Sonya, the girlfriend of Sasha Skochilenko, came to today’s hearing in the trial of anti-war activist Olga Borisovna Smirnova. Sonya wore a sweatshirt embossed with the word “SOLIDARITY.” It was quite nice to see that there is reciprocity among the support groups of political prisoners.
Sergei Troshin told people about the evening gatherings to write letters to political prisoners that are held at the Yabloko Party’s Petersburg offices.
There were twenty [members of the public] in total, all the seats were taken. The trial was again held in the jury room on the ground floor, into which the guards can bring the accused from the courtyard and thus avoid walking them down the corridor amid shouts of support.
The hearing itself left more questions than answers. The judge has obviously begun to hurry in order to finish the trial as quickly as possible. Does she want to wrap things up before her holiday? The hearing itself thus ended around seven in the evening, despite the lawyer’s request to postpone it. The judge behaved nervously, on the verge of rudeness.
The bulk of the hearing was devoted to cross-examining Lebedev, an officer of Center “E” [the “anti-extremism” police]. He came dressed in camouflage, combat boots, a beret, and dark glasses, and he had a beard (which looked fake).
It was [Lebedev] who located and documented the pieces of evidence on which the accusation is based, and also determined them to be “fakes” by comparing them with the websites of the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry and, for some reason, Maria Zakharova’s Telegram channel, “as that of an official authoritative statesman expressing the position of the Foreign Ministry.” He searched for information by dates: if there was something in a post by Olga that was not found on the websites of the relevant authorities, he deemed it a “fake.” He also prepared a search memo stating that there were no special perpetrators [sic] in [Smirnova’s] apartment, and was present during the search.
The cross-examination lasted three hours. It was clear that [Lebedev] considers Olga a “blatant criminal” who disseminates such things “while our boys are getting killed.”
When asked about information from the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry about Babi Yar, Lebedev replied, “Fortunately, our country has its own independent policy and does not consider it necessary to take into account and react to statements made by the Jewish Foreign Ministry at the slightest pretext.”
He also believes that the information given by Russian officials and state bodies cannot be questioned and is the absolute truth.
To Olga’s question about why he had chosen precisely these entries from her social media page, he replied, “It would be impossible to document everything from the time of Jesus Christ’s birth.”
When asked why the witnesses who inspected the web pages containing the [offending] posts were recruited so far from his place of work, he replied that it is not so easy to find people who agree to serve as witnesses.
“I am sure that these people sitting behind me would have never agreed to come and document Smirnova’s criminal actions as witnesses,” he said.
After the recess, a disk with telephone connections that suddenly appeared in the case file was examined.
Olga has been holding up well: she smiled a lot and thanked people for their support. The next hearing is scheduled for Monday, August 7, at twelve noon. It was announced that oral arguments would be heard then, although, in my opinion, the defense has not yet finished examining the evidence.
Despite the fact that people in the support group joked a lot, the overall feeling from the trial is quite depressing. It feels as if the judge has already made up her mind, and we are present at a poorly staged theatrical performance. It’s just that the finale is up to ten years in prison…
Source: Alexei Sergeyev (Facebook), 31 July 2023. All photos, above, by Mr. Sergeyev. Translated by the Russian Reader. You can send letters— written in Russian or translated into Russian (if you don’t know a competent translator, you can use an online machine translator such as Google Translate)—to Olga Smirnova and other Russian political prisoners via the free, volunteer-run service RosUznik. You may ask me (avvakum@pm.me) for assistance and advice in sending such letters.
The State Duma has been drafting a ban on transgender transition in Russia since spring. Despite the fact that experts and doctors opposed it, the MPs have now passed the law in its second reading.
The original bill already prohibited all “medical interventions” for transgender transition and changing gender markers in passports and other documents. But the MPs also proposed new restrictions.
Now, according to the draft law, if one spouse changes their gender marker, their marriage will be annulled. In addition, those who have transitioned to another gender will be banned from serving as guardians and adopting children. Depriving them of parental rights is not on the table yet, but the Russian authorities have taken children from trans people in some cases in the past.
Moreover, MPs would ban not only “medical intervention” in the form of surgery, but also hormone therapy.
Finally, the Duma reworded the law on vital records. Previously, it was possible to amend a passport using a sex-change certificate issued by doctors. Official documents can now be amended if the individual provides a medical report “on the correspondence of [their] sexual characteristics with the characteristics of a particular sex.”
Although the bill has not yet been adopted into law, it is already causing trouble for transgender people. Robert Lebedev, a transgender man, toldBumaga, citing his own acquaintances, that civil registry offices in Moscow had been delaying issuing new documents to transgender people for longer than the month prescribed due to an “order from above.” And yet, the draft law does not even prescribe penalties for doctors or civil servants who violate the ban on assisting a person with transgender transition and gender marker change.
