Archive photo, 2019. Chief Rabbi of Russia Berl Lazar, Patriarch Kirill, and Vladimir Putin after laying flowers on Red Square. Photo: Alexey Nikolsky / Presidential Press Service of the Russian Federation / TASS
April is a time of great holidays for many Abrahamic religions, primarily Judaism and Christianity. Jews celebrate Passover, remembering the time when Jews left Egyptian slavery 36 or 37 centuries ago. There is very little historical information about this, although evidence has been found in ancient Egyptian papyri that indeed the Israelites revolted in Egypt against the repressive regime that made them slaves. In the Bible, the five books of Moses, which in Jewish tradition make up the Torah and are also canonical texts of the Christian Bible, there is nothing about how Jews lived in slavery. How they ended up in slavery is written in the first book, called «Bereshit» («Genesis»). And the second book «Shmot» («Names») begins with Moses, with Aaron speaking on his behalf (Moses was slow of speech), coming to Pharaoh and asking Pharaoh to let his people go. You will not read about life in slavery anywhere in the Torah. Because — this is my hypothesis — God does not need slaves. The main task facing people of goodwill, and particularly Jews, is tikkun olam, to make the world better, which is the main reason, it is believed, that God created the Jewish people. But it is clear that slaves cannot improve the world. They are slaves who carry out someone else's will. And therefore, God does not need them at all.
Jews were in Egyptian slavery for over 300 years. Liberation began when Moses turned to God for help, and this story is well known. The word «Jews» comes from Ever, which later transformed into Ivri and means «people from the other side of the river», or simply «others». They were different because they believed in one God, who, when they left slavery, gave them a single law — the Ten Commandments, which Moses, who spent 40 days on the High Mountain with God, brought the Tablets of the Covenant, two stones on which these commandments were engraved.
One of the most important maxims of Judaism is «do not kneel before a man». In fact, one of the reasons why Jews have been persecuted throughout the world for centuries is that they denied the divine power and will of kings and other rulers
In Jewish tradition, everything is interpreted. The tradition of discussing, debating is one of the most important in Judaism. One of the 613 laws that Jews are obliged to follow is be-divrei Torah, to discuss what is said in the Torah. There is only one commandment in Judaism that is not interpreted. It is called Adonai echad, God is one. The remaining nine, as we see from the Torah, from the Pentateuch of Moses, are interpreted, every single one. Even about the commandment «Do not kill» it is said that if a person needs to defend his home, he can commit murder. Another question is that for the Almighty it is still a violation of the rules. And one of the hypotheses, for example, why God did not allow Moses to enter the Promised Land with the rest of the Israelites, was that Moses killed a man: he saw how a slave owner, a guard, was beating a Jewish slave, and killed him. The Almighty did not want people to enter the Promised Land under the leadership of a man with someone else's blood on his hands. And this, of course, is a very important understanding of this commandment.
But the other commandments are also interpreted. Because life is not black and white at all. Because people find themselves in different circumstances. Because one of the most important maxims of Judaism is «do not kneel before a man». In fact, this is one of the reasons why Jews have been persecuted throughout the world for centuries, with the exception of two countries — China and India, where there were no Jewish pogroms. They were persecuted precisely because Jews denied the divine power and will of kings and other rulers. In Jewish tradition, a person cannot and should not believe in any other person as in God. God is one, neither presidents, nor kings, nor the Saudi monarch, nor the emir of Qatar, nor his prophet who appeared in the 7th century possess divine will. No one else possesses this divine power, which only the Almighty possesses.
The Name of a Free Person
People come out of slavery and gain names. When we celebrate Passover, it is not about history, not about what happened 36 centuries ago. The significance of Passover is more important. It is about the fact that a person constantly falls into slavery. We are slaves to our habits. We are slaves to other people. People who live in Russia now are put in conditions where they are practically slaves who must silently carry out the will of the bandits who have seized the country, and if they do not carry out their will, then just as the guards beat the slaves in Ancient Egypt, the current guards and oprichniks put people in prisons and camps.
