Washington: Russian dissident historian Tamara Edelman was vacationing in Greece when Moscow’s tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022 and she realized she would never go back to her country.
With her only suitcase, 65-year-old Edelman moved to Portugal, where her daughter was living, and started a new life in exile.
“I am operating under the assumption that I will not return. I’m making my life in Portugal,’ Edelman, who has more than 1.6 million followers on his History channel on YouTube, told AFP. “I want to come back… but if I keep thinking every day, ‘When is this going to happen?’ I will go crazy.”
Edelman, who was declared a “foreign agent” by the government in Moscow, is part of a group of exiled anti-war Russian public intellectuals and cultural figures who are rebuilding their careers abroad.
While they serve a large diaspora – it is estimated that more than 800,000 Russians have left the country over the past two years – unlike previous waves of migration caused by Russia’s disasters, they communicate with those who have stayed via social media. are able to continue to operate, despite increasing government restrictions.
“I think this is one of the advantages of emigration today, if there can be any advantage, that our ties with our homeland are not so badly broken,” said Edelman, who wore the colors of the Ukrainian flag on her black blouse. , he said before a lecture at a community center outside Washington.
“Today is an opportunity to exchange ideas. And, despite all the restrictions, inside Russia you can still reach people who have migrated there. It is extremely valuable, it should be used and protected.”
Tamara Edelman, who was declared a “foreign agent” by the Russian government, is part of a group of exiled anti-war Russian public intellectuals and cultural figures who are rebuilding their careers abroad. (AFP)
While exiles are unlikely to have a significant impact on political life inside Russia, according to Alexander Morozov, a political analyst and lecturer at Charles University in Prague, “they can be keepers of ideas, centers of expertise and civic education.”
When political change occurs, “those who have retained trust and their symbolic capital can play a role in Russia’s renewal,” he wrote in a recent paper.
During his first few months in Portugal, Edelman, who worked as a history teacher at a prestigious school in Moscow for more than 30 years before becoming an editor, blogger, and public speaker, reassembled his YouTube team. He kept himself busy looking for a place to live. And signing up for Portuguese lessons.
But she consoled herself by thinking that she was there on a brief visit and needed to buy a bottle of port wine to bring back to Moscow to her mother and friends. Then it hit him.
“When things calmed down a bit, I felt a tremendous weight lift off me and I realized I was going to be in this amazing, beautiful country for a long time,” she said. “Of course, (President Vladimir Putin’s) regime will collapse, but I don’t know if I’ll be around to see it.”
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Edelman’s YouTube channel has grown from about 500,000 followers to 1.63 million and has a team of 30 people, including lectures on Russian, Ukrainian and world history, as well as Putin on democracy. Also includes a special presentation on the attack. , which he donned in a T-shirt that read “No Putin No War.”
“I want to express my unconditional support for Ukraine in this war and I believe that all of its territories, including Crimea, should be returned to it,” Edelman told AFP, referring to the Black Sea peninsula. , which Russia captured in 2014.
During his lecture titled “The Judgment of History” to an auditorium of several hundred Russian speakers, Edelman examined the painful questions of culpability and responsibility of countries and societies for crimes ranging from ancient Greece to Nazi Germany – Russia’s wars. With clear meaning of. Ukraine.
Edelman suggested in his interview with AFP that it would not be enough to prosecute those who committed direct crimes against Ukraine.
“I believe there cannot be collective responsibility, the whole people cannot be guilty,” he told AFP. “But at the same time, there must also be moral responsibility, responsibility before one’s conscience.”
Alina, a 39-year-old Russian-born quality control manager, drove more than eight hours from the southern US state of Tennessee to Washington with her husband and two children to hear Edelman.
For Alina, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “a crime against a neighboring country, but it’s also a crime against my own country because crimes are being committed in the name of people like me, who don’t agree with it.”
In these tragic times, Alina said, Edelman’s conversation was a breath of fresh air.
She said, “When I listen to his lectures, I believe that if there is no hope, there is at least some light for you to follow.” “You realize you’re not alone in all of this, even though you’re physically isolated from everyone else.”
MD/BGS/CO