Gostinyi Dvor

If someone asked me how I ended up at a mass meeting in a foreign country that started a war a week after I arrived, I wouldn’t know what to say. Yet there I was, standing among all those people who had just become as foreign to that country as I was.

It was around 7 pm when I reached Gostiny Dvor, a building that had served as the largest shopping venue in the Russian Empire since 1785. Now, it is a modern shopping center with a metro station vestibule. The convenience of gathering at a metro station could not be overestimated. If somebody asked, you were not at the meeting – you were heading into the metro station. And if somebody were to run after you – there was a quick getaway. Another reason for this choice of venue was that the officials had closed all accesses to Palace Square, knowing for sure that if people decided to gather there, they would never be able to disperse them without turning it into another Bloody Sunday.I wonder what would stop them from shooting: the number of people who would be able to gather there, or the number of bullets they would have to use?

Palace Square wouldn’t suffice as a meeting place, because it was way too close to Bolshaya Neva, the city’s biggest river. Russia is famous for being cold, but Saint Petersburg is only part Russia. The other part is water, and this part is what makes the weather in February unbearable. It makes you wonder: if they spend millions on changing the weather conditions for the Victory Day parade almost every year, could they make the weather so insufferable on purpose? It was so cold that day that standing at Palace Square could make a lot of people shut up just because their lips would stop moving. 

Sounds metaphorical, knowing that the one thing Russian people have been completely deprived of for a long time is their voice. I remember my grandmother telling the story of when her dad found out that Stalin was dead. He exclaimed “Slava Bogu!” (“Thank God!”) and her mom came running to the living room to whisper in fear that he should never say such things out loud. Was it because after they die Russian rulers can hear what you say about them? I hope so, because I have plenty I’d like the current ruler to hear.

When I arrived at Gostiny Dvor, there was a group of people who could pass for listeners of the street musician: a regular event for Petersburg, even in February. He sang “Trava u doma” by Zemlyane, and I tried to figure out whether this choice of song was intentional. And then there were at least a hundred of them. They were patrolling the entrance to the shopping center, all covered in body armor, wearing headgear, carrying batons and guns. Some of them stood still in position to guard the paddy-wagons beside them. Some of them were running like hounds, looking into people’s eyes, as if searching for somebody in particular. Some of them had dogs. Some “passers-by” were wondering aloud why they needed dogs, and I said that dogs could smell explosives. And then I thought to myself that the dogs didn’t know that. They didn’t know what it was they could smell and why. They were simply trained to smell it and run. I wonder how this differed from the people in body armor.

The second the song finished, people started chanting, albeit awkwardly and not very loudly, “Net voine!” (“No to war!”), a slogan that is currently prohibited in Russia. The dogs in armor didn’t give them a chance to finish pronouncing the last syllable. They ran quickly and took everyone whose voices they assumed they had heard. Hands behind their backs, crooked and silenced, they went inside the paddy-wagons and disappeared. Men, women, teenagers, elderly people, children, Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Kazakhs. It didn’t really matter to them who they were taking.

The place was a total mess. People kept coming and joining the crowd and at some point, it was impossible to take everyone who was shouting. The police tried to make the music coming from the speakers inside Gostiny Dvor louder to make sure people’s voices couldn’t break through. At one moment, an advertisement interrupted the music and the whole square could hear: “From February 14 to March 8, Gostiny Dvor will make all your wishes come true!” With such a soundtrack, people’s voices sounded like prayers, cries for help, rather than a desire to protect their rights.

In the crowd I saw a man standing silently with his dog. The dog was missing one back paw. She was balancing on her three legs, rubbing her head against her owner’s leg and constantly looking up at him. She seemed very scared. Somehow, this dog understood much more than many “people” who were there that night. I decided to go talk to them.

“What’s her name?”

“Lapa,” he replied. In Russian, “lapa” means “paw”.

“And your name?”

“Vova,” he replied. In Russian, “Vova” is short for Vladimir.

One thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was the surrealistic nature of this night. I stood beside a Vladimir who was loving enough to take in and care for a stray dog without a paw. I stood there with him mumbling a prohibited slogan to fight another Vladimir, one filled with hatred towards the people he is responsible to and for. 

Not long ago, I read a phrase that I really liked: “If you want to write about something – write about something you saw with your own eyes. Everything else is participation in a lie.” I haven’t seen Ukraine. I haven’t seen Vladimir Putin. But I have seen people being violently pushed through the doors of paddy-wagons for shouting “No to war.” 

The war will end; Ukraine will recover. But this will never leave my memory, nor the memory of anyone who was there that night.