Albert Razin a doctor of philosophy and the director of Udmurt State University lit himself on fire protesting against Russia's language policies in Izhevsk, in the capital of Udmurtia. He was holding two signs reading "If my language dies tomorrow, then I'm ready to die today" and "Do I have a Fatherland?" The first words are from the poem Native Language by Rasul Gamzatov Avar poet. Here is the whole poem.
Native Language
Always all in a dream is a ridiculous is
and strange.
An asleep was me today my death.
There is in the afternoon heat in the
valley of Dagestan
With a lead in the breast I was lying
motionless.
A rings river runs un-hartable.
Forgotten and I did not need to anyone
I was flattened on a dear earth
Before being myself a ground.
I am dying, but no one does not know
About it and will not come to me,
Only an eagles are screeching somewhere in
a heaven
And a fallow deers moans somewhere aside.
And to weep over my grave
That I died in the prime years,
No mother, no a friend, no a darling,
What is really there - and a mourners no.
So I was laying, dying in a powerless
And suddenly heard is not afar
Two men walked and talked,
To me is own, on avar language.
There is in the afternoon heat in the
valley of Dagestan
I was dying, and a people led a speech
About a tricks of some Hasan,
About an antics of some Ali.
And, vaguely hearing the sound of the
native speech
I came to life, and the moment has come
When I understand that would cure me
Not a doctor, not a medicine man, but the
native language.
Someone heals from a diseases
An another language, but to me on it it is
not sing,
And if tomorrow my language disappears,
I am ready to die today.
I always feel sick to him,
Let say that my language is a poor,
Let no sounds from the rostrum of the
Assembly,
But, native for me, for me, it's great.
And to understand Mahmoud, my heir
Do read the translation?
Shall I am, the writer of a last,
Who by an avar writes and sings?
I love a life, I love the whole planet,
In it everyone, even a small area,
And most of all the Country of a Councils,
About it I sang by an avar as I could.
I loved the edge of blooming and free,
From the Baltic to the Sakhalin - all.
I'd be lost anywhere,
But let me will bury in the earth here!
To have a grave plate near the village
An avars are remembered sometimes
By an avar word a countryman Rasul -
A successor of Gamzat from Tsad.