People become dependent on other people not only physically, but also mentally, when they become dependent on someone else's power: under the subordination of the owners of their companies, the heads of their universities, etc. There are many circumstances when a person cannot manage his freedom. And as we remember, it is said that man was created in the image and likeness of God. It is clear that we do not know what the face of the Almighty looks like. He appears before Moses in the form of a pillar of fire. But what does it mean — in the image and likeness? It means that we have received freedom of will, freedom of choice. These are the most important tools of a person that distinguish him from an animal. Freedom of will and freedom of choice. Therefore, on the holiday of Passover, recalling the exodus from Egypt, we also remember the Holocaust and the uprising of Jewish slaves in the Warsaw ghetto, who had practically no weapons, but for whom it was important to die free. And they rose up, held this uprising for many days, and then the men killed their wives and children, just so they would not fall into slavery again.
This is a very important story because a person constantly needs to be reminded that he should not find himself in submission to another person. This is constant work on oneself to get out of mental, or physical, or mental and physical slavery. This is overcoming the slave within oneself, an insanely difficult task that requires very great and constant efforts from a person. Sometimes a person has to act against rational decisions. People often ask why Alexei Navalny** returned to Russia, knowing what it threatened him with. But it was his choice. It was his decision, it was his free will, because he did not want to be dependent on circumstances or his own fear. Those who have read the book «Patriot» do not need to be told that Navalny gave a fantastic lesson in what it means to be free, to have freedom of will and freedom of choice.
Guilt on Everyone
News of recent days. Two Russian missiles again hit the city of Sumy, again killed civilians, again killed children. And this feeling of personal absolute powerlessness and horror from the fact that, as Trump said here, Russia is bombing Ukraine like crazy, and he does not understand what is happening there. And what is happening is war. An aggressive war without any reason, which Russia is waging against the people of Ukraine, using the resources of the country, the living force of the country, and the economy of the country for this. And it kills, kills, kills.
The consequences of a ballistic missile strike on the center of the city of Sumy on April 13, 2025. 35 people died, including 2 children; 129 people, including 17 children, were injured. Photo: DSNS of Ukraine
And here I cannot but mention the discussion that is often heard on the internet, that there is no such thing as collective responsibility. Of course, there is no collective responsibility in the legal sense. Every guilt, every crime is absolutely individual, even when it is a crime against humanity and mankind. But there is collective responsibility in another sense, in the fact that each of us, adult Russians, who have freedom of will and freedom of choice, is responsible for what Putin does. And because we allowed him, because in 2000 we voted for a KGB officer, fully understanding what it means, that is, having already read «The Gulag Archipelago» and the books of Solzhenitsyn and Grossman by that time, knowing what was happening in Soviet camps. It was no longer possible to say: we did not know. Like the Germans who «did not know» about the crimes of the Nazis living under the walls of Auschwitz.
A person who begins to think about denazification understands that the Stalinist Soviet Union and the Nazi regime were absolute twin brothers. In «Life and Fate» by Grossman, SS officer Liss tells communist Mostovsky, with whom he endlessly converses in Auschwitz, that, in fact, if you win this war, then we will live and continue with you, communists. And if we win this war, then you will live and continue with us. We are two sides of a single essence of a totalitarian party state. So, when the first stage of denazification was initially underway, they caught Nazi criminals, Gestapo officers, they were tried, there was the Nuremberg Trials. But this kind of allowed other Germans, who brought Hitler to power in 1933, who went crazy with adoration of this vile man, who knew about Hitler's «Nuremberg laws» that allowed the seizure of business and property from Jews and beat them on the streets, to think and say that they had nothing to do with it. But they recognized Adolf Hitler's right to everything, deified him, just as in the Soviet Union Stalin was held as a god, despite the fact that religion was declared the opium of the people, and almost all temples and synagogues were closed in 1929 and thousands of priests were shot.
Such a simple tool as declaring only those who served in the Gestapo, SS, and punitive detachments guilty, and everyone else as if they knew nothing, does not work. This way, the people do not learn to understand that they were accomplices in the crime
So, it quickly became clear that denazification as such does not work, because people were given a very convenient tool. They could say: we did not know what was happening. Well, yes, I live in an apartment where Jews used to live. Well, yes, I got these sheets and these silver spoons from the warehouse where Jewish things were brought. I have a wonderful painting on the wall that was taken from a wealthy Jewish banker. There was such a convenient exculpatory tool: it was not us, we did not know. However, when in the American occupation zone, the Americans heard about how the Germans «knew nothing», they sent them to exhume mass graves and took them to concentration camps so that they could see what their compatriots were doing to living people, what they were turning people into, whose only guilt was that they were different. They were just different.