The bill’s co-sponsor, Pyotr Tolstoy, argues that “the western transgender industry is trying to infiltrate our country,” and Russia’s “cultural and family values” must be preserved.
Even before the adoption of the law, transgender people faced endless humiliation and persecution. The new law will give the security forces a free hand and effectively outlaw an entire group of citizens.
On this dark day, when we find ourselves at rock bottom, I want to scream with rage and impotence. While voicing emotions is vital, I’m also trying to find a foothold—in myself, in others, in my own experience….
I have nothing but a profound belief that this night of total obscurantism, injustice, and hatred will end one day, and hopefully sooner rather than later. I am overwhelmed with feelings of love and admiration for the trans activists to whom life has introduced me during my ten-plus years in activism. I didn’t always say these feelings out loud.
We started working hand in hand when I didn’t know a single open trans person in my own circle yet. Gradually, I was surrounded by more and more trans people, who did a lot of cool, useful and, sometimes, fantastic things.
I befriend trans people and even became romantically involved with them. Over the years, trans initiatives and trans people have truly accomplished a great deal. It’s no exaggeration to say that they have become the vanguard of the Russian LGBT+ movement.
I learned about the difficulties they face and about ways to help them. I still appreciate the patience, tact, determination, and dignity with which I was corrected when I made mistakes myself, or when mistakes were made in the communities I moderated.
Things became visible that I, a cisgender person, simply had not noticed before: sniggering and transphobic “jokes” at passport control at the airport, misgendering, violence, rejection at home, discrimination at work, sexual exploitation, increased risk of suicide, etc. Interacting with trans people also helped me to understand the narrowness of the binary gender framework and my own gender nonconformity, despite the fact that I consider myself a man.
Further immersion in the topic, collaborations, and a desire to contribute in this area led to the creation of the project Transformation on trans people in the Russian prison system. At the same time, we tried not to speak for trans people. Instead, we delivered their own stories about their prison experience and commentary by experts, among whom there were also trans people. We plan to continue, realizing that it is a long-term job, although the new law will make this work more complicated, apparently.
Again and again I listen to the song “We Shall Overcome,” the anthem of the movement for the rights of African Americans. In new, difficult circumstances, the importance of mutual support, assistance, unification, and finding non-standard channels increases.
I believe in the power of the LGBT+ community’s solidarity in the face of difficulties. Fear and feeling powerlessness are understandable emotions. But it’s important to move on and fight the consequences [of this law].
The song ends with these words:
We are not afraid,
We are not afraid,
We are not afraid today.
For deep in my heart
I do believe:
We shall overcome someday!
The photo, above, from his personal archive, shows the author during the campaign against transphobic legislation in St. Petersburg, with a view of Trinity Bridge in the background.
The latest hearing in the case against Sasha Skochilenko took place. I think the group of her supporters has only grown more numerous. In any case, I didn’t make it into the courtroom: right as I was about to go in, we were told that there were no more seats, although there were still a fair number of people left waiting in the hallway.
And so a campaign was born to file complaints about the fact that people who want to attend the hearings are not being let into the courtroom. The complaints were submitted and stamped at the front desk.
“What you do mean, where? In courts, in support groups [for political prisoners]. It’s good people who’ve convened here…”
A young woman handed out small handmade paper cranes. Representatives from four [foreign] consulates and [Petersburg municipal district councillor] Sergei Troshin were in attendance.
The hearing itself was brief, less than two hours long. An expert witness testified that, after a detailed examination, she had been unable to find any evidence of the alleged crimes in the [anti-war] price tags [that Ms. Skochilenko supposedly attached to shelves in a Petersburg supermarket].
Sasha is holding up well, but is coughing a little. They say her cellmate tested positive for coronavirus.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for May 24.
Source: Alexei Sergeyev (Facebook), 2 May 2023. The original post contains two short videos shot by Mr. Sergeyev, one of which shows Ms. Skochilenko being led into the courtroom by guards and being cheered by her supporters. I’ve inserted a still from the video, above. Translated by the Russian Reader
“Fun times” today at the trial of Olga Borisovna Smirnova. The escort guard pushed the defense lawyer, Zyryanova, and ripped a phone from her hands, injuring her fingers. As soon as the ambulance arrived, the doctors took Olga’s defense attorney downstairs to the vehicle and drove her away.
At the trial itself, the prosecutor read out a bunch of papers for three hours regarding the searches of the homes of Olga’s associates. In each instance the investigator wrote that none of this evidence was entered into the case file, whereas earlier she herself had insisted on urgent searches without a court order, which were carried out.
