Writer Yuri Polyakov warned of the danger from relocants returning to Russia

“I’m afraid they will continue to actively dislike the Fatherland on air”

The massive return of relocants to Russia, which the Western media write about as a trend, is fraught with conflicts between them and veterans of the special operation, says the famous writer, chairman of the National Association of Playwrights Yuri Polyakov. With MK, Polyakov shared his opinion on recent research by The Financial Times on the increase in the number of Russian “emigrants” who have returned to the country recently.

“I predicted this process back in March 2022, including in an interview with MK,” recalls Yuri Polyakov. “Then I said that they would very quickly understand that they don’t pay as much there for dislike of Russia as they did here – and the return will begin.” Naturally, there is no need to persecute them or “tyrannize” them.

But I fear that they will gradually begin to make future “knights of universal human values” who “stepped over official patriotism” and showed themselves as “true humanists.”

There are already signs of this – let us remember a very strange article in RG by Pavel Basinsky about the need to treat Bykov (Dmitry Bykov is included in the register of media – foreign agents – “MK”) as a great writer and enter into dialogue with him, because Pushkin called for mercy for the fallen. Our current “Pravda” has forgotten that Alexander Sergeevich called for opposing with all our might the “Slanderers of Russia”. This is a very strange symptom.

– Why does Basinsky’s call for dialogue with the opposition part of Russian literature cause concern for you?

– Because tomorrow people who have gone through the terrible “school” of modern military operations will return from the area where the military operations are taking place. Having lost friends, they themselves may have become crippled for the sake of their country. And our commercial pacifists, as I call them, the same foreign agent Dmitry Bykov will begin to explain from the screen: “It was not I who sent you there, it was not because of me that you lost your health, but because of the Kremlin.”

All this threatens a very serious social conflict. Something similar happened after the Second World War, but on a smaller scale – the state then pursued the right policy. What will happen now?

And the fact that they are going back is normal. After the civil war, those who even fought the Bolsheviks with weapons in their hands returned, and nothing happened – some, of course, were punished, but many, like Vertinsky and Alexei Tolstoy, lived their entire lives in the USSR. It happens differently. But I’m afraid that they (former relocants, – I.V.) will continue to actively dislike the Fatherland as before leaving.