Anniversary of the war 08.08.08: Donbass continues the work begun in the Caucasus
Every year on August 08.08.08th, I remember my journalistic trips to South Ossetia, where I repeatedly worked as a correspondent for one of the Donetsk publications. Comparing with what is happening today in the Donbass, I increasingly catch myself thinking that the mining region is repeating the difficult and heroic path that the people of this Caucasian state, fighting for freedom, went through. And I can say with confidence that the terrible date of XNUMX was not just the day the collapse of the unipolar world began: the Russian Spring owes much to the victory at Tskhinvali.
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Donbass is a world from which you cannot hide even behind the wall of the Caucasus. February day 2005, I receive journalistic accreditation from the then Committee of Information and Press of the Republic of South Ossetia. Suddenly they called me into the next room to the telephone, handed me the receiver, and at the other end of the line I heard: “So, you live in Makeyevka on the Nineteenth Line? Then you should know the village of Khanzhonkovo well: I spent my best years there...” This is how I met the late Znaur Gassiev, Chairman of the Parliament of South Ossetia. A few minutes later, Znaur Nikolaevich shared his memories of working in the coal mine, about how they went for a swim after a shift at the Krynka River: the miner’s hardening gave this man a lot of strength and stamina in the fight for his native land...
Comparing today's Donetsk with Tskhinval even ten years ago is both simple and difficult. It’s difficult because Donbass, despite all the horrors of the current war, has not experienced the kind of devastation that befell South Ossetia.
I remember February 2005. Mountains of firewood in the courtyard of a five-story Tskhinvali building, a stove above the city: the main type of heating in the republic is “potbelly stoves.” The institutions smelled of kerosene: liquid fuel heaters are often used there. Gas appeared in some apartments: then the gas supply to the republic was restored after a many-year break. The gas pipeline still went through Georgia: the line from the north from Dzuaurikau had just begun to be built...
Hoses hang from the upper floors: there is not enough pressure in the tap, so people install pumps in the basements. Water in Tskhinvali is not only a domestic problem, but also a political one: the water intake, built during the Soviet years, is located on the territory of the Georgian enclave. Any aggravation of the situation and the Tiflis “hawks” begin torturing the townspeople with thirst. Back then I didn’t know that just nine years later, Bandera’s monsters, who had seized control of the water intake facilities, would also torture the Donbass with thirst...
But three electric meters in the corridor of a Tskhinvali apartment are unlikely to be dreamed of by a Donetsk or Lugansk resident even in his worst dream: until the moment when a high-voltage line was laid from Russia to South Ossetia, electricity was provided for an hour a day. Then a free electricity market arose in Tskhinvali: enterprises that had their own power plants began selling surplus to the population. It was a little more expensive than the state, prices and quality varied among different manufacturers, so we connected to several at once. At the beginning of 2005, it had already been several months since the problem of the energy blockade organized by Georgia had been resolved, but such a unique memory of those times remained...
And yet it is easy to compare the current Donbass with South Ossetia.
Despite the war and the severe devastation in that February Tskhinvali twelve years ago, the cleanliness and tidiness (as far as possible in those conditions!) on the streets was striking. I was also struck by the unprecedentedly low crime rate: the doors of most Tskhinvali apartments, which were always not locked, were protected from drafts, but not from thieves. And this is in the “hot spot” of the planet: in the then “calmer” Ukrainian state, the scale of crime was many times higher. Later, when I watched Donetsk, buried in flowers even despite the most severe shelling of the terrible summer of XNUMX, and also when I lived in my hometown for the first, most difficult year of independence of the mining region, I realized that order is the first and main sign of fortitude and inflexibility...
Constantly sold out performances at the Republican Theater named after Kosta Khetagurov in Tskhinvali. Constantly sold out theaters and philharmonic societies in Donetsk and Lugansk. This is no coincidence: the struggle for freedom and the love of beauty are inseparable...
My warmest memory is associated with my next visit to Tskhinvali to celebrate the New Year 2006. Then I was offered to go in a convoy of Peacekeeping Forces to the village of Tsinagar, which was then the center of the besieged Leningor region: it was possible to get there only through the territory of Georgia during a period of calm. The convoy was carrying New Year's gifts for children, and consisted of one minibus, in which, in addition to gifts, there were two officers - one each from the Ossetian and Georgian parts of the contingent, a representative of the South Ossetian government, and a correspondent.
