For a schoolboy from Novy Urengoy Nikolay Desyatnichenko, who spoke in the German Bundestag with words of regret over the fate of an ordinary soldier of the Wehrmacht who died in Soviet captivity, representatives of Russian authorities and even official media are now forced to intercede. The boy was the victim of real harassment from especially "patriotic" politicians, journalists and just users of social networks, accusing him of almost whitening Nazism. This is written by a Kiev journalist, an observer of the Crimea. Realities Vitaly Portnikov.

What is most surprising - in the Bundestag, Desyatnichenko did not say anything that would not fit even into the Soviet model of the attitude towards the defeated enemy. Soviet journalists described how the columns of captive Germans were escorted in Moscow - without hatred and anger, with sympathy, some even passed on products. And these are people who have just survived the bombing, the death of their loved ones, who continue to live in an atmosphere of a real, rather than propaganda war.

Or here is the textbook poem by Mikhail Svetlov, "The Italian", dedicated to the soldier of the enemy army who was killed in battle and written in 1943, two years before the end of the war in Europe on behalf of the Soviet soldier who killed him:.

Black cross on the breast of the Italian, Neither carving, nor pattern, nor gloss - A rich family kept And the only son wearable.

A young native of Naples!.

What left you in Russia on the field?.

Why could not you be happy above your native famous bay?.

This poem has confidence in the justice of retaliation, but there is also an atmosphere of acute regret over the fact that one person is forced to kill another who came to him with arms. And this is no different from what Desyatnichenko said in the Bundestag. But these lines were written during the war and immediately became the Soviet canon - while the murderous articles of Ilya Ehrenburg like the famous text "Kill the German! "Disappeared from the propaganda.

Because even in the years of bitterness, even when soldiers of the Soviet Army could be involved in looting and rape in Europe, Soviet propaganda preferred not to be proud of brutality, but of humanism. The Humanism of Simple Soviet People. From the same pride grew another textbook poem: "Do Russian wars want? »Evgenia Evtushenko. And no doubt neither the author nor the readers had: do not want. Wars can only be desired by ruthless imperialists, but not ordinary Russian people and their state.

The Kremlin propaganda unfolded a ship of national thinking 180 degrees - from "do Russian wars want?" "To" can repeat! ", From humanism, albeit often cynical and deceitful, to outright militarism and the cult of war and power. This reversal occurred during the annexation of the Crimea and reached its apogee during the war in the Donbas - because the very conflict of Russians with Ukraine, which seemed to be an integral part of the common civilization, could only be justified by such militarization. But it is understandable that the militarization of thinking could not but affect the attitude toward military history - so the memory of the Second World War was transformed into a persistent "frustration".

That is why an ordinary provincial Soviet schoolboy, apparently, brought up by great-grandfathers and grandfathers in the customary tradition of sympathy for the deceased soldier - even if it was a soldier of an enemy army - turned out to be a stranger in imperial Russia.

And now the powerful - also products of Soviet propaganda education - have to protect him from the most zealous zealots of militarism.

I wonder if after that the authorities will understand, what monster they are, playfully, nurtured, what strings of national thinking have affected, how the society has been deformed in recent years? After a wild reaction to humanity Kolya Desyatnichenko - this is the same collective "Krymnas". Krymnasch in its pure form.