Kornei Chukovsky
To the Children of Leningrad
The years will speed past you,
Year after year after year,
And you’ll become old women and men.
Now you are towheaded,
Now you are young,
But then you shall be bald
And grey.
And even little Tatka
Shall someday have grandkids,
And Tatka will put on big glasses
And knit mittens for her grandchildren.
And even two-year-old Petya
Will someday be seventy years old,
And all the children, all the children in the world
Will call him “old man.”
And his grey beard will
Hang down to his waist.
Now, when you’re old women and men,
Wearing those big glasses,
To stretch your old bones
You’ll go on an outing.
(You’ll pick up your grandson Nikolka, say,
And take him to a New Year’s party.)
Or, in that very same year, two thousand twenty-four,
You’ll sit on a bench in the Summer Garden.
Or not in the Summer Garden, but in some little square
In New Zealand or America.
It will be the same everywhere, wherever you go —
Prague, The Hague, Paris, Chicago, Krakow.
The residents will silently point at you
And quietly, respectfully say:
“They were in Leningrad during the Blockade,
Back in those days, you know, in the years of the Siege.”
And they’ll doff their hats to you.
1944
Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Alexander Voitsekhovsky and Svetlana Voskoboinikova for the heads-up.
Actor Alexander Sushchik recites Kornei Chukovsky’s “To the Children of Leningrad”
Few people in Russia see the March 2024 presidential election as a real opportunity to change the country’s leadership. Voting in Russian elections has not been free and fair in recent times, and since the invasion Ukraine, the Russian regime has tightened the screws dramatically. There is no freedom of speech, people are persecuted for making anti-war statements, many opposition leaders and activists are in prison, and hundreds of thousands of people have fled Russia.
In January [2024], however, thousands of people unexpectedly showed up to sign petitions supporting the presidential candidacy of Boris Nadezhdin, a former State Duma deputy who entered politics in the 1990s. Nadezhdin is running under the slogan “End the special military operation.” Many people view endorsing Nadezhdin as a legal opportunity to voice their anti-war sentiments. Standing in long queues at signature collection points, people said they had come to see other people who thought like they did and voiced hope for change.
Their conversations are featured in Nadezhdin’s Queue, a film in Radio Svoboda’s documentary project “Signs of Life.”
Source: “Nadezhdin’s Queue,” Signs of Life (Radio Svoboda), YouTube, 27 January 2024 (in Russian). Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader
