Arrested Penza Antifascists Talk about Torture in Remand Prison

“He Would Check My Pulse by Touching My Neck and Monitor My Condition.” Arrested Penza Antifascists Talk about Electric Shock Torture in Remand Prison Basement
Anna Kozkina and Yegor Skovoroda
Mediazona
February 9, 2018

Dmitry Pchelintsev. Photo courtesy of his relatives and Mediazona

Ilya Shakursky and Dmitry Pchelintsev, arrested in Penza and charged with involvement in a “terrorist community,” have told their attorneys that Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers tortured them in the basement of the city’s remand prison. Mediazona has decided to publish the story told by Shakursky’s defense counsel and the transcript of what Pchelintsev relayed to his lawyer.

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In October 2017, the FSB detained four antifascists in Penza: Yegor Zorin, Ilya Shakursky, Vasily Kuksov, and Dmitry Pchelintsev. In early November, they detained Andrei Chernov in Penza, and Arman Sagynbayev, who was in Petersburg at the time. All six young men have been accused of involvement in a “terrorist community” (a criminal offense under Article 205.4 Part 2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code). According to the FSB, the six had established an organization, known as The Network (Set’). They planned a series of bomb blasts during the presidential election, in March, and the World Cup, in June and July, that would “sway the popular masses in order to subsequently destabilize the political situation [in Russia]” and set off an armed insurrection.

The Network allegedly had cells functioning in Moscow, Petersburg, Penza, and Belarus [an independent country]. On January 23, 2018, antifascist Viktor Filinkov was detained in Petersburg, followed two days later by Igor Shishkin. Friends and family could not find either of them for over a day. A court had remanded both of them in custody as members of the alleged “terrorist community.”

In Penza, relatives of the detained activists told how law enforcement officers had planted weapons in the men’s cars and flats, and subjected them to torture by shocking them with electrical wires and hanging them upside down. According to friends and loved ones, all the detained men had been airsoft enthusiasts.

“All they ever did was learn how to render first aid in field conditions and survive in the woods. Is that illegal?” Angelina Pchelintseva, Dmitry Pchelintsev’s wife, asked OVD Info.

Initially, all the men in custody, except Kuksov, who invoked his right not to incriminate himself, as stipulated by Article 51 of the Russian Constitution, confessed to their alleged crimes.

After he was detained, Viktor Filinkov said that siloviki had tortured him with an electric shocker and forced him to memorize the wording of his testimony in order to repeat it later to investigators. Ilya Kapustin, interrogated as a witness in the case, also spoke of torture. FSB officers had shocked him with an electric shocker and threatened to break his legs and abandon him in the woods.

Igor Shishkin has not said anything about torture. The case file contains a letter written by Shishkin after he was detained. It is addressed to Alexander Rodionov, head of the FSB’s Petersburg Office. In the letter, Shishkin explains he received all his injuries while playing sports. Doctors confirmed Shishkin suffered a fracture to the lower wall of one eye socket, as well as numerous bruises and abrasions. Members of the Public Monitoring Commission on Conditions in Places of Imprisonment who visited Shishkin in a remand prison made note of numerous traces on his body of what looked like burns from electrical wires. Recently, Shishkin sent a petition to the authorities asking to cooperate with the investigation and requesting a pretrial agreement.

A Letter by Igor Shishkin from the Remand Prison
Greetings to friends, relatives, acquaintances, and sympathizers! In my stupidity, I got caught up in a very serious and unpleasant situation. I’ll skip the details. I just want to advise everyone to think a hundred times about what you are doing and how the consequences do not affect just you. I also want to send my sincerest apologies to the people whom my problem has affected. Sorry, guys! […] I really ask everyone not to generate a media buzz. We don’t need that right now.

“He Said, ‘I Couldn’t Take It. I Broke Down.'”
Attorney Anatoly Vahterov, Ilya Shakursky’s defense counsel, has written the following. Mr. Vahterov visited Mr. Shakursky in Penza Remand Prison No. 1 on February 7, 2018.

It follows from my client’s statement that he was one of six people simultaneously detained on suspicion of violating Article 205.4 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. The article refers literally to “organization of a terrorist community.” During my conversation with my client, I did not have the slightest doubt he had not been involved in these actions.

I said to him, “I know that you signed a confession. How could that be?”

He wrote a note to me, “I was beaten.”

Later, he gave me a more detailed account of how he had been tortured in the remand prison.

He said the plan was to implicate them in the Maltsev case. He said this. I was surprised. What was the connection? In my view, this case was fabricated on formal grounds. They grabbed one comrade by the name of Zorin. He was the weakest of them and testified against all his friends. Moreover, his testimony is absolutely far-fetched. It was grounds for detaining the other guys on suspicion of having committed the particular crime.

This is where it gets interesting. According to my client, all of them were tortured in the basement of the remand prison. The torture was sophisticated. Officers in masks and camouflage uniforms would enter their cells. They took them to a room in the basement, forced them to strip, attached electrodes to their fingertips, and cranked up a so-called dynamo.

He just said, “I couldn’t take it. I broke down.”

