Thread by @UkrainianMath

Konstantin Olmezov R.I.P.
(1995-March 20, 2022)
Konstantin was from Ukraine, he studied in Donetsk National University. He left Donetsk because of the war and eventually began graduate studies in mathematics in MIPT, Russia.

Konstatnin was in love with additive combinatorics. He was also a poet, his telegram channel is full of poems. What follows is edited death note of Konstantin.
combgeo.org/en/members/olm…

He was detained for 15 days on February 26 during his first attempt to flee Russia. Then he was invited to continue graduate studies in Austria and tried leaving again. He purchased airplane tickets to Turkey, but second escape also wasn’t successful. Then he committed suicide.

Hello. My name is Konstantin Olmezov, I am writing this text in my right mind and memory, and if you are reading it, then most likely I will never write anything.

A while ago, when I was really seriously thinking about suicide, I began to look for some self-help videos online.

In one of them, the psychologist said that the main thought that drives almost everyone who is going to do this is: "the world owes me and the world has not lived up to my expectations." I was imbued with this idea,..

... I realized that such a position was inappropriate for that situation - and the problem was solved, I quickly returned to life.
But this is exactly the thought that I think now: "the world owes me and the world did not live up to my expectations."

The world should strive to correct mistakes. And it doesn't do it. The world should consist of thinking, sympathetic and responsible people. And it is not. The world should allow freedom of creativity and choice. And it keeps taking them away.

The world should consider these demands normal, but it doesn’t.
What began on February 24 changed some existential positions for me. It is very terrible how easily all the signs that I read about in books are acquired by people who only yesterday seemed to be living a normal life

I came to Russia in 2018 to do science. I came because I fell in love with mathematics that was not represented in Ukraine - additive combinatorics. Fell in love for real, crazy - like people fall in love with people. Spent nights and days with her.

I was not too zealous in this love, my scientific progress is very modest, but there is no contradiction in this, because in ordinary love my affairs are even worse.
I have always been critical of Russian politics and have always considered Russian culture to be superior to it,..

... to be able to dominate over politics. This illusion in my head was solid, but now it completely fell at once. Vysotsky, Filatov, Shpalikov, Astrakhan, Tarkovsky, Mikhalkov (outside his demonic rendition), Vinogradov, Linnik, Shkredov, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Scriabin.

I'm afraid these and many other names are not known to vast majority who supports Russia now.
The funniest thing is that everyone still believes that everything can be achieved by force. That by brutally breaking lives, you can make people forget what happened before their eyes.

That, by shutting everyone's mouths, you can make thoughts suffocate. It would seem that this is something from the field of politics or psychology, but no, it is there, in the culture.

On February 26, I tried to leave Russia. This was somewhat stupid, because I didn’t think it through. I don’t regret it, but I regret that I didn’t do it on the 23rd, when there were all the reasons to do it already.

I went to defend my country, to defend it from someone who wanted to take it from me. To protect my president, whom I myself chose, feeling in the same way as a boss protecting a subordinate. By the way, in 2019, in the first tour, I did not vote for Zelensky.

And in 2023 I would not vote for him. But, no matter how unpleasant it may be for me, the freedom of choice and the freedom to be responsible for one’s actions are important for me. It is very difficult to explain to many Russians and pro-Russian Ukrainians how changes forced..

... from the outside that are meant to improve well-being can be unacceptable simply because they are imposed from the outside.
While boarding the bus, I was arrested. The reason for this, I think, is my long tongue and a person to whom I rashly shared my plans.

When I was arrested, I considered that my freedom was taken away forever, and I directly told the FSB everything that I thought about the war. It was stupid, but I couldn’t do otherwise. It was the last thing I could hit them with and I hit with all my might.

I was even amused by how helplessly they tried to answer me, how they repeated the most crude propaganda clichés with absolutely innocent faces.
Once in the cell, I began to look for only one thing - death. I made at least ten attempts in seven different ways.

Some of them, thinking of it now, are ridiculous and their doom seems obvious, but these were sincere attempts. And the only thing I dreamed about was to be released in order to be able to commit the last, successful one (by the way, I still don’t understand why they let me go).

Being unfree is worse than death for me. All my life I have striven to have freedom of choice in everything - in food, in profession, in a place of residence, in what soap to wash my hands with and for which party to vote. I always ate only the food that was tasty to me,..

... and if it was not available, then I preferred to endure the hunger. There are only two ways to deal with absence of freedom - extrusion and rejection. Extrusion is when you freely choose how to live all your life, and then you are locked up..

... and you start choosing freely which book to read while you are locked up. I can fight lack of freedom only by not accepting, refusing to stay unfree - if they prevent me from choosing how and where to live, I would simply prefer not to live.

I really love, albeit with a strange love, Donetsk. Despite the terrible childhood, this is still the city where I wrote my first program, my first poem, went on stage for the first time, earned my first money.

The city, in the center of which every shop and turn of the path in every park is saturated for me with a rhyme or a problem that I solved there, names, faces, pleasant and terrible events.

I love Kyiv very much - the city where I first found an independent life, I experienced hunger and loneliness for the first time, I truly fell in love for the first time, wrote my best poems. While there, at some point I was writing 2 poems every 3 days, as much as ever.

Every bridge over the Rusaniv Canal, every tree in the forest behind Lisovaya, every bench in the Victory Park are saturated for me with their pain and their love.
I love Moscow very much - the city where I first "got on my feet", gained financial independence,..

... where I proved my first and only theorems, where I truly believed in my strength for the first time. And there is Tsaritsyno!