The only variety in these boilerplate search and inspection reports was provided by the descriptions of apartments and rooms. And, for some reason, the prosecutor always says “kitCHEN table,” with the stress on the second syllable.
But there is nothing [“incriminating” in these reports?] except literature in Ukrainian (the prosecutor reads the title in Ukrainian and then the Russian translation, as supplied by Yandex Translate) and placards whose slogans the prosecutor was occasionally ashamed to read aloud, claiming that the slogan “Free political prisoners” was “obscene,” and the slogan “Putin resign” was “illegible.” What sort of sharp practice is it to fill the criminal case file, under the guise of evidence, with stuff that has nothing to do with the case and even according to the investigator is not evidence? Is the prosecutor trying to generate an overall fogginess?
While there is a break in the trial, people wait in the hallway. More than twenty people have come to hearing, including a group of supporters and journalists.
When Olga is escorted out now, the bailiffs close the door to the stairs, where people are standing, apparently so that they won’t be able to shout out words of support to her.
As our correspondent reports, at the latest hearing in the trial of activist Olga Smirnova, in the Kirovsky District Court, the prosecution made public the contents of the nine posts on VKontakte which occasioned criminal charges of disseminating “fake news” about the Russian army.
The posts listed by the prosecution were made on the public social media page of the movement Democratic Petersburg.
A post with a link to a video titled “We will never be brothers,” in which it is reported that the Russian army is “reducing Ukrainian cities to ruins.”
A post with a link to a video that concludes with the words [in Ukrainian], “Glory to Ukraine, glory to the defenders, death to the enemy.”
A post with a link to a video titled “We show Russians photos from Ukraine. The reaction of Russians to the war in Ukraine.” In the video, “the assertion is made” that the photos show Ukrainian cities destroyed by Russian shelling.
A post featuring a photo of a placard on which “the assertion is made” that the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center was damaged by Russian bombing.
A link to a video titled “No war with Ukraine.”
A post titled “Chronicles of the war, March 9,” in which it is reported that over 1,300 civilians were killed in Mariupol, most of whom were Russian-speaking.
A post titled “Chronicles of the war, March 9, continued,” which reports that Russian troops continue to bomb Kharkiv’s civilian infrastructure facilities.
A post which”sarcastically” reports on a battle between Kadyrovites and Ukrainian National Guardsmen on the premises of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, claiming that goal of the Kadyrovites is to seize the nuclear power plant in order to “blackmail the whole of Europe with radioactive contamination.”
A post titled “Anti-war pickets: greetings and glory to Ukraine,” which reports that supporters of peaceful resistance in Petersburg came out to protest against the criminal war which Russia is waging against Ukraine.
Due to the absence of witnesses, the prosecution moved to postpone the trial until March and the court granted the motion.
Olga Smirnova is a grassroots activist. She is one of the founders of Strategy 18, an ongoing campaign in support of the Crimean Tatars. She is also a a member of the Petersburg movement Peaceful Resistance, which, according to its own description, “spreads the truth about the Russian Federation’s large-scale criminal war against Ukraine.”
Until 2014, Smirnova worked as an architect, but after Crimea was occupied, she devoted herself to grassroots activism. In 2021, her home was searched due to Strategy 18’s protest campaign, as part of a criminal investigation into “condoning the activities of a terrorist organization banned in Russia.”
The Petersburger faces up to ten years in prison if convicted. You can write to Olga Smirnova in jail: Bumagaexplains how to do it.
Source: Bumaga, “What posts by Petersburger Olga Smirnova does the prosecution consider ‘fakes’ about the Russian army?” 20 February 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader. You can send letters — written in or translated into Russian (if you don’t know a competent translator, you can use a free online translation service such as Google Translate) — to Olga Smirnova and other Russian political prisoners via the free, volunteer-run service RosUznik. You may ask me (avvakum@pm.me) for assistance and advice in sending such letters.
The grave of Mikhail Vasilyevich Sergeyev, the author’s grandfather
If you’re looking for something that binds the Russian people, it is, perhaps, the cult of the dead. I’m coming back now from the cemetery where my grandfather is buried. The number of bright plastic flowers, pots, baskets, and wreaths per square meter there is off the charts. As long as a person is alive, you can torment them, shout obscenities at them, and even get good and drunk and beat them up. But as soon as he or she is gone, a competition breaks out to make the most solemn graveside speeches and sumptuous graves. In a way, this is the underside of human life’s insecurity and lack of value. Death is a stable condition. As my grandfather’s widow told my father, “You can sit on the bench by a grave. The owners are unlikely to object.”
