“A conscious love for one’s people is not connected with hatred of others”


Academician Dmitry Likhachev left a lot of wise and good teachings to modern youth: about the attitude towards the elders and the motherland, about education, culture, about good and evil, about love and hate and much more. But the main thing is that he does not impose his instructions, but offers them softly and tactfully, so they sink into the soul. Throughout his long and hard life, his work D. Likhachev won the faith of people, especially the young.

Of all the wise ideas expressed by academician Likhachev, it is especially relevant in our time: a patriot is not a nationalist. The patriot loves his country, his people, his native language, but he will never neglect to treat other people, his culture and customs. A nationalist loves his country no less, but his love is blind. This blinding entails calls to hate everything that, for example, is not Aryan, not Russian, not Ukrainian. Our nationalists take their great Kobzar banners on their banners, forgetting that Taras Shevchenko

bequeathed to us: “Do not bother with that stranger!” That’s the essence of a true patriot. Love for the motherland did not blind the poet, but inspired.

Love for one’s people, their culture, traditions can not be connected with hatred of a stranger, because it is “someone else’s” – for someone a native land, a native language, a native culture, to which he is proud, as we are our own.

Hence another wise idea of ​​the Russian academician who took terrible sufferings in the Soviet camps for political prisoners, but who did not endure hatred for the communist regime for his entire nation, home. And the thought is this: in a man you need to love a person. Not a Ukrainian or Russian, not an Arab or a Jew, but a human being. Just as you wish good to your loved ones and yourself, you must learn to wish others well. Then the age-old dream of mankind will be realized: good will conquer evil.

And I want to say this: every nation has its own rules of conduct, its customs, which must be respected if you live among this people. Our neighbor, a Jew by nationality,

told me such an instructive story. During the war, she was evacuated to Uzbekistan, lived next to the Uzbek family. So: knowing that the holy day for Muslims is Friday, she never started this day cleaning the common kitchen or her own room, and her Uzbek neighbors never did this to shabad. And we lived amicably.

The history of the new century has shown: there is no alien grief in the world, there are no borders for trouble and empathy. Under the rubble of skyscrapers in New York, not only Americans were killed, hostages in the “Nord-Ost” were not only Russian. Mankind has become one great family, about which Kobzar dreamed. Bells of Chernobyl, Manhattan, Moscow call and for each earthling.

A conscious love for the homeland is creative, blind nationalism destroys. How many human lives are ruined because of racism, anti-Semitism, Nazism! Does not history teach anything? I believe that the wise thoughts of great people about brotherly love, God’s commandments about love for one’s neighbor will become the norm of life for people around the world.


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“A conscious love for one’s people is not connected with hatred of others”