Mark Rozovsky spoke about “evil unleashed”: “The value of human life has become zero”

The director recalled the terrorist attack on Dubrovka

For the artistic director of the At Nikitsky Gate theater, Mark Rozovsky, the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall resonated with personal pain in his heart. The sleepless nights of late October 2002 and the captured Theater Center on Dubrovka came to mind. His 14-year-old daughter was among the hostages there. And now, 22 years later, a monstrous terrorist attack in a shopping center. Mark Rozovsky wrote this text especially for MK.

What happened on the evening of March 22 at Crocus coincided (is it by chance?) in time with the performance of “The Murderer” based on “Crime and Punishment” on the stage of the Theater “At the Nikitsky Gates”, and this symbolic mysticism of Dostoevsky’s parallel text with that what the whole world saw on the screens is simply amazing… Well, imagine: Raskolnikov’s monologue about the right to terror and AT THE SAME TIME (!) – footage of scoundrels running through the foyer, shooting from machine guns at unarmed people.

In addition, we learned that two of our sound department employees were THERE as spectators and managed to run out into the street, jumping over a dozen corpses at the entrance. They immediately arrived at the theater, and we were incredibly glad that they remained alive!

All this reminded me of “Nord-Ost”, when, in parallel with the terrorist attack, we also had “The History of a Horse” by Tolstoy, where the following poems were heard from the stage:

Universe, whose word are you,

If your creator doesn’t have

Nothing is more defenseless than living things,

No one is more merciless than the living!

One hundred and forty people also died there, among them the son of our actress Victoria Zaslavskaya, and maybe my fourteen-year-old daughter… so, believe me, I know first-hand what terror is.

But I know this.

We live in an era of dehumanism, when evil has become so rampant that the value of human life for someone (and we know for whom!) has become zero, the commandment “Thou shalt not kill!” is not observed primarily by religious fanatics, when, according to the same Fyodor Mikhailovich, the principle of “everything is permitted” triumphs and the “trichinas” of madness and hatred have infected the globe… Terror sows confusion and panic throughout the world. Politicians are engaged in politicking, and before our eyes, the Organization of Disunited Nations is unable to save humanity, because here they first justify pogroms, and then nuclear war. Another psychosis leads to more bloodshed.

No one knows how this will end. However, one thing is known: terror is absolutely unacceptable, because human life is unique and priceless. And only Culture understands and defends this.