There is also a lot of ground for indulging in superstition. Should the cross on a gravestone be on the left or on the right? Can you visit a cemetery after two in the afternoon? Should a temporary cross be thrown in the trash or should it be burned? Can you drink vodka in remembrance of the dead and leave them sweets? These customs are mostly pagan, partly Soviet, and they are widespread. Nobody wants to die, and superstitions give us firm ground to stand on. They are like rules and magical charms.
And death is a serious business, of course. Less than ten minutes after I arrived, a cemetery employee drove up on a bicycle and offered his services.
Source: Alexei Sergeyev, Facebook, 21 May 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader
In March, the Krasnoyarsk photographer Maria Minina got a phone call from an unknown woman. She did not give her name — she only said that she had suffered two strokes. Minina’s caller asked her to do a “Vogue-style photo shoot,” only the woman needed the pictures for her own tombstone. So Maria began providing a new service — photographing people for their gravestones. Takie Dela talked to the photographer and her clients about how they feel during such shoots and why they do them.
“I’m afraid that every day might be my last” This past winter, Minina dreamed that she died. In her dream, she found out about her death from a work chat in which money was raised for her funeral. The dream made a huge impression on Maria, and she began thinking about what she would leave behind when she was gone. Just then she got a call from her first client who asked to take a picture of her for a future tombstone. She asked her to take the pictures in the Vogue style in which Minina works.
A “Vogue-style” photo by Maria Minina. Courtesy of Takie Dela
“I came to Masha’s photo shoot after having two strokes,” says Minina’s client Anna R., whose name we have changed at her request. “I wanted to memorialize myself as beautiful in life, I wanted to have glossy-style photos. I’m afraid that every day may be my last, so I’m doing everything to live to the fullest.”
Anna asked Minina to do a photo shoot of her for her gravestone. Firstly, she wanted to have a photo of her ready in case she died. Secondly, she decided to “train [her] psyche.”
“I thought that I would be sad, that I would feel my imminent departure, but Masha did not let me think about death for a second. During the photo shoot, I felt like a model and a woman being photographed on the red carpet. The feelings were quite strange, but I liked them.”
“They will bury me, and everything will be fine” After Anna’s photo shoot, Minina told her subscribers on social media that she could do a similar shoot for anyone else.
“In fact, many relatives of people who have passed away ask this question: where can I find decent photos?” Maria explains. “About four months ago, my uncle’s sister passed away, and relatives could not find good photos of her, although she had lived for over sixty years. That is, there were no high-quality photos of just her.”
Maria wants to use the photo shoots to ease some of the burden experienced by the relatives of deceased people. Relatives who are preparing for a funeral will, at least, not have to look for a suitable picture, she hopes.
One of Maria’s clients is the well-known Krasnoyarsk blogger Rustam Umarov, whose Instagram account has 370,000 subscribers. He has stage four cancer, and the doctors told him that he had six months to live. That was six months ago. The diagnosis and prognoses shocked Rustam. When he got over the shock, he decided to take care of his own funeral to relieve his beloved wife of the hardship of having to organize it.
Rustam Umarov. Photo: Maria Minina. Courtesy of Takie Dela
“I have already made arrangements with a funeral service. So that if something happens to me, my wife doesn’t panic and go into hysterics. So that they call her and say, ‘Anna Igorevna, we will take care of everything. We don’t need anything from you — no money, no worries.’ They will bury me, and everything will be fine,” says Rustam.
Having set about organizing his future funeral, Umarov thought about a photo for his tombstone. He says that when he buried his mother three years ago, he could not find a single good picture of her. Because of his diagnosis, Rustam decided to do a photo shoot.
“I don’t want people to cry at my funeral. I want people to dance and smile at my funeral. I’m not going to the worms in hell, I’m going somewhere that is maybe a million times better, so why worry?” says Rustam. “Everyone has their own time on this earth. I have talked to my children and my wife. They know that I have a terminal illness, that I can die at any moment, and for them, at least, it will not be a shock. Even at the photo shoot, they knew that it was partly being done for my funeral, and partly for my family, for memory’s sake.”
“Each of our days is unique“ Maria herself is certain “there is a calm acceptance of death” in the tombstone photo shoots. But, in her opinion, a person begins to work out their attitude to life’s finiteness even before meeting with the photographer, not during the shoot.
“I always try to make the shoot itself a celebration — no matter what we are getting photographed for. It is a mood-lifting therapy, a means of working out that each of our days is unique. No one in this world is immortal — the wheel of fortune can break, and life can turn abruptly in the other direction,” Minina notes.
