The war occupies, in Paris, south of the Urals, most of the small museum of the Vassili-Bliukher school – two rooms nestled on the third floor of the building from which the tragedy of Russian history overflows, leaving a modest nook with folkloric outfits and handicrafts from this region. There is the civil war (1917-1921), of which the Red Marshal Blioukher was a figure before being assassinated by his own people in 1938. The “great patriotic war” of 1941-1945, in which the village and its school paid an immensely heavy price: five hundred men, almost the entire adult male population, fought; half did not return. Later, Afghanistan, Chechnya, respectively twelve and five former members of the school enlisted, whose crumpled portraits are displayed on displays.
The visit itself gives off a heavy scent of Sovietism. Schoolchildren declaim in the tone of an epic poem the statistics of tons of grain and livestock delivered by local peasants to the Red Army in 1941. Some were dressed in the uniform of Soviet pioneers, white shirt and tie red. ” Always ready “, they chant, a touch of pride in their voices. A month ago, a new display appeared, but the school’s director, Nadejda Ivanova, is signaling to speed up. As if this one should not be seen by outsiders. Artificial flowers, “Zs”, the symbol of the “special operation” in Ukraine, and new portraits whose paper has not yet had time to yellow: the ten alumni of the school currently deployed in Ukraine.
Nadezhda Ivanova frowns. She prefers to praise the equipment received by her school – the building is old, but each room has its overhead projector and fresh paint on the walls – or the good behavior of her students. Gifted, passionate about sports, polite… The principal says the truth: in the school corridors or in the street, the children respectfully greet adults. “I don’t even remember the last time I had to deal with theft”, insists the principal, thoughtfully, before showing the best-equipped classes. The room where boys, only them, are entitled to technology and welding lessons; the one where girls, only them, learn household chores on brand new sewing machines and kitchen utensils.
Surveillance almost always present
Paris, 1,800 kilometers from Moscow, is the Russia of the isbas, the glubinka – the deep country. The village has one thousand seven hundred inhabitants, the vast majority of whom are Nagaïbaks, a Turkish-speaking ethnic group, close to the Tatars but of Orthodox faith. They are descendants of the Cossacks from the southern Urals who rode across Europe on the heels of Napoleon in 1814 after his defeat. Returning home, the Nagaïbak Cossacks were deployed by the Tsar in the southern confines of the Empire, facing the borders of present-day Kazakhstan. They named their villages in memory of the European cities they had passed through: Fère-Champenoise, Leipzig, Berlin, Varna and Paris (Parij, in the Russian style), where the troops had for a time occupied the Champ-de-Mars and the Champs-Elysées…
You have 90% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.