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Who are the Russians?

Stories and News No. 1263

Once upon a time the role playing.
The eternal dance of typically human characters, which are many and act beyond time and space.
Yet they are repeated each time more similar and, for the more obvious ones, the judgment of history changes according to who reads or observes.
Now is the time for the Russians in these western latitudes.
The Russians who bomb, the Russians who invade, the Russians who plunder, the Russians who deport, the Russians who rape and the Russians who kill.
In one way, the Russians are the Bad Guys of history.
They have been that for a long time and often in the last century, from the cold of a war that has not yet ended to the warmth of the pages of novels as well as movies.
Nonetheless, within each chapter of the human story, if for the reasons mentioned above the “evil Russian” could be defined as the right character for the consumption of the plot to be told rather than of the Story itself, well, it must be said that such a menacing and cruel mask has been worn by many in the past and also in the present.
Let's face it, many have been and still are today equally “Russians”.
Without going too far back, limiting ourselves to the last century, I list in no particular order and I remember that we Italians were the “Russians” when we decided to invade Eritrea, my father's country of origin, and then on several occasions the neighbor / quarrel Ethiopia, not to mention Libya and Albania.
Impossible not to talk about the Germans, of course, who about eighty years ago were immensely “Russians”.
And during the same period the Americans with the stars and stripes have been “the Russians” in many more countries than the ones liberated during the Second World War.
France has acted like “Russia” over and over again on the African continent.
While the United Kingdom, which now lives separately in its own land following a political consultation that has thrown in the dust every foundation of progress and modernity conquered in other spheres, was the “Russian guy” in a large part of the planet.
And what about the Spanish and Portuguese? South America still pays the price of their being “Russians2 in ways that are still terrifying.
What about the Chinese with everything that isn't Chinese or don't want to be? And of the Israelis with all that sooner or later will have to be Israeli?
Not to mention the infinite number of occasions in which even today, thanks to the sale of arms, economic and financial, strategic and political support, we are all “Russians” without any mercy. But with the weakest and most despicable alibi in the world, pretending to be unaware of it, because mentioned in the title or portrayed with bloody hands in the middle of the still image in the foreground, condemned and blamed, the Russians are the others.
Not us.
Not anymore.
Nevertheless, depending on how much clear memory and honest awareness resides in the mind of those who observe the cruelty of the live story, history goes on and unfortunately repeats itself.
Because there is always someone ready to play the worst role. To invade, deport, loot, rape and kill.
I think we should all have learned, everywhere, to predict the misdeeds of the bad guys in order to save the next victims.
Because we've been both, we know the story and we already know how it ends.

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