9df5e576b811a2658cced24c766cda70 Ilya Shakursky. Photo from personal archive and courtesy of Mediazona

Torture was also used against Pchelintsev, according to my client. They talk to each other in the remand prison. Sagynbayev has also been tortured. This is savagery, you realize? As if the year now were 1937.

There can be no question of any terrorist activity whatsoever. I would venture to say that during the preliminary investigation and trial we will try and prove it. The guys only played role-playing games. They were into airsoft and running round the woods. Yes, the guys gave each other nicknames. It was just easier for them to address each other that way. None of this is anything other than child’s play. Yes, there were nicknames, yes, there were assigned roles. Why not? We played war when we were kids. We also pretended to be medics, sappers, and snipers. Each had a role to play. There were role-playing games and nothing more.

The had their own group and their own music. They were involved in the antifascist movement and environmentalism. The authorities have been trying to accuse them of espousing anarchism, but the thing is that my client and the other comrades are antifascists. A person who opposes Nazism cannot preach Nazi ideas and chauvinism, engage in any kind of propaganda, and advocate overthrowing the social order.

Ilya Shakursky is a totally sensible, regular guy. I would say he is the salt of the Russian earth. He’s a normal, genuine, good Russian lad, raised in our society’s best traditions. He is not a criminal, that is for sure. But when he speaks, you can see the pain and resentment on his face. It happens. But he is hanging in there and hoping for a good defense. His mother was immediately fired from her job when the first articles about Pchelintsev and so on were published.

In order to be involved in a group, especially a terrorist group, a strict conspiracy, as my client has been accused of, there must be exclusively friendly relations, based on mutual respect, decency, and the knowledge that your comrade will not turn you over to the relevant authorities. But Shakursky and Pchelintsev had a falling-out over a young woman. They had fought with each other, and one even spit in the other’s eye.When there were conflicts like this, what kind of tightly knit team can we speak of?

In order to justify what I regard as groundless detentions, criminal charges, and remands in police custody, the men were accused of committing another crime, possession of weapons and explosives, Article 222 in the Criminal Code. Law enforcement planted two grenades and a pistol under the back seat of Shakursky’s car. If he and his friends were such conspirators, he would not have done something as amateurish as leaving two grenades in his car.

Ilya Shakursky’s letter to his girlfriend

Ilya Shakursky’s Letter to His Girlfriend
Today is exactly three months since I’ve been in the remand prison. If I were on the outside I would definitely go to the event commemorating two great heroes, Nastya Baburova and Stas Markelov.

We now find ourselves in circumstances in which we miss these people like never before. They fought injustice and helped people who were in very difficult situations in life. I sincerely hope that with the help of friends, loved ones, and concerned citizens we can get out of this pickle, which is one enormous misunderstanding and injustice.

Goodness will triumph!

January 19, 2018

All my acquaintances and friends should see this text.

“My Mouth Was Full of Blood, and One of the Torturers Stuck My Sock in It”
On February 6, 2018, attorney Oleg Zaitsev visited Dmitry Pchelintsev and interviewed him. Like most of the defense attorneys in the case, the investigator made Zaitsev sign a non-disclosure agreement concerning evidence in the preliminary investigation. Zaitsev notes that, under the circumstances, he has not violated investigatory privileges, but nevertheless he felt obliged to discuss all the violations of rights his client has suffered. What follows is a transcript of his interview with Pchelintsev.

I can say the following. On October 27, 2017, I left the house at around six o’clock in the morning to meet my grandmother. Near the end wall of the building, as I was nearing my car, four men in plain clothes suddenly approached me. I was so surprised I put my hands up in front of me. These men immediately beat me up and threw me on the ground. Their faces were not covered. I could identify them. Later, some of them escorted me from the remand prison to the FSB office. One of them looked to be thirty-five years old. He had light-brown hair, was wearing a gray jacket, and had a stout face and thickset build. They asked me my surname and struck various parts of my body. They reproached me for having putting up my dukes when I was being detained by the FSB. They confiscated the keys to my flat and used them to enter the place when my girlfriend was sleeping and search the place.

On October 28, 2017, after the court had remanded me in custody to the remand prison on Karakozov Street, I was in solidarity confinement cell 5-1. It was around four o’clock in the afternoon when a special forces policeman, the senior shift officer, and a major from the local office of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service entered my cell. They told me to exit the cell and go to the nearby punishment cell, which I did. Six or seven men immediately entered the cell. Half of them were in MultiCam camouflage uniforms, while the other half were in plain clothes. But all of them wore balaclavas. Despite the headgear concealing their faces, I could identify some of these people by their voices, physique, and clothes. Subsequently, I recognized some of them when I was being transported and escorted.

They told me what to do, and I followed their orders. I stripped to my shorts, sat down on a bench, stretched my arms backwards, and put my head down. At first, I thought this was some examination everyone sent to the remand prison had to undergo, so I voluntarily submitted to it. Then they taped my hands behind me, tied one of my legs to the foot of the bench with more tape, and stuck a wad of gauze in my mouth.

