War and peace: those words are forbidden in Russia today | Elena Kostyuchenko
War and peace: those words are forbidden in Russia today | Elena Kostyuchenko
My mother plaits camouflage nets for soldiers, and when we try to talk about what’s happening in Ukraine we end up shouting, says Elena Kostyuchenko, a Russian journalist
George Orwell - 1984. 'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms."
Everyone describes their motivation in the same words: “To keep from losing my mind.”
Isn't it a sign we've already lost all our marbles?
I've felt a chest pain reading about a lesbian couple mentioned there. One gossip, one report, and their son would become an orphan and both of them would go to prison. So much of these family values talks. I hope they'd fly under the radar until this system dies, or, better, leave that swamp in some way.
@andrew_bidlaw @mozz
Things will get better when the current crop of befuddled geriatric leaders die. That generation needs to go. It's like the old Soviet Union when it was ruled by political fossils. They don't have a useful idea in their heads, and want to turn the clock back to their glory days.Well that did never fix anything. They were just replaced!
You don't have to mention people when replying to them.
In the history of Russia, it gets better only for a moment, just to say that freedom is chaotic and justify another dictator at the helm for decades.
Good luck trying to sell the epic Tolstoy novel "And"
This is the best summary I could come up with:
She brought me a shawl – crimson, with asters and morning glory – and then she put on a song for my fiancee that went, “As long as there’s no gays and wars.” She doesn’t want to come and live with me in exile.
New laws forbid the dissemination of any information that contradicts the official line (this carries up to 15 years’ incarceration) and expressing negative feelings about the war (a fine for the first offence, then prison).
Then Russia attacked Ukraine, Novaya had its licence revoked and I quit, but Sveta stayed and is still working as a journalist, without any accreditation or pay, still living in Moscow.
One time, she was simultaneously trying to find a bomb shelter (Ukrainian drones approaching Moscow) and an air conditioning unit (summer was expected to be hot).
My friend Vika and her wife are also parents to a son, but families like theirs have been outlawed by Russia’s supreme court for being part of what it called an extremist “international LGBT public movement”.
The jailers declare that Navalny just dropped dead – “sudden death syndrome” they say, while the TV adds helpfully that it was a blood clot.
The original article contains 1,125 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I think in this case the bot rather butchered the mood piece.