Letter from Tasmania

On January 7, 2018, I got a most interesting letter from my friend Rostislav in Tasmania:

"Many thanks for your 'Exodus from Tyranny', dear Ileana, - historically it’s a very fruitful theme, indeed! But, truth to tell, it’s rather sad to read again and again about all sorts of 'Smart and cautious refugees, who are FLEEING.' I’d prefer finally to read one beautiful day some great article about the unusual 'Resolved and brave citizens, who are FIGHTING their inhuman regimes'.     However I understand perfectly well (thanks not to some faraway Venezuela’s example, but, alas, thanks to my own Russia’s one) that my hope is hardly anything but a rosy dream: you see, leaving for Australia in my 75 only, I gave nearly all my life to the exposing – often with quite a cruel price for it – the Soviet crimes in my articles, in my books, in my later work as the Siberian Parliament’s representative. The same task was even better performed by a lot of my much more brilliant contemporaries, from Solzhenitsyn to Bukovski. So what? So nothing: 18 years ago my countrymen have freely elected (without any machine-guns or gulags behind) for their president the KGB boss. They were most obediently voting for the same Putin ever since.
    Well, probably it’s nothing to be too much astonished about the Putin’s electorate after our witnessing the 2008-2012 victories of the pro-Communist, pro-Islamic and pro-Terrorism 'community organizer' with falsified identity papers – where did it happen? Not in any Russia, Uzbekistan or Indonesia, but in the Land of the Free…
     Your 'Exodus from Tyranny' has made me to re-read most pleasantly – thank you! - one of my most cherished English-language worn books brought from Russia (it was strict forbidden there, naturally): 'Sailing to Freedom' by Voldemar Veedam and Carl Wall about the incredibly hard transatlantic escape in the late 1945 (137 days to the North Caroline’s Cape Henry) of several Estonian families (with their children!) in an old 36-feet fishing boat. Do you know the story? If not, the volume surely does deserve your attention!
With every good wish from your thankful Tasmanian reader Rostislav"