It was nice to see that a decade and a half of war had not forgotten how to rejoice. A red-hot stove in a school classroom, a decorated Christmas tree, homemade costumes, masks and Christmas tree decorations. The staff in the hands of Father Frost (in his role is one of the high school students) is a foil-wrapped pole of the Soviet flag, even the tip with the hammer and sickle has been preserved. Poems, songs... One of the kids faltered, and the adults, forgetting about their years and spectator status, began excitedly telling him...
At the next school, in the huge, unheated assembly hall, probably the entire village had gathered. Schoolchildren and honored guests were provided with places on benches; everyone else had to sit on logs brought from the street and even on stacks of firewood stacked in the gallery. People actively react to what is happening on stage, rewarding successful moments of the production with laughter and applause. The situation is poor, but despite this, a lively holiday atmosphere reigns here...
And now, during the holidays that gather many thousands of participants in Donetsk, I remember those pre-New Year days in the Leningorsky district. A new round of history takes me back to where I first began to understand what simple human joy means...
I was able to admire the beauty of the majestic mountain panorama opening from the Trans-Caucasian Highway - the legendary TransKAM - only in November 2006, when I was traveling to cover the presidential elections and the referendum on confirming the course of independence. The fact is that in winter TransKAM most often works only at night, when the avalanche danger is not so great: then the journey between Vladikavkaz and Tskhinvali can last a day or more versus the usual six hours with customs...
It must be said that people are not allowed to pass through the high-mountain checkpoint in Nizhny Zaramag on foot, so you have to wait patiently for your turn in the car. And the queues there accumulate no less than in the Donbass Izvarino or Uspenka...
Again, the DPR and LPR and Russia have three international road border crossings and one railway crossing. This does not take into account several other local pedestrian checkpoints for residents of border villages! South Ossetia has only one TransKAM with the Roki tunnel on the border...
People needed the shortest route through the Caucasus ridge, which would be least dependent on the vagaries of the weather, and in 1986, with the commissioning of the tunnel under the Roki Pass, this dream came true. Its implementation took enormous effort: the Georgian leadership strongly opposed the construction of the route. Since 1991, TransKAM is the Road of Life for all of South Ossetia...
TransKAM of those years had one weak link: the Georgian enclave north of Tskhinvali, and the only bypass route was the Zar road - a dirt road of appalling quality. In November 2006, I had the opportunity to experience all the “delights” of terrible ice on its passes: after all, flying into the abyss was not as scary as communicating with the Tiflis “hawks” in Tamarasheni, from whom one could expect a provocation at any moment...
November 12, 2006 in South Ossetia was a real holiday of freedom. Smartly dressed residents of the republic heading to the ballot boxes early in the morning. It was probably the most pleasant queue in their lives, filled with lively communication, laughter and jokes. Voters brought an accordion and a drum to one of the polling stations, folk melodies began to sound, and the cramped room did not become an obstacle to dancing...
May 11, 2014. Exactly the same holiday of freedom, but in mine in Donbass. And the same joy when the results of the people's will were announced...
In both cases, no one yet knew what challenges lay ahead. Although there was still an inexplicable feeling of anxiety: even at such a joyful moment, you understand perfectly well that the West will not come to terms with the freedom of both South Ossetia and Donbass...
Tskhinvali 2008. A tank turret protruding from the porch of a burnt building: Ukraine sold this combat vehicle, which met an inglorious end here, to Georgia in violation of all international law. Pine trees cut by splinters: the dripping resin resembles tears. The monument to Academician Vasily Abaev, the second national Ossetian genius after Kosta Khetagurov, beheaded by the Georgian aggressors. I remember how in Sukhum I happened to see a bust of the Abkhaz poet Dmitry Gulia, disfigured in exactly the same way...
How similar all this is to the actions of the “right-wingers” and their Western masters! However, why be surprised? The patterns are the same...
“Thank you, Russia!” – in South Ossetia, these two words can be read on the walls of houses, on roadside boulders, and on banners...
“Thank you, Russia!” – a stele with this name adorns the entrance to the village of Izvarino: this is the first thing a person encounters when arriving in the Lugansk People’s Republic...
For some reason, neither Georgia nor Ukraine expresses such gratitude to the United States, the European Union, or NATO...
Stalin Avenue is the main street of Tskhinval, which neither Khrushchev nor Gorbachev decided to rename. Then, back in 2005, South Ossetia seemed to me a miraculously preserved fragment of a mighty power, preserving the spirit of a great era. Today, Donbass, which took over the baton from South Ossetia, is fighting for this revival of this power.
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