According to her, such shoots provide psychological relief to people with incurable diseases. But among Minina’s clients there are also people who are not getting ready to die, but working through psychological problems, for example. This was why Elena D. signed up for a photo shoot with Maria. (Elena’s name has been changed at her request.)
“I asked Maria to do a Vogue magazine-style photo shoot of me for a tombstone,” says the client. “Before that, I had had a nervous breakdown. I decided to let it all hang out. I wouldn’t go to a spa or a club, but to a photo shoot with Masha! By pure chance I came across her advertisement and called her. To be honest, I don’t regret it at all.”
Maria believes that such photo shoots can interest different people for different reasons. According to her, some people really are preparing for death in advance or want to overcome psychological difficulties in this way, while others are trying to shock the people in their lives.
“Perhaps Insta divas will want to look on their tombstones the way they do now. They will want everything to be clear and beautiful. Or some will want to update their content and shock people. A blogger gets their picture taken and tells [subscribers] that it’s going to be on their tombstone, and their account goes viral,” the photographer says.
Maria is also using her new service to work through her own fear of death.
“Gradually, I began to accept that sooner or later we all find ourselves on the other side of life, but we don’t know when and how it will happen. Perhaps I will help people with the service I provide.”
“It can be important and thrillingly reconciling” Psychotherapist Lisa Zaslavskaya deals with subject of dealing with death. The specialist notes that techniques involving photographs can actually be used in psychotherapy. These can be photos from a family archive, self-portraits or just pictures of clients taken by another person. Psychologists use such photos during therapy to treat various conditions. Zaslavskaya notes that taking pictures for a tombstone can be a therapeutic process. It can help people to realize that “death is near, that perhaps it will come soon,” and to live through it.
“It is one of the ways of abiding in the real world. And it can be useful for loved ones. After all, if this issue is talked through, if it is discussed that I am doing a photo shoot for a tombstone, it may be important for relationships — within the family, with loved ones. It can be another occasion to tell each other about your feelings and desires. It can be important and thrillingly reconciling,” the specialist argues.
When a person is photographed for their tombstone, they touch on the various fears evoked by death. Because of this, it can be difficult for others to accept the process.
“It is also important to take into account the modern context. The topic of death is taboo, and if in the past, theoretically, people saw other people dying and died at home, nowadays there are specialized institutions for this and people often die in hospitals, ambulances, or hospices. Even if a person dies at home, they are taken away. They are not left in the home after they die, as used to be the case. So, death scares us, of course. It is tabooed and concealed in everyday life,” the psychotherapist argues.
Zaslavskaya notes that there are different ways of coming to terms with death, and not all of them suit a particular person. In her opinion, the most important thing about the process is a sensitive attitude towards oneself and others.
“We need to somehow measure [how much a person is able to] withstand this confrontation with death,” she argues. “A photo shoot like this is suitable for some people, but not for others — everyone decides for themselves. There is no universal [way of making peace] with death. If it is matters for someone to be remembered in this way, in this style, it is their right.”
Source: Sabina Babayeva, “‘I don’t want people to cry at my funeral’: How Russians order glossy photo shoots for their tombstones,” Takie Dela, 17 May 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader
The three Last Address plaques in the gateway to our house in Petersburg’s Central District
On Sunday, May 22, four new Last Address plaques will be installed in downtown Petersburg.
At 11 a.m., residents of Zagorodny Prospekt, 24, will install three plaques memorializing people who lived in their house and were shot during the Great Terror.
35-year-old Elizaveta Ivanovna Mullo, an ethnic Finn and at teacher at School No. 16 in Leningrad’s Volodarsky District of Leningrad, was arrested on September 5, 1937. She was shot on November 15, 1937, after being sentenced to death by a “twosome” [an NKVD officer and a prosecutor]. Her three-year-old Albert was left motherless.
Iosif Abramovich Dorner, a 45-year-old Jew, was head of the sales office at the Printing House. He was arrested on November 2, 1937, and shot on May 5, 1938. He was survived by his wife Sarra and four-year-old daughter Larisa.
Yakov Venediktovich Adamchik, a 55-year-old Pole and train conductor, was arrested on January 18, 1938, and shot on April 2, 1938. He was survived by his wife Feodosia and their four children — Olga, Mikhail, Lydia, and Nina.
All three victims were later officially exonerated for lack of evidence of a crime — Yakov Adamchik and Iosif Dorner, in 1957 and 1958, respectively; and Elizaveta Mullo, in 1989.
