To Yulia

1983–2025

“Fire of Ethics” is dedicated to my wife Yulia. She died on 17 September 2025. This page says where the programme came from and what I do one day a year.

Written by Boris Ivanashchenko, the founder of the programme. About the author →

Why it is dedicated · The Day of the Quiet Deed · If you have lost someone too

Why the programme is dedicated to Yulia

Yulia did not run this practice and did not write these texts. She was neither a teacher nor a model to follow — she was a living person, with a strong character, with hard days, and with a rare gift for making a day calm. I will not turn her into a symbol: that would be untrue, and untruth is a poor foundation for a programme about honesty.

The dedication is for something else. Everything described on this site — the pause before answering, the minimum for a hard day, four lines in the evening, one small deed for someone else — was not assembled out of books. It came together over the year that began on 17 September 2025, because I had to get up in the mornings and be a steady father to two girls when nothing inside was steady. The programme grew out of that year, and that year began with her death. That is why Yulia’s name stands at the foundation of the programme and not on its cover.

One day a year

The Day of the Quiet Deed — 17 September

A dedication that does nothing is just an inscription. So it has a form: on 17 September I do one quiet deed for another person. It is my date, not a shared rite of the programme.

The deed is quiet and concrete

Call the person you have not called in a long time. Give someone a lift. Fix something. Sit beside someone in silence. Take over a boring duty of theirs for one evening. Not a post on social media, not a repost — a deed done by hand.

The recipient is a living person

Someone who is having a harder time than you right now and did not ask for help. Not an organisation, not abstract humanity, not “all the people of the world”.

Not a single coin

No collections, no donations “in memory of”, no charity accounts. On this day no money is asked for or accepted.

Nothing compulsory

Nothing is recorded or checked. Skipping is fine, as everything here is. Nobody will write to ask whether you did it.

It is not a day of mourning

You do not have to grieve on schedule or for company. If the day feels light to you, let it be light. The deed is done not out of heaviness but instead of it.

Your own date works too

If you have a date of your own like this, do the quiet deed on it. The point is not 17 September; the point is that memory is turned into an act.

Why an act rather than an inscription?

Because the Russian philosophical and ethical tradition on which this programme stands treats the departed with surprising sobriety: it asks not for prolonged sorrow but for something done in the name of the one who is gone. And it warns of exactly two mistakes: speaking ill of the departed and forgetting them. It forbids tears to no one, and certainly not to children.

Where these words come from

From the books of this tradition: “Even in earthly custom people try to do something joyful in the name of the absent one.” And, in closing: “Let us send the departed a smile of love.”

This is the view of the books’ authors; the programme does not ask you to share it. There is no anniversary rite in these books — no requiem, no memorial feast; there is an attitude and there is a deed. The Day of the Quiet Deed is my form, not the tradition’s, and I say so plainly. Which books these are — briefly, on the About page.

If you have lost someone too

This is a practice of attention and behaviour, not medical care and not psychotherapy: in heavy grief it neither replaces nor cancels them — see the rules of participation. If you feel so bad right now that it frightens you, see a professional; that is a normal, adult step.

If you are in danger right now, call a crisis line in your country or your local emergency number (112 in Europe and in Russia).

Four things I can say honestly, because I tested them rather than read them.

A steady day holds better than strong words. The morning phrase and the evening fact take two minutes and work on the day when nothing else works.
One small deed for another person pulls you out of the pit faster than talking about the pit. Your eyes move from yourself to the one who is struggling.
Children need permission for tears and permission for laughter — on the same day. An adult gives both, out loud.
Memory holds on to the concrete: a habit, a phrase, a quality of character. “She was wonderful” holds on to nothing.

Try one day Who is writing this