One of the men was wearing white rubber medical gloves. He took out a dynamo and set it on a table. He stripped two wires with a boxcutter and told me to stick out my big toe. Another man checked my pulse by touching my neck. He would subsequently do this more than once: he was monitoring my condition. He was surprised my pulse was normal and I was not agitated. That was because I did not realize at first what was happening.

Then the man in gloves cranked the dynamo. The current flowed to my knees. My calf muscles contracted, and I was seized by paralytic pain. I screamed. My back and head convulsed against the wall. They put a jacket between my naked body and the stone wall. This went on for about ten seconds, but when it was happening, it felt like an eternity to me.

One of them spoke to me.

“I don’t know the word ‘no.’ I don’t remember it. You should forget it. You got me?” he said literally.

“Yes,” I replied.

“That’s the right answer. Attaboy, Dimochka,” he said.

The gauze was stuck in my mouth again, and I was shocked four times, three seconds each time. […] Then I was tossed onto the floor. Since one of my legs was tied to the foot of the bench, when I fell, I seriously banged up my knees, which bled profusely. My shorts were pulled off. I was lying on my stomach. They tried to attach the wires to my genitals. I screamed and asked them to stop brutalizing me.

“You’re the leader,” they repeated.

“Yes, I’m the leader,” I said to make them stop torturing me.

“You planned terrorist attacks.”

“Yes, we planned terrorist attacks,” I would reply.

One of the men who measured my pulse put his balaclava on me so I would not see them. At one point, I lost consciousness for awhile. […] After they left, a Federal Penitentiary Service officer entered the room and told me to get dressed. He took me back to my solitary confinement cell.

The next day, October 20, 2018, I broke the tank on the toilet and used the shards to slash my arms at the wrists and elbows, and my neck in order to stop the torture. There was a lot of blood from the cuts on my clothes and the floor, and I collapsed onto the floor. They probably saw what I did via the CCTV camera installed in the cell. Prison staffers entered my cell and gave me first aid. Then the prison’s psychologist, Vera Vladimirovna, paid me a visit.

As regards the video cameras installed in my cell, as well as in the punishment cell and the corridor, I can say that when FSB officers show up, the cameras either are turned off or the recording is later erased, or something is done with the sensors. The FSB officers completely control the local Federal Penitentiary Service officers.

On November 8, 2017, at around five o’clock in the afternoon, the senior shift officer was getting ready to leave.

“Will everything be alright with me?” I asked him.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right back,” he replied.

I had connected his departure with the fact that the last time he left, the day before, Saginbayev’s scream was audible on the floor. I realized he was being tortured. Later, our paths crossed, and he apologized for testifying against me.

A lieutenant from the Federal Penitentiary Service then came to my door.

“Am I safe here?” I wrote on a piece of paper that I showed to him.

“Yes,” he replied in big letters.

After that I showed him the enormous bruise on my chest and stomach to let him know I had been tortured. After awhile he opened the cell door, and four men wearing prisoner’s uniforms dashed into the cell. Civilian clothes were visible under these uniforms, all of which were baggy. They were all wearing what looked like Buff masks, black tube scarves.

They beat and kicked me in the stomach, kidneys, and head. I had bruises from their blows, but they hit me like in a gym, so they would leave fewer visible traces. They informed me they were from the “underworld committee”: because of me they had been put on lockdown. They gave me a week to solve my problems with the “pigs.” If I didn’t solve them, they would punk me. One of them filmed the whole thing on a smartphone. The Federal Penitentiary Service officer was outside in the hallway the entire time. The four FSB guys from the “underworld committee” left. Later, I also recognized some of them when I was being escorted and transported.

Then the senior shift officer, a captain, returned.

“How can I believe you when FSB guys just came into my cell and beat me up?” I asked him.

He looked puzzled.

Afterwards, FSB agents have visited me many times in the remand prison. They wear no masks and chat with me in the visiting room. When they talk with me, they exert psychological pressure on me. They threaten, blackmail, and manipulate me.

During an interrogation, the investigator told me it was he who gave the agents permission to visit me. They took their orders from him and they had their own work.

After I tried to commit suicide by slashing my veins open, I was put under special watch in the remand prison. The cuffs are not removed from my hands even when I am signing interrogation reports.

I want to add that, when I was tortured with electrical shocks, my mouth was full of “crushed teeth” due to the fact I gritted my teeth since the pain was strong, and I tore the frenulum of my tongue. My mouth was full of blood, and at some point one of my torturers stuck my sock in my mouth.

I was beaten so badly I had open wounds on my head.

••••••••••

According to Republic, which has seen the case file, the FSB has named Pchelintsev the organizer of The Network terrorist group. He met his accomplices at concerts and allegedly founded the organization in 2014. According to the FSB, since 2015, every member of The Network has had his own role. Investigators believe Pchelintsev is The Network’s leader and ideologue. He has a deputy, nicknamed Redhead, who recruits new members.

