Witaj, bracie! Pisać bardzo trudno
Hello, brother! Writing is Very Hard

Summary/Abstract: After the annexation of Crimea in Russia, irrevocable changes occurred. The space for dialogue grew smaller, politics waded into our daily lives, leaving untouched neither culture nor scientific discourse, and sparing neither our small talk nor the idle stories we swap at bus stops, in cafes, and during breaks at work. It has become harder to avoid confrontation, and more difficult to keep our ears tuned to a reality that is becoming unbearably homogeneous and saturated with war propaganda. Can we therefore talk about a new symbolic conflict in Russia? About a split, about two societies, two kinds of people – as some would like? These questions have been asked repeatedly for months by those involved in Russian culture. Intellectuals trying to understand these dynamics talk about a crash or a turn, about the end of illusions, or about the beginning of a new world, a new Russia which “has risen from its knees”. The present text considers the attitudes of Russian intellectuals during the annexation of the Crimea and the war in Donbas in the autumn of 2014.

• Details
• Contents