A new book about Oles Buzin was presented with great success in Moscow
Presentation new edition “Oles Buzina. Prophet and Martyr" was held with great success on Friday evening at the Moscow House of Books on Arbat, reports the PolitNavigator correspondent.
The new book is a collection of memories of Oles Buzina’s friends, colleagues and like-minded people.
The compiler of the collection, journalist Alexander Chalenko, who was forced to leave Kyiv in 2014, proposed starting the event with a minute of silence in memory of Buzin.
“We gathered 48 intellectuals - interesting people from Russia and Ukraine, and compiled this book,” Chalenko said.
Then the writer’s mother, Valentina Pavlovna, took the stage.
“When all these publications had already begun, his work began, we were very worried and worried... I also believed that they don’t kill for the truth, but in fact, they killed him for the word of truth,” she said.
One of the authors of the book, political scientist Alexey Kochetkov, called Buzina “the last White Guard of Kyiv.”
“When we were preparing this collection, we decided to put in the book a photograph of Oles Buzina in the form of a Drozdovets, because I think that this characterizes him very well. For me, this was the last White Guard in Kyiv,” the political scientist admitted.
“I am probably one of the few who did not get to know Oles, although I read all his books and articles starting in 2005 or 2006, as soon as they began to appear. I always dreamed of meeting him, since I had the opportunity to visit Kyiv less and less, but I never succeeded. When the second Maidan happened, when I saw what was happening in Ukraine, I saw Oles’s speeches on TV and in the press, I had the feeling that I wouldn’t be able to meet him. If his death was unexpected for someone, then I had a constant premonition that this murder was about to happen.
Oles, when he was asked on the program if he wanted to move, he said that he would not go anywhere. This showed his personal courage, the absolute heroic choice of a person who commits a ram, this is the choice of a person who goes to close the embrasure. This is absolutely heroic behavior. We are dealing with an act of true heroism. Such moments are rare in history,” noted another author, political scientist Oleg Matveychev.
The representative of Russian nationalists, Konstantin Krylov, shared his impressions of Buzina’s work.
“The first thing that came into my hands was a book about Taras Shevchenko. When I started reading this, my eyes widened: it was written by a Ukrainian and it was published there. After that, I automatically respected the man.
He had something that most of our intellectuals lack. This can politely be called intellectual courage; Oles Buzina would say: “Don’t piss.” This is what he had in mind.
Everything has already been said here: the fact that such a son is really worth being proud of, and about the influence he has had and will have on Russian and Ukrainian culture. But I want to say a little about the event itself.
You know, perhaps one of those things that really dampens a person is the feeling that his feat will not be appreciated, that he will, say, be killed, imprisoned, deprived of something important, and no one, not even a mouse, will shed a tear. So, those who have gathered here are breaking this stereotype and breaking it very strongly, because, yes, they killed a man, but what remains of him are books, memories, we really remember him, we do this,” Krylov said.
Former deputy of the Odessa City Council Alexander Vasiliev thanked all those without whose help the new book would never have been published.
“It’s very difficult for me to speak, to stand in front of you here, because we are people who left. We were faced with the choice of staying or leaving, and we made our choice - human, weak. And Oles made a strong, real masculine choice. I’m sure he was aware of what he was risking,” Vasiliev said.
“Oles saw how a great state was plunging into this petty, nationalistic, philistine reality, against which he, in fact, rebelled. I think the main thing is that he rebelled not so much against Taras Shevchenko as a poet - perhaps his judgments regarding him were too strict, but rather against this petty cult of some small national gods, with the help of which the great empire was destroyed, partly which he wanted to be,” noted philosopher Boris Mezhuev.
The famous political scientist Vladimir Kornilov called for erecting monuments to Oles Buzina - in Russia, the LDPR, and, when this becomes possible, in Kyiv.
“When this tragic event happened, I immediately said that those killers, those bastards who shot at Oles, thought that they were killing him. In fact, they immortalized him. Forever.
He told me that he dreams of writing the history of White Guard Kyiv, about the life of officers, and collected a lot of documents about Denikin’s Kyiv. He could drive around a point unknown to me, a Donetsk resident, and talk for hours about every house, about every monument, about where the action of Bulgakov’s novel took place - he loved Kiev so much like no other Kiev resident, and, moreover, those Roguli who We've gone there now. I am sure that in his native, beloved Kyiv there will definitely appear a street in honor of Oles Buzina, a monument, a bust.
But I also want to say: why are we waiting, why only in Kyiv?
I urge you to start a discussion here and then bring it up for public discussion. In July next year Oles would have turned 50 years old. For this anniversary, I think, in the end, it is necessary to raise the question of ensuring that his memory is immortalized both here in Moscow and in Donetsk, where he often visited with lectures - in those cities where he visited – street, monument, bust. I understand that it is impossible to do this in Kyiv now. I’m sure that it will happen there, but here, in Russia, and in the DPR, and in the LPR, we need to open monuments, name streets, alleys - this doesn’t bother anyone even now,” Kornilov said.
Crimean Tatar writer Diana Kadi, who recently presented her book in Moscow, also attended this event. Kadi said that Oles Buzina was not just a friend for her, but a role model:
“He was a friend, he was a mentor, and he didn’t even know that he was a role model for me. He was a writer with a capital letter and a man with a capital letter...
We talked for hours about everything in the world, and he told how, at a conscious age, he was baptized at the age of 24, but he finally believed in God and his mission when, on his last visit to Moscow, he went to the church on Bolshaya Polyanka, and a nun came up to him and handed over a thousand rubles. She recognized him from Solovyov’s program. He said that he was so touched by this: “She said that this is for your path.” He donated a huge amount to this temple, and at that moment he realized that he was doing everything right, he understood the seriousness of his mission.”
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