The case files indicate that, in the summer of 2016, several cells joined The Network. The Penza cell was dubbed 5.11 (November Fifth) or Sunrise; the Moscow cell, MSK (Moscow Standard Time); and the two Petersburg cells, Field of Mars and Jordan. In addition, investigators believe The Network has a branch in Belarus, and that the cells were managed out of Penza. The FSB refers to all the detainees as anarchists.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to NV and PK for the heads-up

Solidarity with Persecuted Russian Antifascists and Anarchists in NYC and Minneapolis

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Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council – MACC
As part of the week of solidarity with Russian anarchist political prisoners there will be a demo at the Russian Consulate, 91st Street, today, February 7, 2:30 PM–4:00 PM.

#Antifa #Antifascism

More information on the recent arrest and torture of anarchist and antifascist political prisoners here:

https://freedomnews.org.uk/russia-arrests-and-torture-of-anarchists-and-antifascists/

•••••••••••

Solidarity with Russian Anarchists
The Base
1302 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11221
7 PM–10 PM, February 8, 2018

Six anarchists have been arrested in Penza, Saint Petersburg, and Crimea, from October 2017 to February 2018, by officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) on charges of involvement in a terrorist group. During this period, there have been raids on the homes of anarchists and antifascist all over Russia. The arrested anarchists have been tortured into falsely confessing their involvement in the imaginary network. This is clearly a state-fabricated conspiracy being used to eradicate the anarchist movement.

As the support team says, “These repressions can only intimidate people and crush the anarchist movement. In this case it’s necessary to show that we are not afraid and we can’t be destroyed by their force. Otherwise, the repressions will be used every time when the anarchist movement attracts the notice of the FSB. We must show them that the stronger their crackdowns are, the more furious our resistance is.”

We are hosting a movie and information session about the broader anarchist and antifascist movement in Russia, and talking in more detail about this particular case.

About the movie
Antifascist Attitude is the first-ever documentary film on the emerging Russian antifascist movement made by activists themselves. The movie features moderate NGO activists and radical grassroots activists and anarchists from three cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Irkutsk. It also features the antifascist lawyer Stanislav Markelov, murdered by neo-Nazis in Moscow on January 19, 2009.

Come and learn about what’s happening and ways to support our comrades in Russia!

•••••••••••

Solidarity Dinner with Russian Antifascists
Twin Cities IWW General Defense Committee Local 14
5:30–8:00 p.m., Saturday, February 17, 2018
2101 Hennepin Ave, Minneapolis, MN, United States

Join the General Defense Committee for a dinner, discussion, and letter writing to support antifascists targeted by the FSB crackdowns in Penza and St Petersburg.

The far right rises in the US, in Russia, and across the world, attacking oppressed peoples, immigrants, and working class revolutionaries. Antifascists are fighting against nationalist hate across borders, and facing attacks from the ruling class’s governments. In Russia, the FSB (Federal Security Service) are hard at work arresting, torturing, and framing antifascist activists in Penza, St. Petersburg, and elsewhere.

The Anarchist Black Cross in Moscow and St. Petersburg has asked for international solidarity with the Russian anarchists facing repression. We will be holding a dinner in the IWW offices at 2101 Hennepin Avenue South, Suite 101, Minneapolis, on Saturday, February 17, 2018, from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

We’ll discuss the situation in Russia as well as the repression faced by anarchists in Belarus, Ukraine, and other countries. We’ll collect donations, provide a space for letter writing to the defendants, and facilitate discussion on further international solidarity work with political prisoners, labor organizers, and anti-authoritarians.

https://libcom.org/news/support-anarchist-antifa-prisoners-stpetersburg-penza-31012018

https://itsgoingdown.org/call-international-days-solidarity-russian-anarchist-political-prisoners-feb-5th-12th-2018/

https://avtonom.org/en/news/how-stability-has-really-been-achieved-russia

How “Stability” Has Really Been Achieved in Russia

Viktor Filinkov. Photo courtesy of Filinkov’s wife and OVD Info

Petersburg Anarchist Viktor Filinkov, Arrested in Terrorism Case, Says He Was Tortured
Mediazona
January 26, 2018

Antifascist Viktor Filinkov, arrested for alleged involvement in a terrorist network, has told members of the Public Monitoring Commission (PMC) he was tortured, according to the PMC’s report, which Mediazona has in its possession.

According to the PMC report, injuries “inflicted in the last two or three days” were discovered on Filinkov’s body, including numerous traces of burns from an electric shocker all over his right thigh, a hematoma on his right ankle, and burns from an electric shocker on his thorax.

Filinkov explained he suffered the injuries on January 24 in the car in which he was put by FSB officers after he was detained at Pulkovo Airport in Petersburg. The activist was then taken to the local Interior Ministry headquarters, and from there to a hospital. Filinkov was then driven into woodlands and held in the car for five hours.

FSB officers were seated in the front of the car, according to Filinkov. The middle row of seats was occupied by a man wearing a mask, while Filinkov and another man wearing a mask sat in the back of the vehicle. The injuries were inflicted between seven and eight o’clock in the morning.

According to the PMC’s report, “The FSB officers demanded that Filinkov confess, and having obtained his consent, they forced him to memorize the particular wording [of his confession].”

