(The Russian Pen Center is an affiliate of the International Pen Club. This document, dated May 7 2014, has been on the Russian-language Internet [Ежедневный журнал, ej.ru]. No names are affixed to it.)
To speak the truth and create ideas is the professional and civic duty of the writing community, of writers and journalists. The soul instrument for creation of ideas and reflection of reality is the word.
Today the Russian regime is using the word to destroy ideas. And this is unquestionably a crime against culture.
Words endowed with emotional response in the hearts of many Russians—fascism, junta, Nazism—have turned out to be catalysts of aggression and hatred.
Recently the lexicon of the regime has been augmented by “national traitors” and “fifth column”—concepts that arose in the most grievous times of civilization. These words are used to label those who openly express a position of their own different from that of the regime.
Yet, in addition to word-labels, the regime also has at its disposal a machine for making laws.
Free expression is equated today to a terrorist act. Unrighteous and anti-Constitutional laws on rehabilitation of Nazism, slander, bloggers, or appeals to separatism are criminalizing public expression and leaving to the state a monopoly on creation of ideas.
Violence against language and against ideas inevitably grows into physical violence.
The escalation of lies becomes military escalation. That is precisely how the conflict in Ukraine looks today.
Originating in lies about violence in Crimea, it led to tens of real victims in the southeast of Ukraine.
Journalists who had been decorated by the President on the eve of Press Day became the soldiers of this war.
Their lies have turned into blood and death, and their cynicism and hysteria which have caused a terrible harm to Russian public awareness, are called in the prize documents signed by the President “an objective reflection of reality.”
We cannot, we do not, have the moral and professional right, to accept this outrage against the word and this destruction of meanings.
We shall continue in the future to openly express our position, to support dialogue with friends and colleagues in Ukraine in order together to stand up against lies and violence.
We know the strength of words better than bureaucrats and political hacks do.
And we will not retreat from this.