The Russians Don’t Want War!
With his poem „Meinst du, die Russen wollen Krieg?“, Yevgeny Yevtushenko showed that nothing is further from Russia's mind than starting a war — too painful are its own experiences with invasions of Russian sovereign territory.
Do you think the Russians want war? In view of the Russian troops in Ukraine, one might take the question for cynicism: just look, could be the answer, of course the Russians want war! When Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote his poem, from which a song grew that he gave to the people of Europe, the times had long been shaped by the conflict of systems, by the enmity between East and West. In that era the author was a soldier in the Bundeswehr. Whether on the radio or on the barracks square: the citizens of this country, which at no time truly belonged to us, were made to understand back then, always and everywhere, that the Russian, whoever that might be, would soon invade us. The Russian never came — has to this day not come to Germany as an enemy.
The Russians understand more about an assault on their land than all other people in the world. Twice in their history they were invaded by foreign troops. The French army’s march into Russian land began on 24 June 1812. The German troops invaded the Russians on 22 June 1941. As a result of both wars, millions of Russian dead, scorched earth and decades of painstaking reconstruction had to be endured. In both wars the foreign armies came without warning and without being provoked, right up to the gates of Moscow.
The Russians do not want war, because they know better than other peoples how war feels. The Russians have the fear of an invasion in their genes.
In every Russian family one can tell of a relative devoured by the last war: whether it is one who starved to death in besieged Leningrad who is remembered, or one who was murdered in a German camp, or the one who fell fighting the Nazis for the liberation of Europe: one remembers.
These concentrated Russian memories force the state of Russia into one consequence: to be prepared for a war. Part of that preparation is not letting the enemy come too close to one’s borders. When NATO, since its founding the self-declared adversary of Russia, built up more and more bases around Russia, the Russians tolerated this for a long time. When Russian Ukrainians in the Donbas were butchered by militias over the course of years, Russia did not intervene. When Ukraine sought to set out on the path into NATO, when it permitted US biological-weapons laboratories on Ukrainian soil, when Ukraine threatened to revoke its renunciation of nuclear weapons, the patience of the Russians was exhausted.
Yes, the Russians do not want war. But when they are threatened by war, they face the fight for their existence.