The masked men said very little, while the FSB officers threatened Filinkov that if he subsequently reneged on the confession, the beating they had given him would be a “light version” of the beating he would get later.

Afterwards, Filinkov signed a statement, addressed to the local Interior Ministry headquarters and the local FSB headquarters, in which he informed them of all the things he had been prompted to say. The FSB officers then demanded he not deny the statement in court, threatening to place him in a pretrial detention center with tuberculosis patients.

The only things the masked men said were “Stop twitching!” and “What you shouting for?”

Filinkov was transferred to another car in the woodlands, a Lada Priora, and taken to the local Interior Ministry headquarters. According to Filinkov, the masked men seemed to know their way around the building, as if they had been there many times. They also discussed the fact they should keep their faces hidden because of the security cameras in the building.

The PMC’s report notes that the men wiped the blood off Filinkov’s face with his own hat and with snow, and traces of bood were left on the hat. The leftist activist was also told that if he behaved badly, the FSB would “get to” his wife “even in Kyiv.”

On January 24, Filinkov’s wife told OVD Info her husband had disappeared on his way to Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport. The antifascist was scheduled to fly to Kyiv at eight o’clock in the evening on January 23. The last time they communicated that day was three o’clock in the afternoon, when Filinkov texted his wife that he was headed to the airport and would text her again after he arrived there.

On January 25, it transpired that the Dzerzhinsky District Court in Petersburg had remanded Filinkov to police custody for two months on suspicion of involvement in a terrorist network (per Article 205.4 Part 2 of the Russian Criminal Code). According to police investigators, Filinikov and unidentified persons who “supported the anarchist ideology” were branch members of a terrorist network whose purpose was to engage in terrorist activities, propaganda, and justification of terrorism.

Today, the wife of another Petersburg antifascist, Igor Shishkin, reported he was missing. Shishkin went missing after his home was searched and he was taken away by law enforcement officers.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Vlad Tupikin: Why We Take to the Streets Every Year on January 19

"Remembering Means Fighting," January 19, 2014, Moscow. Photo by Comrade Anatrrra — “Remembering Is a Way of Fighting Back,” January 19, 2014, Moscow. Photo by Comrade Anatrrra

Vlad Tupikin
Why We Take to the Streets Every Year on January 19
Facebook
January 19, 2016

Why do I go to the antifascist demonstration every year on January 19 and call on you to do the same? There are several obvious reasons, but of one of them is deeply personal, and I do not mention it often.

I am not a religious person, but in a sense you might say this is my way of praying to God.

Seven years ago, on the night before January 19, many activists, like today, were sitting in chat room, only they were not on Facebook but on Gmail, although real activists should avoid both Gmail and Facebook, but I will save that conversation for another time.

Seven years ago they were sitting in chat rooms, and so was I. Two events of importance to the Moscow anarchist and antifa community had been scheduled for January 19. The most important was a counter picket against pro-Kremlin youth protesting the arrival of migrants at Moscow’s Kazan Station. To put it more simply, the pro-Kremlin youth were going to frighten newly arrived migrants by citing the severity of Russian laws and their rigorous application, and strongly suggest to the migrants that they were a priori uncultured mugs who wanted to roast a sheep carcass at the drop of a hat, while we anarchists and antifascists believed these accusations were at least latently racist and at most wretched in so many ways that it is a pain to list them all. So we decided to respond to their frightening leaflets with our own welcoming anti-picket.

The second important event on January 19, 2009, was a press conference called by lawyer Stanislav Markelov at the Independent Press Center in downtown Moscow. We paid attention to nearly every public appearance by Stas Markelov, because . . . Because, if you remember, in Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s novel Beetle in the Anthill, when the KGB-like COMCON-2 ask the Golovan Embassy (the Golovans are a race of intelligent dog-like creatures) about the character codenamed Beetle, the embassy sends this definitive response: “The Golovan people know the Beetle in the Anthill.”

The same thing could have been said about Stas: “The antifa know Stas Markelov.” Was it any wonder. Markelov knew the antifa, loved the antifa, was a friend of the antifa, defended the antifa in court, promoted the antifa, and tried to raise the way the antifa thought and acted to a higher level. (See, for example, his article “Red Book of the Antifa.”) But when the time came, the antifa were unable to save Stas Markelov, just as the Golovans could not protect the Beetle in the Anthill.

Although earlier they had protected him. They had guarded him at pressers before, and had actually prevented an armed attack on Markelov in autumn 2008.

Personally for me, a person whose occupational hazard was calluses from gripping a ballpoint pen and banding on a keyboard, there was not much of a choice on January 19, 2009, although I wavered. It was clear there would be some kind of action at Kazan Station, that it should be described, and so it was better to witness it with my own eyes. It was clear that Stas was holding a routine presser on the Colonel Budanov case (Colonel Yuri Budanov was a Russian military officer who had murdered a young Chechen woman), although it had been occasioned by the extreme circumstances of Budanov’s sudden release from custody. Obviously, I had to go where the action would be, especially since reportage was my favorite genre. But what was there to report about a presser? That a colleague had scratched his ear at some point?

