The Diary of a Russian: Leaving the country
March 30, 2022 — VERA YAKOVLEVA
As soon as Putin sent his first troops to Ukraine, my boyfriend, an Oxford postdoc, decided to withdraw me from Russia. Flights were getting cancelled, ticket fares were skyrocketing, fears of army conscription and border closures were blowing in the air. The prospect of being separated by the iron curtain did not appeal to us. I booked a train ticket to Helsinki and a flight from there to London. March 7th was the day to leave.
To be honest, I did not want to go. I even made sure the tickets were returnable, hoping that the need to travel might miraculously disappear. Of course, I love England. I did my master’s at Oxford, but I have always wanted to live in Russia and work for the best of its people. I travelled extensively across the country, explored small religious communities, worked as a teacher and a museum educator, wrote a guidebook on the medieval heritage of the oldest Russian town, and strongly believed that Russia must renounce its Soviet past and break institutional continuity between the FSIN (prison system) and the GULAG, the Ministry of Domestic Affairs and the KGB.
When the Russian army invaded Ukraine, I realised how little I, and all of us who work with people and culture, had done to prevent it. It felt as if you are at the Last Judgment, and all truths and lies are suddenly evident. Have I really done much to change social attitudes? Have I done anything?.. I was ashamed of myself and all academics who would happily discuss Hanna Arendt or art after Holocaust, while our own country was gradually turning fascist.
“But don’t you think there wouldn’t be that many protesters if universities had not been doing their job for the past decades?” – a week into the war, my friend, a brilliant historian, wanted to reassure me. That was true. I knew that a whole cohort of students from my faculty went protesting, and our Dean spent the night at the police station trying to get his students released. So, yes, some universities had done a good job spreading and defending the seeds of freedom. But was it enough?
On the first day of war there was a big crowd of young people in the streets shouting “No to war!” and ‘Russia without Putin!”, and I was walking between those energised boys and girls trying to hide my tears. On the second day, the police rallied their troops and installed speakers with very loud patriotic music in the big city square to make shouting “No to war!” pointless. So, we were just standing there silently and impotently, near a posh shopping centre, looking into the eyes of tall armed guards in black helmets and listening to the booming “Go-o-o ahead, Russia!” And there was no youthful fervour to this silent manifestation.
On the 6th of March, the day before my planned trip to London, I was detained. It was the day for which Navalny, himself in jail, announced mass protests in all major cities. I arrived in the city centre three hours after the protest had started, and by that time protesters had already been forced out of the big square, but there were still streams of people spreading silently all over the streets, and new people kept coming. I was moving with the flow past the State Duma, when two guards approached me and asked to follow them. Without any explanations, they took my phone and passport away and locked me into a police van.
I was released eleven hours later, at 3 AM. And as soon as I got my phone back, I called my boyfriend to say I was definitely going to the UK. I had two and a half hours before my train departure, and that was just enough to get home, pack my things and reach the railway station, praying that I would cross the Russian border safely.
The train to Helsinki was packed. People, most of them aged 25-40, travelled with a lot of luggage.
“How long are you going to stay in Helsinki?” – the Finnish border guard asked a man sitting next to me.
“I… I don’t really know. I still have to decide,” – he answered.
“Alright. I see,” – with no further questions the border guard returned the passport to the man and moved to the next passenger.
We all don’t really know. Thousands of young men that are now staying in hostels in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan fearing conscription, thousands of families that are hoping to start a new life in Armenia, Georgia, and Turkey, thousands of companies that are now trying to relocate their offices to anywhere outside Russia, thousands of tourists that decided not to return home from holidays abroad. Millions that are staying with no chance to leave. We all don’t know what to do, and many of us cannot help thinking what more we could have done to prevent this catastrophe.