MARINA OVSYANNIKOVA. SAY HER NAME.

Marina Ovsyannikova is, or rather was, a  journalist on the Russian state television channel, an editor, presumably well paid by Russian standards. Then a week ago, she couldn't stand it anymore, and burst in front of the news reader with a homemade sign denouncing the war and  telling viewers they were being lied to. She was hauled  off in an instant of course, but  for that instant, the truth was told, to everybody.

She's in a cell now somewhere, perhaps in the Lubyanka itself, being interrogated, beaten, possibly tortured. Probably her close friends and relatives have been holding to, and maybe some of them will lose their jobs or their university places and certainly be shunned by many who knew them. and for her, what lies ahead? Surely for such an egregious breach, the full 15 years prescribed by new laws, served in some gulag where, under Russian tradition, an attractive young woman must exect the worst.  And unless Russia changes, she will be released in 2037, well into middle age, traumatised, coarsened, remembered by no one, with no job  and no future.

She knew, of course, that exactly this would happen. she must also have known that it would make no difference, that the vast majority of viewers would it obediently wipe their memories of the truth they had seen for an instant, against their will. They are a mystery, aren't they,  these lone protestors against dictatorships that are  supported by the more or less consent of the majority. A day comes when they can stand it no longer, their throats will no longer utter the lies, their hands no longer write them, and they speak, or act. They burn with a fierce brightness for a  moment before going out forever, like a light bulb before it fails. Sophie Scholl in Germany during WW2 was  another.

But they fascinate us precisely because they are so exceedingly rare. For every or Ovsyannikova  or Scholl, there are many millions who plod on submissively, acclimatising ourselves to tyranny, through lies and half lies and little accommodations. The fascinate us because we know, don't we, that we would fail the test she passed, with colours flying.

But today, please, just say her name, diffcult though it is to pronounce, say it under your breath, once or twice: Marina Ovsyannikova.
 
 
 
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