And yet, I hesitated, because I had not seen Stas in a long time, and every encounter with him was a joy. He radiated optimism, cheerfulness, and invincible confidence in the future, something that I, a historical optimist but everyday skeptic, sorely lacked, and so sometimes I basked in Markelov’s rays. And the Budanov case was politically important: it had to be written about, too. Whatever, I thought. First, I would take in the action at Kazan Station, then file a story about the action at Kazan Station, and only then would I read the reports colleagues had filed about Stas’s presser, and if need be I would get Stas on the phone to clarify some details, and then I would write about it, too.

No sooner said than done. I went to watch the protest and counter protest at Kazan Station and, as it turned out, try and save a female anarchist activist from being abducted by the pro-Kremlin crowd. She was thin and light as a feather, and so they had grabbed her and raced off with her down the platform.

Basically, a good time was had by all. I then traveled to the nearest computer (at a girlfriend’s office) and sat down to type it all out. That was when I heard the news. A man had been shot and killed in broad daylight on Prechistenka in Moscow, near the Kremlin. A woman who was with him had also been shot.

A colleague had also spent half the night in a chat room persuading another anarchist journalist to go to Kazan Station the next day. But he was unable to persuade her, and she went to Stas Markelov’s press conference. Now everyone knows this journalist’s name, Anastasia Baburova.

But that was a personal digression.

Generally, of course, such crimes must not go unanswered. The answer is not to respond with deadly force. (None of us wants a civil war). The answer is the clearly expressed civic will to stop such crimes and prevent their repetition in the future. That is why there is a demonstration every year on January 19.

It is like our May first holiday, a holiday celebrated round the world in memory of murdered workers, workers who were murdered a long, long time ago, in 1886. But people still remember them.

May the memory of Stas and Nastya live forever!

Those who remember them know what to do. Today, January 19, we gather at Novopushkinsky Square in Moscow at 7 p.m, and then we march in demonstration down the boulevards to Kropotinskaya. And people will also be laying flowers at the murder site on Prechistenka. But there it is everyone for themselves, and the spirit of antifa for all.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Socrates Has Not Surrendered: The Plight of Political Prisoner Alexei Sutuga

Alexei Sutuga, December 10, 2015. Photo courtesy of Svyatoslav Khromenkov

PERSCECUTION
No medical treatment, no letters, no visits. A political prisoner’s life in a penal colony. Zoya Svetova and Alexei Glukhov investigated the conditions of antifascist Alexei Sutuga’s imprisonment
December 14, 2015
Open Russia

29-year-old Muscovite Alexei Sutuga is an antifascist activist known among antifa by the nickname Socrates. On September 30, 2014, the Zamoskorechye District Court in Moscow sentenced Sutuga to three years and one month in prison for disorderly conduct for his alleged involvement in a fight at a Sbarro restaurant in the city. Sutuga’s defenders believe the criminal case was revenge on the part of Center “E” officers who had already tried to put Sutuga behind bars for his alleged involvement in a fight at the Moscow nightclub Vozdukh, for which he had been amnestied.

The Memorial Human Rights Centre has declared Alexei Sutuga a political prisoner.

In March 2015, the antifascist was sent to Correctional Colony No. 14, a medium-security facility, to serve his sentence. He was soon put in solitary confinement, and two months later he was sentenced to a new type of punishment, a year’s imprisonment in a single-space cell. Now Sutuga is serving his sentence at Correctional Colony No. 2 in Angarsk, Irkutsk Region.

Olga Sutuga, Alexei’s mom, explained to Zoya Svetova how and why her son is being pressured in the colony.

Solitary confinement and single-space cells are forms of penitentiary repression. Is this improvisation on the part of local wardens or are there orders from above? Is there a plan to break your son?

It began in Moscow, when the FSB wanted Alexei to cooperate with them. They came to him while he was still in the remand prison and suggested he collaborate. They said he would serve his sentence in far from the best conditions, in a colony far from Moscow Region. That is what happened: he was sent to Siberia. And there, in the remand prison, he was again visited by two Center “E” officers who suggested he collaborate and promised that in exchange he would do his time in the Irkutsk Remand Prison and get parole. But he did not agree to these proposals.

What exactly do they want from him? To snitch on anarchists?

Apparently, yes, because he knows a lot of people, is a fairly authoritative person in that world, and has his own opinion. Not only anarchists but also other activists listened to him. He is a very inconvenient person for the secret services. He always spoke the truth, and they decided it was vital to break him and force him to cooperate with them.

How do you keep in touch with your son? He is not allowed visits, letters, and telephone calls. How do you find out what is happening with him in the penal colony?

Only through his lawyer. When his lawyer battles his ways through to see him, he finds out that Alexei has not been getting letters from his wife, from me or from his friends. On November 30 he was released from solitary confinement, where he had spent ten days. Now he is in a single-space cell in Correctional Colony No. 2 in Angarsk, Irkutsk Region. He is supposed to spend a year there—until May 2016.

Is he considered a repeat offender of prison rules?

