At the metro station at Haymarket square became calmer. Passed about an hour from the moment the explosion occurred. Behind the barriers, set by police, gathered a lot of people. Some silently shake my head, others about something seriously talking to each other or calling their loved ones.
Taxi drivers transported people free of charge in solidarity with the residents of the city. People, it is obvious that the authorities have not yet officially announced when Dagbladet yesterday, signed in print, namely, that in a city with 5 million people came terror.
“It is sick. They need to kill, then they get the pleasure,” says the man standing next to me in the Haymarket area.
“Sick,” he repeats. And shakes his head.
Russia became the victim of terrorist attacks after the Chechen wars in the 1990s and early 2000-ies. As a result of deliberate violent terrorist attacks in the theater, school and hospital were killed in total of a thousand people. Was also carried out attacks in the air and a number of terrorist attacks in the Moscow metro.
In total more than 2.6 thousand people became victims of terrorist attacks in Russia, which became the consequence of the defeat of the Chechens in the wars.
Terror — the worst nightmare of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Before the Olympics in Sochi there were several major attacks, were afraid of terror and during the Olympic games. But in the last two years, up until yesterday, it was relatively quiet. Putin managed to fight against terror, successfully suppressing his opponents. But if you now start a new wave of terror wave, which can also have an impact on the world Cup next year, which will be held in several Russian cities, in particular, Saint-Petersburg, it will become his nightmare.
The former capital of Saint Petersburg until yesterday, the terror was spared. There is something paradoxical about this. Just as there is something symbolic in the fact that the first terrorist attack in recent times in this city occurred on Sennaya square. It was here that the wandering heroes of Fyodor Dostoevsky, which was believed by the writer, a new time resulted in mental confusion, forced them to reject the law and above morality — as befits every terrorist.
Here Rodion Raskolnikov Dostoevsky killed the old woman pawnbroker in “Crime and punishment”. It was here that the terrorists of Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons” hatched their plans.
But the terror was highly realistic. “Tsar-liberator” Alexander II was assassinated by terrorists in 1881, his son Alexander III had survived several assassination attempts. Brother leader of the revolution, Lenin, Alexander, was hanged in 1897 (so in the original article — ed. ed.), that manufactured the bomb that was to destroy Alexander III.
Grain of modern terrorism was planted in the political soil in Saint-Petersburg. The rage of young people in the most authoritarian state in Europe exploded not only kings, but also the borders. One of these young men was Sergei Nechaev. He was the author of the revolutionary catechism, which appeared in 1868, and setting the tone for the Russian terror. He began:
“The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has neither of their interests, no Affairs, no feelings, no attachments, no property, not even a name. Everything in it is absorbed by a single exclusive interest, a single thought, a single passion — the revolution.”
It looks like a bomb at Haymarket square, blew not a suicide bomber. But today, the logic of terror the same as 150 years ago, when Nechaev wrote the catechism. The terrorist must be willing to break the law over morality, and to sacrifice their lives.
