Prior to this trip to Russia, I had lived in Japan for nearly five years. During my time there, I forced myself to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the express purpose of finding out whether the Japanese still hated Americans, hated me, for what happened to them twice in August of 1945. I was relieved to learn they didn’t hate Americans, they hated the bombs. The Japanese hated what the bombs did, NOT what Americans did to them. On Red Square, I asked myself, why I should hate the Russian people? Shouldn’t I hate war instead?
The teachers I worked with: Sergei, Galya, Tanya, Little Rabbit were wonderful and warm hearted. Kolobok, (Little Loaf of Bread) Sergei’s mother, treated me like her own son. Nearly everyone I met was loving, enduring, affectionate, resilient and most of all resourceful people. Shouldn’t I hate idealistic notions and any attempt to unilaterally impose them on the unwilling? Why should I hate this country and its rich and glorious history? Shouldn’t I rather hate violations of freedom, selfish imposition of some leader’s desires and invasion instead? On Red Square, I wrestled with demons and the hate demons lost. It wasn’t the Russians who killed Fish. It was war that killed him. Nobody wins a war, one side just loses more.
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