reformulated and downgraded in the best-wri�en style. That is the poli�cal surrealism of the highest standard.
Andrei Kurkov
Novelist, Independent Thinker and Author Ukraine
President of PEN Ukraine club. Author of 19 novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin, 9 books for children, and about 20 documentary, fiction and TV movie scripts. His work is currently translated into 37 languages and published across 65 countries.
The Russian authori�es understand that the historical memory of the Crimean Tatars is much stronger than the historical memory of Russia. Nevertheless, when it is necessary when there is no other way, Russia recognizes other people’s traumas but again, this recogni�on is only just a tool in a struggle for Russian state influence for the territory or geopoli�cal interest. In 2016, two years a�er Crimean annexa�on on the anniversary of the deporta�on Russian authori�es already installed the memorial complex to vic�ms of deporta�on. Almost simultaneously with the opening of this complex, the Na�onal Bank of Ukraine issued
51 march 5-6, 2020 | Vilnius