At 12 noon at Kuznechny Lane, 8, next to the plaque installed in 2016 for Nikolai Ivanovich Konyaev, a memorial plaque for his relative Boris Petrovich Matskevich will be installed. They lived in the same apartment and were arrested on the same day (March 11, 1935) as “socially dangerous elements.” A technician at an enterprise and a former Tsarist army colonel, Boris Petrovich was exiled to Kazakhstan for five years. In 1938, he was arrested in Atbasar and sentenced to death by firing squad. He was exonerated in both cases in 1959 and 1960, respectively. His granddaughter will be installing the plaque in his memory.
We invite you to join the installation ceremonies.
Source: Last Address in Petersburg email newsletter, 17 May 2022. Photo and translation by the Russian Reader
Alexander Kynev: “A moment of patriotic joy. I don’t know if there is anything more bogus. Even the Young Pioneer line-ups of my childhood were more natural.”
The video Mr. Kynev has embedded on his Facebook page is entitled “Zapolarye Za Mir” — “The Arctic for Peace.” The activists identify themselves as “residents of the Murmansk Region” (and, indeed, are standing on a hill overlooking Murmansk itself.) In addition to the newfangled Russian “Z” swastika, the hoodies sported by the lead troika of “activists” are also emblazoned with the “We Don’t Abandon Our Own” slogan that featured heavily in Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and has been revived for the new invasion. ||| TRR
__________
A Perekrestok chain supermarket in Moscow. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
“People are to blame…”
I stopped by Perekrestok and was blown away. Bananas were 140 rubles a kilo, pre-washed carrots were 100 rubles a kilo.
The hypermarket itself is open until eleven p.m. nowadays, not around the clock.
“Prices have really gone up. Is this all because of the w*r?” I say to the middle-aged woman at the checkout.
“No, it’s not just because they’ve attacked the neighbors. It’s because of the people.”
“The people who unleashed it all? I hope they will be held responsible…”
“No, because of the people, all of us, who allowed this gang to take over Russia. And each of us will bear our share of responsibility for this. And bananas at 140 a kilo are still just icing on the cake… We are to blame for what happened. Everyone who let this happen. Everyone who ‘wasn’t interested in politics.'”
An abyss of silence. You shout at the top of your lungs, but there’s no response, only silence. It’s like in a dream when you need to shout, but you have no voice at all. It’s gone. In a dream, however, you can wake up, while in this case…
On the placard, I had tied a bell to a symbolic spool of the white thread that was used to sew the shaky case against Alexander shut. It trembles in the wind, and passersby hear its “ding-ding.” For whom does the bell toll? Don’t walk on by, don’t look away…
Why did I get involved in the case of Alexander Merkulov (aka Aleksandr Peĵiĉ)? We weren’t friends, just acquaintances. Why, even though I hate court hearings, did I attend three court hearings last week?
The bell has a tongue. Many people in prison don’t have a tongue. The Russian Themis does not hear them. Not only has she blindfolded her eyes, but she has also put earplugs in her ears and plugged them tight. Whether you yell or not, you will be sentenced The judicial ear is sensitive only to the sovereign’s oprichniks. Gulag-minded, the courts presume that you are guilty, nor are their verdicts subject to review or appeal.
So it turns out that the only voice prisoners have is their circle of support on the outside. These groups are different for everyone. The famous blogger has hundreds of thousands of subscribers. The arrested journalist enjoys the corporate solidarity of the media: the major newspapers publish editorials about him, while his colleagues devote columns and radio and TV broadcasts to him.
A prominent public figure is supported by ordinary Russians, his fellow activists, and human rights defenders. And doctors, actors, truckers, feminists, LGBT activists, etc., have the support of their own communities. But Merkulov’s case has nothing to do with LGBT issues, so LGBT organizations can’t give it the proper attention and resources.
Sometimes, it is possible to raise a regional case to a national and even international level of publicity, as many people have managed to do in the case of Yulia Tsvetkova by pooling their efforts. While it is no guarantee of victory, it increases the chances.
But most cases in Russian courts are heard in complete silence. People are sentenced, transported to prison, and serve their sentences or die trying, and yet nobody says a word. Of the five cases that were heard in Petersburg City Court on Wednesday morning in the same courtroom as Alexander’s case, only his hearing featured a few members of the public in the gallery. The other defendants faced indifferent silence before hearing the judge say, “The appeal is denied, the defendant will remain in custody.”
Recently, the Perm human rights activist Igor Averkiev wrote an excellent post entitled “The Personal Usefulness of Crowds.” It’s not about people, it’s about animals—about the chances a hypothetical “introverted reindeer named Sergei,” a “social reindeer named Kostya,” or a “young musk ox named Proshka” would have against a pack of predators, a pack of “Lake Taimyr wolves.” I will quote a couple of passages from it.
