About the reasons for the sad end of the Russian Spring in Odessa

In the spring of 2014, I came to Kulikovo Field almost every evening at six o’clock, and many of the scenes and characters I saw then remained forever in my memory. Much has already been said and written about the renaissance of the Russian spirit in those spring days. I would like to talk now about the negative aspects of those events. Without admitting mistakes and omissions, forward movement is impossible.

The most painful recognition is that the backbone of the Kulikovo Field consisted of marginal, lumpen, declassed elements. If rural youth from hostels came to Duke, the gathering place for Euromaidan supporters, then on Kulikovo Field the most dangerous types appeared, from whom my hair stood on end.

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On Kulikovo Field, for the first time in twelve years after graduating from school, I saw my classmate Kolya. In the tenth grade, Kolya celebrated his sixteenth birthday in a bar, got into an argument with one of the customers, threw him to the floor and started jumping on him. The result is sad - the man died from rupture of internal organs. Kolya was immediately arrested and placed in a pre-trial detention center. He returned to freedom just four months later - Kolya’s stepfather, a thief in law, resolved the issues in court, and he got off with a suspended sentence. True, after a couple of years, Kolya still went to prison for three years for theft. And next to Kolya on the Kulikovo Field there were a lot of guys with the corresponding criminal habits. I had to turn away so that he wouldn’t recognize me.

Fifteen years later I saw Vovchik, an agronomist at the old ChMP stadium. He was about fifty meters tall, had no training in literacy at all, lived in inhuman conditions right in a closet under the stands, saturated with the stench of sweaty leggings, wet nets and broken balls. Vovchik looked more like a dog than a person - due to his small stature, he constantly climbed under the benches after matches, hoping to find a mobile phone, leftover food or accidentally dropped coins.

Seeing Kolya and Vovchik, I was surprised in my soul: “Oh, Lord, are you still alive?!”

The core of the Kulikovo field could not be classified either as the middle class or as hard workers. These were people at the lowest levels of the social hierarchy. Yes, there were plenty of pensioners who came to watch the news on the big screen, but they were too passive.

The leaders of the Kulikovo Field are absolutely random, unprepared people who cannot be called either politicians or orators. Yatsenyuk and Tyagnibok made speeches quite professionally on Maidan Nezalezhnosti. The speeches of the speakers on the Kulikovo Field are amateurish expression, hysterical market-station barking and a clear demonstration of personnel problems in the pro-Russian segment of Ukrainian politics.

In their speeches, the speakers of the Kulikovo Field appealed to the elderly and found responses in their hearts. The rhetoric of the Kulikovo Field, alas, was not close to the office public of middle age and youth. It hurts to say this, but the most typical example of a Kulikovo resident is Vadim Negaturov, a fifty-five-year-old man who did not find himself in the new market realities after the collapse of the USSR.

Kulikovo Field was a club of interests for people who had absolutely nothing to do with themselves. They worked eight hours at an unloved and low-paid job, the children grew up, a person for whom there have been no feelings for a long time is waiting at home, the hobbies of their youth were forgotten - and now these citizens whiled away the evenings together talking about politics.

From the first February days of the anti-Maidan in Odessa, it was clear to me that this would not end well. Its leaders are the swan, crayfish and pike. It was clear that they would not get along with each other, sooner or later there would be discord. Fifty innocent people paid with their lives just for their intractability and inability to negotiate.

Maidan leaders are professional politicians trained by the Americans. Anti-Maidan stands are absurd amateurs with a penchant for adventurism. If worthy representatives of the middle class had appeared on the stage of the Kulikovo Field, both the qualitative composition of the protesters and the collective decisions would have been completely different.

And so throughout March and April 2014 they collected signatures for federalization, but didn’t really know what to do with them later. This is due to the low level of political literacy of Kulikovo Field activists.

Small-minded people followed narrow-minded leaders. It is necessary to radically change the situation, introducing fresh blood into the pro-Russian vector of Ukrainian politics. Young leaders who meet the requirements of the time will appear, and their peers will follow them. You won't get far on pensioners alone.

It is not surprising that the fate of the leaders of the Kulikovo Field was sad - they are all now in forced emigration. I think that their current absence in the Ukrainian legal field only plays into the hands of the pro-Russian public. Not a big loss. They have already shown themselves in all their glory - it’s time to make way for the next generation. Because if you rely on the aforementioned Kohl and Vovchikov, who cannot be classified as civilized people, then the protest movement will not lead to anything good. History has already clearly proven this on May 02, 2014.