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Francis Report 05-24 Dave Francis -St. Petersburg, Russia On the 23rd of May, US President George Bush was making his way to Russia, and that sparked the inevitable protests in the big cities. Moscow had an assortment of leftists, holding placards, waving anti-American signs, and a flag or two was burned. Here in St. Petersburg, the Nationalist Russian Workers Party had a rally. In case you don’t know, they are the guys in the red and black clothes, with the red, white, and black flag, flaunting ideas that were the cause of a hell of a lot of bloodshed in the middle part of the 20th century. Ultra nationalists, some people call them here. Others call them fascists, which is more accurate, but to me, they are Nazis. I was on my way to the University, and I saw a large group of people with their banners filled with bad ideas in front of a monument to Mikhail Lomonosov, the father of Russian chemistry and the publisher of the first book of Russian history. There were about 60 of them, right on the embankment, just down from the University. Now, I needed to get to the University, and as I saw it, I had three choices. Most of them were Russian youths, between the ages of 17 and about 35. They were dressed in red, white, updated versions of the SS uniforms made so popular by a previous group of idiots. One of the things I noticed, among the white supremacists, there were about half a dozen Palestinians. (Students from the University.) They had their faces covered by checkered scarves, and they were mixing with the Nazis as equals. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Somebody should explain the rules of being a white supremacist to these Russians. Apparently they weren’t paying attention in White Power 101. They just don’t get it. 1:Go around the back of the group, avoiding them as much as possible. 2:Go around the front of the group. 3:Go through the middle of the group. “The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing,”- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I went through the middle of the group. Maybe it was my Texas swagger, maybe it was the cowboy hat, maybe it was the USA pins on the hat, or the US flag-style hatband, or maybe it was something else, but they figured out quickly I was an American. They began to shout, scream, yell; it was akin to when I used to go into the ape house in the St. Louis zoo as a boy. Ahh, I remember it like it was yesterday. It would be early in the mornings, and the apes having not been disturbed by anyone yet would become vocally indignant at my intrusion into their lives. This din had the same sort of ring to it. Fairly foaming at the mouth, they began to chant, “F*#K USA! F*#K USA!” I uhhh…. I uhh……. Tried to engage them in the arena of ideas. Yeah! That’s what I did! Anyway, these guys weren’t too open to me, or to my ideas. I think the price of admission to the arena of ideas was a little out of these guys range. Anyway…. One thing led to another, there was pushing, shoving, maybe a punch or two….or three… somebody kicked me. (Fights like a girl! Fights like a girl!!) The worst thing was, they grabbed my cowboy hat. Anyway, the police broke it up, (Lucky for those 60 young, healthy guys. Me and my bad heart were just getting warmed up!) and I got my hat back. The news media was there, and I talked to a couple of them. (What a strange way to end up in the NY Times…) After it was all over, I left, went to work, came home and the phone calls started. Here is the thing I don’t understand about it. It seems that nobody here understands my point of view. Everyone says, “Leave them alone. They are from bad families. They don’t have anything better to do with their time.” All of this may be true, but so what? Is that a reason to not confront true evil when you see it? On September 8th, 1941, the German army encircled Leningrad, (current day St. Petersburg.) and the siege lasted for about 900 days. It is estimated that upwards of 800,000 people died in Leningrad. In the Piskariovskoye Memorial Cemetery alone there are more than half a million siege victims buried. World War II hangs over Russian society like a cloud. Everywhere, everyday, you see old men in ragged suits proudly wearing their campaign ribbons and medals. You can scarcely find a family who didn’t lose a few members during the war, and here in St. Petersburg, family that died as civilians here in the siege. If I were from a society that lost more than 20 million people to the Nazis, if I were from a city where 800,000 people died in a siege perpetrated by the Nazis, if I were a Russian man, I wouldn’t be so calm. Hell, I know that lots of Americans are STILL mad at Japan, and we didn’t lose near as many people. For that matter, normalizing relations with Vietnam, 25 years after the war ended was a nauseating reality for most Americans. For all the terrible things that the North Vietnamese did, it was their territory we were fighting on. They never attacked any American cities. Can you imagine if the Vietnamese had killed more than 20 million Americans, how repugnant someone holding a VC flag and running around in black pajamas would be to us today? How many of us still detest Hanoi Jane? Maybe this calm attitude on the part of the Russians is a testament to the wonderful education system. They intellectualize past it. Maybe it is that they are ‘above it all.’ Maybe. I don’t think so though. They are apathetic sometimes. They are afraid sometimes. These are the same sort of attitudes that, in the 20s and 30s, allowed the predecessors to these barbarians to take power in Germany. I don’t know about you, but I would have a hard time looking myself in the mirror in the mornings if I had gone around the back of the rally. To hide from these slugs is the worst kind of cowardice. To go around the front may have been the best strategy. I could have saved face, avoided being cowardly, and stayed above the fray. That is, until they saw me. Then, it would have been them jeering at someone who was going past. I am not a very good jeeree. I think the only real option I had was to go through the middle of the scum. Show them that they can’t frighten everyone, that a gang of toughs swinging misspelled signs won’t cow some people. I mean, if you were me, what would you have done? I need to have a bit of belief restored in my fellow man. Virtually everyone I have talked to here, and a couple of people in the USA, have told me that what I did was foolhardy and useless. That they would have done something different. That they would have taken steps to avoid the people. I am saddened by the lack of heart I am running up against. Fightin’ the good fight. Dave Francis |