Here are some of the violations he has been charged with: not making his bed, having his nametag torn from his clothing, and sleeping during the daytime while sitting on a stool. For all these things he was deemed a repeat offender. When in late May he was transferred for a year to the single-space cell, the warden of the single-space cell facility told him he would not be getting out of there, that he would be spending the rest of his sentence in the “jug,” that he would not be returning to the medium-security facility, although by the verdict of the court he should be serving his sentence in a medium-security penal colony.

Is Alexei in solitary?

No, there are four people in there.

How can we help him?

He has asked that people do not stop paying attention to the whole situation, because if they do not write and talk about it, the prison wardens will see they can do anything they like and will use even more repressive methods against him.

How long does he have till the end of his sentence?

One year and five months.

Do members of the Public Monitoring Commission (PNC) visit him?

Employees of the PNC come to see him every two or three months. They constantly file complaints about violations of his rights with the Federal Penitentiary Service. But it does not help: no one pays any mind to the complaints.

Those violations of the rules in the remand prison for which he has been punished, were they real or contrived?

It is impossible to comply with all the rules there one hundred percent. Maybe the nametag really was torn off his clothing. But Alexei definitely did not have a shiv, because when he was transferred from the remand prison to the penal colony, six people searched him, and the trip from the prison to the colony takes half an hour. [Angarsk is forty kilometers away from Irkutsk — Open Russia.] So it is completely unclear how he could have got hold of a shiv if he was in a paddy wagon with guards the entire half hour.

When is your next visit with him?

I was authorized to visit him in October but I was unable to go. I will go in late December. I wanted to get to see him during the January holidays. But I am not sure it will work out. When the lawyer went to see the head warden of the colony and find out whether I might be able to get this visit, the warden replied there would be no visits due to the fact that Sutuga was socially dangerous.

Is that even legal?

No, of course not. By law I have the right to visit him. I wrote to the head warden of the colony asking him to give me a visit. If he does not respond to me within fifteen days, then we will file another complaint. Unfortunately, though, complaints have no impact. We write to the Federal Penitentiary Service, the prosecutor’s office, and the court.

How does Alexei spend his time? Is it true he has no books and is unable to get periodicals?

The prison does not accept books sent to him, and it also does not give him the periodicals we subscribed to for him. I wrote to the warden and asked what happened to the periodicals that were sent by mail in my son’s name to the penal colony. After all, we had paid money for the subscriptions. It smacks of petty theft.

What is his mood?

When attorney Svetlana Sidorkina went to see him in October, she said that Alexei was very depressed, sick, and his knees were swollen and painful. He was diagnosed with acute arthritis and tossed out of the infirmary back into the cell. He receives no medical treatment or medical examinations. Sidorkina brought him letters from me and from his friends. That supported him. The local lawyer, who visited him the other day, says that Alexei’s mood has improved. Generally, he is a very active person, and if he has no opportunity to do anything he gets depressed. But now, apparently, he has realized we are fighting for him, his friends wrote that he has not been forgotten, and so his mood has been normal and he is holding up. He will turn thirty on January 24. It’s a big birthday.

How Alexei Sutuga Was Made a Repeat Offender

After his trial in Moscow, Alexei was sent to the Irkutsk Remand Prison. When the prison staff confiscated his personal belongings and letters, Sutuga protested by declaring a hunger strike and demanding to be transferred to a penal colony. Three days later, Sutuga was transferred to Correctional Colony No. 14 in the city of Angarsk, Irkutsk Region.

However, as soon as Alexei arrived at the colony, a shiv was found on him. Sidorkina believes prison colony staff planted the shiv on him.

Before his transfer from the remand prison, Sutuga was undressed completely, all his personal belongings were examined, and the procedure was filmed on a video recorder. No forbidden items were found. The paddy wagon in which he was transported in the company of three guards was also inspected.

At the penal colony, Sutuga was immediately taken to the search room, where in the presence of ten colony staff he was again forced to strip and put all his things on a table. As Sutuga was undressing and simultaneously replying to the questions of penal colony staff, one of them suddenly discovered a sharpened metal object in Sutuga’s cap. Sutuga claimed he had nothing to do with the shiv.

Sutuga was placed in solitary confinement for seven days.

Over the next month, Sutuga received three more disciplinary reprimands: for not wearing a badge, for not reporting to the on-duty guard, and for not cleaning his room.

Due to these clearly fabricated violations, Sutuga was declared a repeat offender of prison rules and was first transferred to a high-security cell, then to a single-space cell.

What Is a Single-Space Cell?

Sutuga is now imprisoned in a single-space cell [edinoye pomeshchenie kamernogo tipa or EPKT] at Correctional Colony No. 2 in Irkutsk Region.

Single-space cells were instituted in penal colonies after July 1997. Previous to this, each penal colony had contained an “internal prison”—a cell-like space [pomeshchenie kamernogo tipa or PKT]. Now single-space cells have been devised that are no longer managed by the particular correctional facility, but by the regional office of the Federal Penitentiary Service. Prisoners placed in single-space cells are often in the process of transfer to another city and sometimes another region. But Alexei Sutuga has been left in the very same city, in Angarsk.

