Ukraine War Day #754: Kots Visits Polling Station In Luhansk

Dear Readers:

Today I have this story from KP. Which is more of a “human interest” type story than a political story, even though the topic is the Russian Presidential election.

Military correspondent Alexander Kots who, among his other duties, is also an official Election Monitor, visited a polling place in the city of Luhansk. Where he discovered some rather interesting architecture and people.

Kots: I never imagined that a routine visit to one of the Luhansk polling places would turn into an excursion into past history. Without which past, as the people here are convinced, there can be no future. It’s just an ordinary school on the outskirts of the city. The entryway is decorated with the patriotic holiday repertoire. Security is tight: you have to go through a metal-detector to get to the voting booths and urns. All very typical. As a member of the Working Monitoring Group of the Human Rights Council attached to the Russian Presidency, I have been visiting dozens of such places.

What stands out here, in this particular voting place, is its location inside a gigantic musical-dramatic theater, which greets the voter with its massive white columns. And its huge futuristic frescos, in front of which the voting urns look like small containers in this cosmic infinity. Perhaps the voters [yalensis: I think Kots has a typo here, his word is изобретатели (“izobretateli” – “inventors”) but from the context I think he means избиратели (“izbirateli” – “voters”) are actually astronauts who take their ballots off the table and fly with them into the capsule, after which they complete their first flight into open space, debuting at these Presidential elections as fully-fledged citizens of the Russian Federation.

Overwhelmed with these patriotic feelings, Kots chats with a retired metal-worker named Sergei Makarovich, who comments: “This is a very important moment in the life of our Republic. Everything depends on which kind of leader is going to lead our country into the future. We find ourselves in a situation, in which the person at the head of state must be a very strong leader; and he must follow a single, constant line, which never wavers, in the service of the people.”

Voters at this polling place were treated to a musical show.

Kots: “In other words, what we are electing is not so much an individual person, as a course of development for the country?”

Makarovich: “Naturally. But the personality of the leader also plays an important role, of course.”

Like the majority of Luhansk residents, Sergei participated in the Referendum of 2014. This was the beginning of Luhansk’s long and painful road to be part of Russia.

Next Kots chatted with a smiling woman named Elena Ivanovna, who is the main Administrator of the theater. When asked why she is voting: “For the future of Russia, for the future of our Donbass. I came here in all sincerity to cast my vote, because I believe in the future. What expectations do I have? I want to see our creative theater develop. I want to see a government based on the rule of law. I want to see a government that does not oppress us for speaking in our own tongue and believing in our own history.”

A Hero-Mathematician

Kots was taken on a tour of this amazing schoolhouse. His guide was a woman named Larisa Vladimirovna Kovaleva, the advisor to the Principal. Larisa is responsible for community outreach and forming ties with other children’s organizations. “Here is our Museum of Peace,” she points out. “We have various symbols of Peace, such as lanterns and cranes [birds]. Over the decades we have had many visitors to our school, our Visitors Album goes back 50 years! Here you can see that it has been signed by many famous people, and many other people who came to visit us from abroad, for example, visitors from South Africa, from South America and North America.”

Kots: The museum is filled with artifacts of the Soviet era: a Pioneer’s uniform from East Germany, various pins and medals from nations in the Socialist camp. Even a stars-and-stripes flag belonging to the nation that is currently our sworn enemy, that’s also here! I myself recall how, back in the day, American exchange students use to come to our country, and some of my own classmates got to travel abroad.

“We are not going to erase any of that history,” Larisa assures me. “We live with our history as it is, and we tell it to the children. And we want them to continue to pass it on to future generations.”

A memorial to Anatoly Kozachinsky, a schoolteacher who perished in the Special Military Operation

Nearby is an exhibit dedicated to the memory of Anatoly Kozachinsky, who taught Math at this school and perished while serving in the Special Military Operation. The exhibit includes some of his personal items, his notebook, his pen. Kozachinsky, along with his son, went off to serve. He died from an exploding mine, right in front of his son. In the corridor of the school people hang photographs of other SMO soldiers who are either graduates of the school, or the parents of graduates. These photographs hang side by side with similar memorials to those heroes who perished in the Great Patriotic War. There is also a photograph of a soldier-internationalist who graduated from this school and later died in the Afghanistan campaign. All of this is designed to teach the pupils the continuity of Russian history, and the veneration of war heroes.

Kozachinsky’s name is also used to call out individual pupils for their excellence. There is a section of desks set up in one of the classrooms called “The Room of Heroes”, and here sit those pupils who have distinguished themselves in either study or sport. Kozachinsky’s wife, Galina Ivanovna, teaches Math in this classroom. Her daughter, Masha, a 10th-grader, get all A’s and also studies dance. Among her trophies there is a prize she received at an all-Russia dance competition. Both of her parents used to dance in a Folk Ensemble. Her brother, the one who witnessed their father perish, was demobilized when the decision was made to give deferments to students. “He is studying Finances now,” Larisa Vladimirovna shares with Kots. “But something still keeps tugging him back to our school. By nature he is an artist, and he loves to perform in our theater.”

Larisa has to get back to her duties at the polling place. But first she shares some parting thoughts with the reporter. Kots mentions to her: “I have visited several schools in towns that were only recently liberated. The children there know nothing about our common history. But I see that you are not taking away anything that they have: Neither the cross-stitched portraits of Shevchenko, nor their Ukrainian textbooks.”

Larisa explains: “The history of our country consists of the various histories of all of the parts and regions taken together. […] Our state was built up from various independent and interesting regions, each having its own particular history. In other words, History is part of our common culture. If that were not the case, then why would we bother to vote?”