The 4 th of November this year couldn’t do without losses. After the Russian March, Konstantin Fetisov, the leader of the Right Cause Party’s Khimki branch, was assaulted.
Why was he attacked? It seems to me that the answer is obvious. Some people don’t want different segments of opposition come to terms, support each other. Exactly these some people are satisfied only with the situation of permanent routine conflicts, and the more groups are conflicting with each other, the better it is. The community is split, doesn’t pose a thread, so one can sleep quietly.
But when liberals go to nationalists’ March, when the military begin to display political activity, it’s then that these some people show concern and hooligans begin to assault people, and someone may be run over by a car or a train, like 73-year-old retired general Dubrov, who was returning from organizing committee for paratroopers’ meeting.
On the night of November 6th a journalist Oleg Kashin was severely beaten.
I don’t have any sympathy with Oleg Kashin. We have met twice – in 2006 in RE: Action newspaper’s editorial office and in 2008 on journalist trip to Rostov on invitation of the All-Great Don Army – we absolutely didn’t like each other. Political vector of his essays is, to put it mildly, total opposite of me as well. However, this year we, “Russian Obraz”, went on the Russian March under the slogan “For your and our freedom”. To paraphrase Voltaire’s already trite quotation – “We disapprove of what journalist Kashin says, but we are ready to defend to the death his right to say it”.
Two years ago DPNI leader Alexander Belov was attacked by unidentified individuals with metal rods in Lyubertsy region near Moscow. I visited him then in the hospital and I saw in what condition he was. He survived by a miracle. The blow was struck precisely on the head. For some reason it didn’t get deep resonance then. Nobody called it attempted murder, and those media, which covered that event, used a more neutral term “attack”. Whereas, the attempt on Belov’s life was a clear signal and response to him from the certain structures for holding the Russian March on Arbat street. However, unlike the situation with Kashin, journalist community was keeping silent about it. Sure, Belov isn’t a journalist, then why to worry? That is their affairs.
