history

Could I, could we all imagine then that that year (1991) would bring such changes in two of my homelands, that here Dubrovnik, Rovinj, Sarajevo, and in Russia - Kiev, Crimea, Odesa, would become "abroad"... Bosnia, Herzegovina and Krajina... Nagorno-Karabakh and Chechnya... Thousands, millions of refugees, orphans, ruined lives, destroyed cities and villages, dead, maimed...

What is left of what we believed so much five decades ago and even during the war? What else am I destined to experience? Let me stop there...

This was from the memoir of Đorđe Lobačev a Serbian/Russian comic creator and essentially the only Soviet comic book creator until the 80s. He joined the partisans, survived WW2, got citizenship in the USSR, was deported by Tito to Romania, wasn't allowed to move to Leningrad because of fears over those who had worked in capitalist countries (least that's what bios say, I assume it was more specifically entertainment and artistic fields) until after the Thaw, only allowed back to Serbia decades later, only to watch all of it destroyed.

I was trying to find some communist comic history that wasn't defectors or dissenters driven, but came across this tragic fucking quote from an obituary of him. Sums up the helplessness of being an elderly person watching the collapse of both motherlands.