I am in pain for every side in this war. But I see with my own eyes who is defending their own land and who is taking over someone else's. I see with my own eyes who defends the right to responsible for their own lives, and who justifies their own degradation.

Correction, per the death note: Konstantin decided not to attempt to go abroad for which he asks forgiveness from people who were trying to help him.

Here is a well-known question: to be or not to be. I have always tried to ask it myself from time to time. It seems to me that if a person does not ask about this regularly, then the continuation of life for them is not a conscious choice.

The question is well-known, but the author follows up it with another one:
Whether it is worthy to calmly suffer the disgraced fate?
“Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”

To me the answer is unambiguous: to be silent, to lie, to pretend that nothing is happening around or that nothing is happening in your soul is unworthy; to substitute, to stay in prison completely impotent - shameful; hiding from everyone, bringing trouble to other people,

constantly looking for help, being afraid of everyone is shameful; to start guerilla activity, to harm another state on its territory is doubly shameful, I am a Ukrainian, a person of a different culture (I understand that someone will consider this a weakness, and that’s okay).

I see no way to continue my life with dignity.
At some point, I hoped to attempt to escape again. I am immensely grateful to the people who helped me, and I apologize for not using the opportunity. I'm too afraid that they will put me to jail a second time, this time forever.

Not to mention the fact that I am disappointed humanity in general. In the 21st century, an army in the middle of the night attacks a neighbor non-threatening country... And every soldier understands what he is doing and pretends not to understand.

When the minister of this country says "we did not attack", and the journalists broadcast it. And every journalist understands that this is a lie, and pretends not to understand. When millions of people watch this and understand that what is happening will be on their conscience.

And in history, but they pretend that they have nothing to do with it. When black is called white, and soft is called bitter, and not in a conspiratorial whisper, and without a wink, but as if it is coming from their hearts. When Zadornov's joke about an American who said that:

"the Russians are cruel because they attacked the Swedes near Poltava" ceases to be a joke and ceases to be about the American and the Swedes. When the world is seriously discussing the possibility of what it has been trying to prevent for 75 years,..

and not discussing any new models of prevention. When power again claims to be the main source of truth, and betrayal and hypocrisy - the main source of peacefulness.
When this is all happening around, I completely lose hope for a different path for humanity.

I completely lose the desire to do anything for these people or with them. I realized that such a come-back would happen sooner or later, that the beast is incorrigible. But I did not imagine that it was possible so quickly and so easily, as if by flipping a toggle switch.

I can’t say that I am ashamed of my life, but it could have been better. I did not have time to do a lot of things that no one else will do and that would improve people's lives. However, is it necessary now?

I wanted to make an app that promotes mindfulness of choice, allowing a person to "vote" within themselves by answering the same question many days in a row. I lived with this idea, but who needs elections and referendums now, who is seriously interested in their own opinion?

I wanted to colorize Szemeredi's theorem, to turn a mathematical proof into an art-form at the intersection of the arts, into something on the scale of a movie. I'm sure math deserves it.

I wanted to help people get out of cognitive distortions and logical contradictions, to seek and formulate their own model of the world. I think I did well when I tried.

Now this is no longer important, and I am writing about this not for pity, but to insist on significance.
I was unforgivably lazy and thought I had a lot of time. It was a big mistake.

I am somewhat ashamed in front of my Ukrainian friends. Believe me, I never wished or did anything bad to Ukraine, and I always kept in mind my readiness to leave if what started now suddenly starts.

Unfortunately, I just didn’t succeed, I simply didn’t approach this matter sufficiently well ... The FSB officers who detained me spoke to me as a traitor, but on the morning of February 24, I myself felt betrayed. Yes, no matter how ridiculous it may be,..

...but even having recognized rationally that war is possible for quite some time, emotionally it came as a very big surprise. I had a naive confidence war can be avoided at a critical moment. I stuck my head too deep into the tiger's mouth. This is my second big mistake.

I am hurt by every shell that falls on the streets of Kyiv. Reading the reports, I imagine these streets under shelling. From the first day until now, I have been with you wholeheartedly, although it is clear that I did not save anyone…

I am an absolute atheist. I don't believe in hell, I'm going nowhere. But this nowhere is dearer to me than reality, where part of the people fell back into savagery, and the other part indulges this - throwing up their hands in all-around insanity. I don't want to be with them.

And finally, of course, a poem:

Хотят ли русские плакатов "нет войне"?
Спроси об этом у омоновца в броне,
Спроси об этом у ныряющих в метро,
Спроси об этом у вцепившегося в трон.

Хотят ли русские разбитых городов?
Спроси об этом у забитых поездов.
Хотят ли русские разрушенных больниц?
Спроси у высохших младенческих глазниц.

Хотят ли русские хоть что-то изменить?
Спроси об этом у оставшегося СМИ.
Хотят ли русские искоренить нацизм?
Спроси об этом у студентов с буквой "цыц".

Твоей визиткой станет этот жуткий год,
Воистину непоколебленный народ,
Готовый хоть в крови купаться, хоть в говне,
Но лишь бы не было плакатов "нет войне".

Konstantin's wish was that his death note is widely shared and read. He emailed the note to a number of people along with the following introduction.

HELLO! IF YOU RECEIVE THIS LETTER, THEN IT MEANS I TRUST YOU.
At least enough to send you a death note. It is not addressed to you personally, this letter is generic. I am sending it only to make sure that it does not vanish in case if it is removed from all social networks.

If this still happens, I ask you to help distribute this letter to anyone who may be interested in reading it, including my family and my social networks (vk, facebook, instagram).