Pushkin didn’t die. He changed his legend.
Before the stream I wrote a little poem for Mom: “How many times did I ask you: leave the Reich?” Father read it and asked about the word “colleagues-cripples”: colleagues or cripples? I answered: many around us simply have no decent people left. They seemed like colleagues, but turned out to be cripples in the head. Then I started the news: Smerch and Uragan on residential neighborhoods, Su-34s over Kharkiv.…
I read the poem to myself and said: sharp, but practically useless. Only persecution by the authorities, and personal at that, will push most conformists to part with the Reich. Then I sang a reworked song from The Secret Agent’s Blunder about Eritrea and Ethiopia. Eritrea and Ethiopia are like Ukraine and Russia, I explained. Pushkin didn’t die, he changed his legend.
Three stanzas were dedicated to me. I was left with an apartment and a dacha, while in Moscow my colleagues file denunciations. Please don’t send me a selfie before the shot.
Echo of Moscow and Dozhd have been shut down. The authorities try to hide from Russians the truth they are already listening to. And the double goes on telling of the Siege of Leningrad and the siege of Kyiv, while there is still air on YouTube.
Read the complete story in “Putin’s Double Exposes.” This page contains only a short excerpt; the book has the rest.
Read the full book