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Vsevolod Korolev
During his closing statement in court today the documentary filmmaker Vsevolod Korolev read a poem by Grigori Dashevsky:
1.
Across the river they’re making chocolate.
Out there the river-ice is breaking up.
And upriver we’re waiting, but for now
no bus comes, only its vacant ghost,
a desolate fleshless light flying ahead
to the engine’s howl
and the clatter of
the ad-slates changing.
We’re not cold, we bide our time.
The sky a deeper blue, the burning streetlights.
2.
To wait for each new minute as for a ghost,
to put on stage-paint for him alone,
to powder your face with light––and poorly it sticks,
but without it there’s nothing
to tell you apart: not from the many
faces—multitudes—
but from the lived-through years
which, like a star, are distant and weightless as smoke.
3.
But from the sweet smoke, the glory of heaven,
look up for a moment,
tear your eyes away
as from a book:
As much as a star has its shining
or a factory its smoke,
all things have
their limit: a book’s gilded edges
or a band of cloud.
4.
And turned from weddings not my own, and graves,
not waiting for the end, I rose
and saw an enormous room, a hall,
walls, walls, Moscow, and I asked:
where is the light that lit these pages,
where is the wind that rustled them like leaves?
5.
It’s late to be asking: each person is lit bright,
thrown open to the right dream
for the minutes, like pupils widened,
unscathed, like smoke or sleep:
they fly in, gleam, collect a promise:
Remember, remember (take leave of) me.
“I don’t intend to speak for very long. Your Honor, I am in some sense a colleague of yours, since I’ve worked as a third-tier soccer referee; I understand that you’re in a tough situation, it’s hard to envy someone stuck in the middle of this whole business. But nevertheless I have always believed in people and will continue to do so, even when it makes absolutely no sense. In any case I know this is really hard for you, but I think you’ll figure it out.” (Vsevolod Korolev)
“To ask for ten years when the maximum is ten and given the absence of aggravating circumstances and the evidence of mitigating ones—this goes against the fundamental norms of the criminal code. And this demonstrates for the umpteenth time the invalidity and baselessness of the prosecution’s case.” ([Korolev’s defense] lawyer Maria Zyrianova)
Source: Irina Kravtsova (Facebook), 18 March 2024. Translated by the Fabulous AM. Grigori Dashevsky, “Across the river they’re making chocolate,” trans. Ainsley Morse and Timmy Straw, The Hopkins Review 16.2 (Spring 2023): 18–19. Translation © 2023 Ainsley Morse and Timmy Straw, reproduced here courtesy of the translators.
Discourse journalist and documentary filmmaker Vsevolod Korolev has been sentenced to a three-year prison term on charges of “disseminating fake news” about the army.
During the trial on March 18 defense lawyer Maria Zyrianova noted that the case file did not indicate what information in Korolev’s posts had been determined to be knowingly false. Korolev is accused of making two posts on [the Russian social media network] Vkontakte about the mass murders of civilians in the Ukrainian cities of Bucha and Borodianka, as well as about the shelling of Donetsk.
The prosecution requested a nine-year prison sentence for Korolev. This, noted Discourse, was the longest prison term ever requested by state prosecutors for the charge of disseminating “fake news” about the Russian army.
During the court hearing on March 20, bailiffs at St. Petersburg’s Vyborg District Court recorded the names of those who came to support Korolev, SOTA reports. Earlier, SOTA published a recording of a telephone conversation between the bailiffs, in which they announced their intention to provide the lists of those who came to the trial to Center “E” [the “counter-extremism” police].
The Case of Vsevolod Korolev
- Vsevolod Korolev is a documentary filmmaker and poet. He worked as a correspondent for the culture magazine Discourse and made films on social themes — about children with disabilities and political prisoners.
- Korolev was detained in July 2022. During the search, his electronic devices were confiscated.
- The prosecutors argued that Korolev’s documentaries about the political prisoners Maria Ponomarenko and Alexandra Skochilenko should be deemed an aggravating circumstance.
- Linguistic expertise in the case was provided by linguist Alla Teplyashina and political scientist Olga Safonova from the Center for Expertise at St. Petersburg State University.
- One of the prosecution’s witnesses later recanted their testimony.
- In his closing statement at the trial, Korolev quoted a poem by Grigori Dashevsky: “It’s late to be asking: each person is lit bright, / thrown open to the right dream / for the minutes, like pupils widened, / unscathed, like smoke or sleep: / they fly in, gleam, collect a promise: / Remember, remember (take leave of) me.“
- Memorial has designated Korolev a political prisoner.
You can support Vsevolod Korolev by sending him a letter to the following address:
196655 St. Petersburg, Kolpino, Kolpinskaya Street, 9, FKU SIZO-1, Vsevolod Anatolyevich Korolev (born 1987)
You can also use the service FSIN-Pismo.
Source: “Discourse journalist Vsevolod Korolev sentenced to three years for ‘fakes’ about the army,” DOXA, 20 March 2024. Translated by the Fabulous AM and the Russian Reader. People living outside of Russia will find it difficult or impossible to send letters to Russian prisons via regular mail or using online prison correspondence services such as FSIN-Pismo. In many cases, however, you can send letters (which must be written in Russian or translated into Russian) to Russian political prisoners via the free, volunteer-run service RosUznik. You can also write to me (avvakum@pm.me) for assistance and advice in sending such letters.||| TRR
