Shetko Speaks

Russia is full of philosophers. They hang around its films, novels and short stories like a beggar about a street corner; though it’s not money they’re after… Lend us an ear, guv’nor. They want to fill our ears with priceless advice. Svetlana Alexievich is very fond of such characters. 

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I ask myself if Svetlana Alexievich should have written about the horrors of war. Yes! And should a mother stand up for her son? Yes! And should the “Afghanis’ stand up for their comrades! Yes again! Of course, a soldier is always culpable in any war. But at the Last Judgement the Lord will forgive a soldier first…

The court will find a legal way out of this conflict. But there has to be a human way out of it too, which consists in the fact that mothers are always right to love their sons, that writers are right when they tell the truth, and that soldiers are right when the living defend the dead. (Pavel Shetko, ‘former Afghani’, in Boys in Zinc)

Written in defence of the author, when her book went on trial, this letter is one of the most profound statements ever to be written about politics. Love. Respect. Truth. Three absolutes between which there can be no compromise. Our best hope the wisdom of a humane judgement - we think of Marlow on Lord Jim - that can make the pain of loss - the loss of this absoluteness - liveable. 

Politics, concerned with the relations between people, has to reject the absolute; it lives upon compromises, like a bird on insects. Not for Mr P the agony of giving up even an inkling of what we love, respect, believe is true. No. He has different worries; his standing with the Prime Minister, the support of colleagues, his popularity with the electorate; all are more important, more pressing. Without these he cannot exist.

Politics and the rest. They live on opposite sides of the ocean. And though they speak the same language they are foreigners to each other; politics living on the surface of words; love and respect anchored to the feelings, truth digging deep in the mineshaft of the mind. Mr P must be careful about what he speaks…

Alas, he rarely is so.

Politics is a stage where the actors see only themselves. They play roles they know are not quite real. The queen dies; a new king is proclaimed in the next act; the courtiers as loyal and affectionate as before. In politics the ties have to be weak so that they can be easily broken; we must forget what we once admired when it is no longer profitable to do so. Feelings give way to words. This world little more than a clever phrase, to excite and please the audience. Love. Respect. Truth. To the politician: trinkets that become trash when their glamour goes.

It is why politics will always be an anathema to a mother, a lover, a writer. To listen to a politician speak about what is most dear to us is watch a hooligan trampling over our beautiful flower beds. We shout at him. Tell him to f*** off. So intent on this vandalism he doesn't even bother to turn around; he pulls off a rose and crumples it in his fist. Love. Respect. Truth. We must protect them from politics.