I found this as a simple post on another website and I felt I had to post it. It is quite simple but says so much about the Stkies.
When Bobby Sands and his comrades went on Hunger Strike, I just became 14. I was living in Soviet Union, going to school and preparing to become a Komsomol member - just like all the other kids. Ireland was in the news all the time when I was growing up, and my very first memory of it was Bloody Sunday - even though I was just 5 then. I also had quite a few Irish children books translated into Russian, with a foreword on Irish tragic and heroical history, so it wasn't a totally unfamiliar territory. Yet, it was the Hunger Strike that has made the deepest impression on me. It was something that seemed to be happening on another planet - I simply could not believe that somebody can be as cruel as the British politicians to allow these brave men to die just like that! After all, it was year 1981 - not the Middle Ages! In fact, I refused to believe that Bobby and his comrades would die - until they actually started dying... I also couldn't simply sit and watch it on TV and read the bulletins about their health in the papers every day - I wanted to do something to help! But what could I possibly do in a state where everything was decided for us from above? Yet, I tried. I started to collect signatures in support of the Hunger Strikers in order to send them to Thatcher among our pupils at school. First some of my teachers panicked because it wasn't initiative of our Komsomol Committee or local Party Committee - it was just something I decided to do myself.They found it very unusual and couldn't really understand why did I decide to do it - "isn't the official support for it enough?" It wasn't - for me. I wanted "to play my part". That was my first experience of the fact that my own country wasn't exactly what it was supposed to be also... I could get into some quite annoying troubles by doing this "partisan work", but fortunately, there was a teacher - also a party member - who understood my young idealism for what it was. We collected about 1000 signatures - I also asked my pen-friends from all around the country to sign our protest letter. There were Estonians and Chechens, Tadjks and Siberian aboriginals among those who signed it....I sent it to Margaret Thatcher' s office personally - but I will most probably never find out if it ever was delivered, because in USSR at that time virtually no letter that was going abroad, was reaching its destination. Unless you knew your addressee rsonally. And in this case I am glad I did not! ...In Russian papers he was never called Bobby: to us, he was always "Robert Sands". I suppose, it was because "an adult man and a hero can't be called by his short name, like a child". First time I discovered that when I came to Belfast years later with a bunch of Australian tourists and saw his mural on
SF's office wall. "This is Bobby Sands", - the guide told us. To me, it was like meeting a good old friend! I was smiling there and nearly talking to him - and shamed the Australians :"How can you not know who he is?" (it was probably because most of them were much younger than myself!) One thing we were never told about the Republican struggle, not a single word, was "The Dirty Protest". Again, I suppose, that must be the culture of our society at that time - one wouldn't talk about things like that, it was considered to be so disgusting that it might have given the people who were forced to this action by the British, a bad image: Russians of the early 80s, living quite comfortable and very quiet life, couldn't possibly understand what kind of conditions the Irish Republicans were kept in in prisons at that time... But for us in USSR- unlike in the Western countries and their media- there was no questioning that Bobby was fighting for the right cause. There was no excuse for Britain to occupy this part of Ireland - and the IRA soldiers were modern revolutionaries and freedom fighters. At the time I was preparing myself to go to Africa when I would be an adult and to fight for the justice for people there. (Our own problems seemed to be minor at that time - and so they were,at least during my childhood). When the Hunger Strike has began , I fully realised for the first time in my life than one doesn't have to go that far - that even in Europe there are people who are being subjected to such barbarity on a daily basis and that the struggle here goes on. I remember the day when Bobby died - back in my native city of Tula. It was a beautiful sunny day where everything around was so full of life - fields bright with yellow flowers and gardens full with blossoming fruit trees.Nightingales singing at night. And because of that it was hurting double - how could such a wonderful person die on such a day? I remember myself sitting at the iron roof of our little house while the sun was going down- my place where I wanted to be alone - and crying there bitterly.I felt like if I lost a relative. I was very naive - as perhaps everybody at that age - and was amazed and shocked that nobody of those who had it in their power did anything to prevent these tragic deaths. One must be truly inhuman - and I deeply believe until today that Margaret Thatcher should be put on trial for this murder and her other crimes against the Irish people - just as her old buddy Pinochet in Chili! To me, to be now here in Ireland and to talk to those who were taking part in the struggle at that time, to those who knew the Hunger Strikers, to their friends and relatives brings back that painful, but precious time of my life- the time when I made a choice for myself: that I want to be part of this struggle.
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Originally Posted by brenners'