“I’m a reindeer named Sergei. But I’m a very introverted, nearly autistic reindeer, and I only really feel good when I’m alone. And so, being the only other reindeer for many miles around, I come across a pack of hungry wolves. My chances are almost zero: I run faster, but they are more resilient. Moreover, when I’m alone, it’s easier for the wolves to work together smoothly as a group. Basically, I’m no longer here… Natural selection is why we don’t see ‘nearly autistic introverts’ among reindeer.”
“Any danger forces people (and not only people) to band together in a group, in a crowd. This happens instinctively. The import of this instinct is obvious: it depersonalizes the threat. When I am in a crowd, the danger is not focused on me personally, but rather is distributed over a large number of people, which increases my own chances of survival. But you can not only hide in a crowd, the crowd can also protect you. When it comes to self-defense, the size of the crowd matters.”
Any metaphor has its limits, of course. So, returning to Alexander, I want to talk about more than just him. We know that he is one of Averkiev’s “autistic introverts.” Not only does he lack media fame, but he also lacks a large number of what are called “stable social connections.”
(The topic of how the system cracks down on people with psychiatric or mental peculiarities deserves a separate post).
And this was where I said to myself: Stop, Alexei. There is no retreating. If it weren’t for you and the few colleagues who have got involved in this ‘hopeless case,’ and for Alexander’s mother, Alexander would be a goner.
I think this was what Olga Masina, who is seriously ill and undergoing medical treatment, and yet still works, said to herself. She stubbornly spends the few free hours and energy she has covering Alexander’s case. And then, like ripples on water, other people plug into the campaign. Svetlana Prokopyeva, who was convicted of the same “crime,” wrote an article about Alexander between her trial and her appeal. And Grigory Mikhnov-Vaytenko has got involved, too.
This story is not so much about Alexander, it’s about all of us. This is a test of our personal commitment, of our capacity for overcoming ourselves and our circumstances. Do we do something, however small, or do we just turn away and make excuses?
Of course, even a serious public response does not guarantee a 100% positive outcome. But the lack of support almost guarantees a negative outcome. And, at least, our involvement is felt by Alexander, and it is important for him, he writes about it in his letters.
I will end this post with two actual quotations.
“We’re not going to Merkulov’s court hearings. He’s not as cute as Yegor Zhukov,” writes a gay man.
No comment.
“I’m not ready to picket yet. The case itself is quite murky.”
Does this warrant up to 7 years in prison? Do we need to keep Alexander in jail for three months running as if he were a particularly dangerous criminal? For me, the answer is obvious, and the point is clear in this sense: there were no calls for violence in Alexander posted. On the contrary, when reposting, he wrote that he did not approve of violence.
There is no counting the streets in our country that still bear the names of terrorists, but our valiant security forces could not care less. We LGBT activists send notarized bundles of the threats we receive to the police, but they don’t open criminal investigations because, they say, “the threats are not real.” Assaults, domestic violence, and poisoning are “not grounds for criminal prosecution.”
But Alexander’s actions are a “threat to national security”? The criminal case against him is a joke. The article in the criminal code under which he has been charged [Article 205.2] a mockery of the law. In my opinion, if it is left on the law books, then at most it should be an administrative offense.
We’re talking about people’s lives here. We’re talking about Alexander’s life. Will his fate be decided in silence, or will we pass this test of caring? We don’t have horns and hooves like musk oxen and deer, the only things we have are our voices and our conscience.
At 12:30 p.m. on September 10, the appeals hearing on Alexander’s remand in police custody will take place at Petersburg City Court.
Save Alexander Merkulov (Peĵiĉ) Telegram
September 10, 2020
The Petersburg City Court upheld the original decision to remand Alexander Merkulov in custody. In the photo, you see the face of this “justice”: Judge Tatyana Matveyeva Tatyana , hiding behind the monitor.
Prosecutor Minina didn’t even stay for the announcement of the court’s decision. Apparently, she already knew it in advance.
Alexander was present via video link and was very happy to see us in the camera🙂
A LGBT pride event was scheduled today, but the authorities refused to permit it, and it was decided we should limit ourselves to solo pickets on Palace Square. The protest was scheduled for 12:34 p.m. It looks pretty (1,2,3,4), but the time is horribly early for me.
But I remembered the words of Alexei Sergeyev and forced myself to get up.
Alexei and I wound up on the same bus. We were running a bit late.
On Palace Square, we saw crowds of patriotically minded Petersburgers. Many had dressed in camouflage and adorned themselves with St. George’s Ribbons. It transpirted that today was a party for Harley-Davidson motorcycles and their owners.
Palace Square was completely cordoned off and chockablock with cops.