In 1948, a survey was conducted in the FRG, and Germans were asked in which Germany they would like to live. The first place was the Kaiser Germany (the last Kaiser was overthrown as a result of the German revolution, removed from the throne in 1918). Number two was the Third Reich. And this was three years after the end of the war, when all of Germany lay in ruins, when factories were taken out of Germany, mainly to the Soviet Union as compensation for the terrible destruction that was primarily on the land of Ukraine and Belarus, as well as in the Caucasus, where the Germans roamed freely. After all the horrors of military devastation and humiliating capitulation, with all the physical and moral suffering as a result of post-war occupation, the Germans continued to dream of the Hitler Reich.
And then it was understood that such a simple tool as declaring only those who served in the Gestapo, SS, and punitive detachments guilty, and everyone else as if they knew nothing, does not work. This way, the people do not learn to understand that they were accomplices in the crime. And then real denazification began in Germany, when newspapers began to write in detail about the crimes of Nazism, books began to be published, television programs, lessons of tolerance. In schools, they specifically studied what the Germans, their grandfathers and fathers, did on the occupied territories throughout Europe, in Africa, and so on. Germans told Germans about how the people went crazy, recognizing Hitler as their god, and how they became accomplices in the crime.
When I say that I consider myself guilty of the fact that the Russian army, Russian people, and, of course, the Chekists and their deity Putin commit daily crimes on the territory of Ukraine, I am talking exactly about the fact that it is absolutely necessary that not only the bad Chekists are found guilty, but that we, Russians, understand that we are accomplices in this crime — at least because we allowed it.
The People Are Not Always Right
Now about what concerns the endless discussion about collective guilt, whether it is possible to blame the entire people, because the people are «always right».
It is not true that the people are always right. As the wonderful former president of Uruguay, who ended military rule in Uruguay in the mid-80s, told me, the people are very often wrong, but they are the only ones who have the right to make mistakes. And to atone for guilt, the people need to go through repentance, through the recognition of their involvement in the crimes committed on their behalf.
All dictators always appeal to the people. They always say they act for the greatness of the people, for the welfare of the people. And for the Russian people to feel great, they kill others, they commit crimes. They torture and representatives of their own Russian people who are against dictatorship and war.
For their whims, they are now destroying the Russian economy. According to some data, about 70% of the Russian economy is already in the hands of the state. And it is clear that this is a militarized economy, an economy that has been transferred to a war footing. Nevertheless, 30% remains in private hands, and the interests of Deripaska and Alekperov are completely different, the interests of Sechin and the Kovalchuks are also different. For Sechin, it is important that there is a shadow fleet and that it is possible to trade oil, and for the Kovalchuks, the interest is to make Russia a fortress, to close it from everything, so that their banks and financial companies become internal offshore and help dictators from around the world launder money. In short, the interests are very different, and that is why Putin's role is the role of a mediator. He constantly plays with his entourage, pitting everyone against everyone. We saw how in 2022 and 2023 Putin played with Prigozhin and Shoigu with Gerasimov, pitting them against each other, in order to have control, including over the military, whose role naturally increases significantly during the war, whom he, of course, feared. As Russian monarchs always feared the military, no matter what they were called, tsars or general secretaries, starting with the Decembrist uprising.
Another question is that when the regime collapses, no liberals will immediately come to power in Russia. Although the experience of the post-Stalin regime shows that those who come to power after the dictator, first of all, try to limit the power of the Chekists as much as possible, that is, this pack of wolves that has fed on blood. It fed when it worked in the NKVD, it feeds now when it works in the FSB, and so on. And they tried in every possible way, as it was under Khrushchev, to dilute the MGB, and then the KGB with party appointees, to have control from within. This was, of course, a big illusion, but nevertheless, until Andropov became both the chairman of the KGB and a member of the Politburo, it somehow worked. Because they feared for their own lives. Because they were tired of being afraid throughout the entire Stalinist history, when the wife of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Molotov was in a camp, the wife of the «All-Russian elder» Kalinin, the so-called president of the Soviet Union, was also in a camp, and so on. It was a common thing for Stalin to play with his subordinates like this, so that they always remembered that only he decides who lives and who dies.
