Resistance is Fertile

Toward the end of her excellent biography of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade(Madame Fourcade’s Secret War), the courageous woman who led France’s largest anti-Nazi resistance organization during World War II, Lynne Olson quotes the beginning of the unofficial anthem of the French resistance:

Friend, do you hear
The dark flight of crow
Over our plains?
Friend, do you hear
The muffled cries
Of a country in chains?

It is a poignant stanza that, sadly, has deep resonance in our day. And Olson ends the book with a very concise description of what brought the members of the French underground together, what helped them save the soul and honor of France: “a refusal to be silenced and an iron determination to fight against the destruction of freedom and human dignity.”

As Russia continues its criminal war on Ukraine, so too do some inside Russia refuse to be silenced. Against the odds, they resist.

This resistance comes in many guises. As a friend wrote from Moscow, "while there are many heroes who openly resist Evil, there are also plenty who just stubbornly do their jobs. Not as if nothing was happening, but in spite of what is happening."

To work “professionally, with quality, without lies and exaggerations, and stretching oneself to complete a task – that too is resisting,” they wrote. It is “much easier for those who have stayed behind to do their job because of those who left and are able to speak openly and without censorship. Both are for the same thing.

“Each person does what they can, but they resist… no, not tanks (this we cannot do), but devastation, despondency, entropy, and lies… And it is not in two or three places, but all around us. Look closely, it's everywhere. Kindness, mercy to loved ones, and even courage are often quiet, they do not yell.

“Not everyone is ready to go to prison, but very, very many are ready to defend their dignity, to live without putting their conscience up for sale. Everyone who loves and does not hate, everyone who does not lie, everyone who has not confused white and black, everyone who simply remains human, is practicing this simple thing: resistance to violence and evil.

“And they are growing, growing underground. They are an invisible green grass, a yellow-breasted flower. And one day they will break through the asphalt.”

It is our hope and prayer that 2023 will be an awakening from the nightmare that was 2022, that Russians will begin to claw back their freedoms and their country (as Ukraine did nearly a decade ago), and begin creating a Russia that, as one brave soul profiled in this issues says, is free and wonderful.