I got held up, and when I got to the square, Alexei Sergeyev had already been detained. Then Alek Naza (Alexei Nazarov) was detained: he had no placard, only a rainbow flag. Before that 28 more people had been detained. That is a total of 30 people detained for trying to hold solo pickets [which, according to Russian law, can be held without permission and without notifying authorities in advance]. There are minors among them. Some have been taken to the 74th Police Precinct (in particular, Alexander Khmelyov), while a third group is still being held in a paddy wagon, as far as I know.
Information from witnesses: “Six of the people detained on Palace Square were dropped off at the 69th Police Precinct at 30/3 Marshal Zhukov Avenue, including Yuri Gavrikov, Alexei Sergeyev, and Tanya (Era) Sichkaryova. One of the detainees is an underaged girl. We have refused to be fingerprinted and photographed.”
I was taking pictures with Yelena Grigorieva’s camera. I don’t have those photos yet. I’m using ones that have already been published on group pages and the social media pages of the protesters.
Translated by the Russian Reader
UPDATE. Please do not credit the accounts of this incident published by Gay Star News, Gay Tourism, and True Media. I sent the following letter to them a few minutes ago.
Your websites published a very sketchy summary of a post I published on my blog The Russian Reader earlier this evening.
Namely, you characterized the source of my post, Yevgenia Litvinova, as a “LGBTI activist.” She is no such thing. She is a well-known opposition journalist and pro-democracy (anti-Putin) activist, whose organization, Democratic Russia, feels it important to show solidarity with the LGBTI movement in Petersburg.
Please correct or delete this baseless speculation on your part or I’ll expose your bad journalistic practices on social media and my blog.
My blog is a copyleft website, but no one has the right to rip what I translate and write out of context—a context I know well because I’ve lived in Petersburg for 25 years—and fit it into a fake context that makes more sense to your readers, who, apparently, cannot imagine a non-LGBTI person would or could show solidarity with the LGBTI movement.
LGBT Activists Protest on Palace Square on Paratroopers Day David Frenkel
Special to The Russian Reader
August 5, 2015
Local LGBT activists bearing flags and posters took to Saint Petersburg’s Palace Square on Sunday, August 2, Russian Paratroopers Day, to defend their rights.
In August 2013 and 2014, young local LGBT activist Kirill Kalugin held solo protests on Palace Square on Paratroopers Day, but he left Russia in late November 2014, applying for political asylum in Germany.
This year, LGBT activists tried to get permission for an event but were turned down three times by city officials.
Yuri Gavrikov, leader of the local LGBT organization Ravnopravie (“Equal Rights”) thus decided to go to Palace Square alone with an LGBT flag. He was arrested in the morning, however, for “swearing in public” as he was riding his bicycle toward the city center.
Nevertheless, several of his comrades came to Palace Square sporting flags and posters, and demanding Gavrikov’s release.
The first to take to the square was activist Olga Panova. She unfurled the LGBT rainbow flag before being arrested by the police a few minutes later.
Panova managed to pass the flag to another activist, Valery Ugarov, who was immediately arrested as well.
Policemen claimed the arrests had been made at the “behest of citizens,” although at the time, around two o’clock in the afternoon, only a few paratroopers were still left on Palace Square celebrating their holiday. They paid no attention to the LGBT activists.
Journalists from state media outlets approached the paratroopers and asked them their opinion of the protest, making no secret of their own disgust and dubbing the activists “drunk.” The paratroopers, however, merely dubbed the protest a “provocation” and avoided engaging in any violence towards the activists.
The next activist to take to the square with the flag was Mikhail Gerasimov from the Alliance of Heterosexuals and LGBT for Equal Rights. Police also detained him.
Police initially charged all the detained activists with “promoting homosexuality among minors,” but later dropped the charges for lack of evidence, claiming that a child who had been strolling through the square with his mother had taken no interest in the flag’s “meaning.”
Police released all the activists later in the day.
As Gerasimov was being arrested, activists Alexei Nazarov and Alexei Sergeyev emerged from the crowd holding posters that read, respectively, “Free Yuri Gavrikov,” “Three ‘rejections’ from the Smolny [Petersburg city hall]: lawlessness and discrimination of Russian citizens,” and “‘Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance.’ Charlie Chaplin.” (The last is a quotation from the Jewish Barber’s speech in Chaplin’s 1940 film The Great Dictator.)
A few men wearing the trademark baby-blue berets and navy blue-and-white striped sleeveless t-shirts of the Russian paratroopers and casual clothing suddenly rushed Nazarov and Sergeyev, grabbing their posters and ripping them up.
The LGBT activists kept producing new posters, and the would-be paratroopers ultimately tore up five posters.
Police ignored the assaults on the activists, even laughing as they tried to defend themselves.
No one from either party to the scuffle was arrested.
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