The same thing is now, of course, done by Putin. He tries to create an image of a person who decides who lives and who dies. But at the same time, Putin is a market man. He himself is obviously the owner of a colossal fortune. And therefore he is forced to act as a mediator between various oligarchs allowed to power. These people have their own interests, large businesses have one, medium and small businesses have another. And this is exactly what, by the way, allows the opposition to exist in market systems and what was impossible in the conditions of the nationalization of everything and everyone in the Soviet Union. This is the main difference.
Like all dictatorships, the current Russian government appeals to the people and says that the people simply dream that Putin will sit in power endlessly and that his Kovalchuks, Rotenbergs, and other sons of bitches can exploit the resources that belong to the Russian people.
All these attempts to create the elixir of immortality, which are endlessly engaged in St. Petersburg and in institutes in Moscow, are ridiculous and pathetic. All dictators do exactly this. They think they can deceive the Lord God. They will not succeed. God is not a sucker
Whether the people are capable or not, whether they show a desire to free themselves, whether Russians are capable of fighting and resisting the fascist regime? Unfortunately, as we know from the history of Germany, it is very difficult to resist from within. There were seven assassination attempts against Hitler, there were seven conspiracies, but not a single attempt was successful, and it took the occupation of Germany by the Soviet Union and the allies to destroy Nazism. Although, for example, in Italy, the Resistance overthrew Mussolini's regime. In Portugal, where Salazar's fascist regime operated for a long time, as soon as Salazar died, the military came to power, and they were overthrown by internal opposition. In Spain, where Franco's fascist regime operated for a long time, after his death, the elites began to negotiate, a non-aggression pact was signed. The same thing happened to some extent in Chile after the end of Pinochet's regime, and in Uruguay after the end of the military junta, which was in power for more than 10 years, and in Argentina. That is, some time passes before the criminals are punished. But everything has an end, more or less inglorious.
They say that 90% of Russians are satisfied with what is happening in the country. Why should they fight? Everything is fine with them. But is it really so — we just do not know. Even according to polls, of course, not free, of the «Levada Center», more than 50% of Russians want the war to end. This despite the fact that people for understandable reasons are afraid to speak. They are interviewed by phone. This means that those who ask questions know their phone, surname, first name, patronymic, place of residence. What normal person in Russia now will tell the truth?
They try to measure by the internet, by telegram channels, but these are all very, very approximate surveys. Nevertheless, we have a fairly clear idea, according to the data of independent sociologists who are outside Russia or conduct focus groups, that about 20% of Russians support the war, 20% are sharply against the war, and in the middle is a swamp that waits to see where the curve will lead. And if tomorrow they declare freedom, equality, and fraternity, they will gladly shout «Freedom, equality, fraternity!» and «Down with Putin!» We observed this with you in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and suddenly it turned out that all these wonderful communists, and above all the nomenclature, had dreamed of capitalism all their lives.
We still have so much to overcome before denazification... Putin is not eternal. No matter how much he wants to pretend that he is the anointed of God on Russian soil, he is not the anointed of God. He is mortal. And if his own do not stab him, he will still die. All these attempts to create the elixir of immortality, which are endlessly engaged in St. Petersburg and in institutes in Moscow, are ridiculous and pathetic. All dictators do exactly this. They think they can deceive the Lord God. They will not succeed. God is not a sucker. And they will all burn in hell.
I believe that all of us, citizens of the Russian Federation, with the exception of those who were small children in 2022, cannot but bear responsibility for the war. Are Russians capable of repenting like the Germans? They will be forced to do so. All history shows that without repentance, without understanding their guilt, without realizing mistakes, overcoming these mistakes, it is impossible to move forward. In fact, this is what the failure of Russian democracy in the 90s showed, when they refused lustration, refused repentance, refused to admit guilt, refused to cleanse all this KGB and Soviet nomenclature filth from all government bodies.
When they refused this, Putin's rise to power was completely inevitable.
* Evgenia Albats was declared a «foreign agent» by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.
** Alexei Navalny was included in the list of «terrorists and extremists».