Members of the Irkutsk Public Monitoring Commission reported what they saw at Correctional Colony No. 2 in June 2015.

“There were heaps of construction debris in the yard in front of the entrance to the space. The cells were dimly lit, there was no ventilation, and the radio was not working. The tables were ninety by fifty centimeters, and there were benches ninety by twenty centimeter benches on each side. They were in the middle of the room, so it was problematic for four people to fit in the room at the same time. There was also very little space to move around. The drinking water was poured from the tap into tanks in the rooms.”

Top brass at the Irkutsk Regional Office of the Federal Penitentiary Service reacted to the remarks, but as of October 2015 the construction debris had not been removed. In conclusion, the PMC wrote:

“Slag mixed with ash that is loosened up every day is scattered near the entrance to the building and around the entire perimeter of the room. It is not only that the slag exudes harmful substances (sulfates, phenol, etc.) but also that the dust from the slag and ash gets into the air and from there, through the windows, into the cells and exercise yards, harming the health both of convicts and staff.”

Alexei Sutuga Does Not Receive Medical Treatment in Prison

The antifascist has several ailments that require treatment.

“In October, the public monitors established that Alexei was not being given packages with medicaments: they were being sent back. Staff at the facility explained that they do not let packages through if the permitted number of them is exceeded. And yet they do not look inside to determine whether they contain medicaments or not, but just send them back. They say the sender has to personally come to the facility and submit the package through the infirmary,” recounts Irkutsk human rights defender Svyatoslav Khromenkov.

In the presence of members of the PMC, Sutuga was prescribed an x-ray. At the time of the visit Sutuga was in the facility’s medical solitary confinement cell with a foot injury. According to him, he had an old sports injury, which had flared up after he had struck his foot against a nightstand. Sutuga also complained about lung problems: he said he was having trouble breathing. He believed he had pneumonia.

Lawyer Denis Ivanets says the trauma specialist in the infirmary at Correctional Colony No. 6 diagnosed Sutuga with first- and second-degree severe arthritis in both knee joints. This is a chronic illness. Civilian trauma specialists told the lawyer that, given such a diagnosis, medication was insufficient. Sutuga would also need physiotherapy, including massage, as well as special orthopedic aids.

On December 10, 2015, the public monitors once again visited the antifascist. He said he had been given the package of medicaments that had been brought to the prison personally by his comrades. Sutuga was very happy that he had finally got the pills. According to Sutuga, a doctor, who had told him there was no need for an immediate operation, had examined him and it could wait until his release.

Lawyers and Public Monitors Are Often Not Allowed to See Alexei Sutuga

During the course of the calendar week (five working days) beginning November 25, 2015, lawyer Denis Ivanets and human rights defenders constantly attempted to visit the political prisoner.

Every time the visitors appeared at the headquarters of Correctional Colony No. 2, the Federal Penitentiary Service officers found a pretext to turn them away. Either the warden of the facility, who had to sign the lawyer’s request to visit the convict, was not there (although, as later transpired, he had been in his office having an intercom meeting with the head office), or the warden of the single-room cell facility was gone all day, and he was allegedly the only staff member who could escort the lawyer to the premises behind the barbed wire (although the warden of Correctional Colony No. 2 had signed off on the paperwork for visiting the convict).

Now members of the Irkutsk PMC are appealing in court Correctional Colony No. 2’s ban on holding a personal conversation with Alexei Sutuga under conditions of acoustic isolation from penal colony staff. The law “On Public Monitoring” directly stipulates this right.

Letters and Newspapers Are Not Delivered to Sutuga

According to lawyer Denis Ivanets, “Alexei’s mom says her son does not reply to letters from his spouse, parents, and friends. When I talked to him about it, it turned out that more than two thirds of the letters had simply not got to him! These letters had been sent to Alexei over a month ago.”

According to Article 91.2 of the Russian Federal Correctional Code, letters, postcards, and telegrams sent and received by convicts are censored by the wardens of the correctional facility, after which they must be given to the convicts.

In addition, Sutuga’s relatives took out subscriptions to several newspapers and magazines (Kommersant, Novaya Gazeta, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, GEO, Vokrug sveta), but Sutuga had not been receiving them. Staff in the warden’s office at Correctional Colony No. 2 could not give the lawyer an intelligible answer as to why this had been happening. According to the Article 95.1 of the Russian Federal Correctional Code, convicts are permitted to receive stationery supplies in parcels and packages, purchase literature through retail distributors, and subscribe to newspapers and magazines without limitation at their own expense.

Socrates Has Not Surrendered

Alexei Sutuga was placed in solitary confinement from November 20 to November 30 for his latest “rules violation.” As his lawyers report, the number of reprimands grows with each passing month, and this will make it impossible for him to be paroled.

On December 10, 2015, the members of the PMC were able to chat with Sutuga, who sent greetings to everyone, especially his loved ones, his mom, wife, and child. Sutuga asked for new photographs of them, as well as books on psychology, sociology, and political science.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Remembering Timur Kacharava Ten Years Later

Remembering Timur Kacharava Ten Years Later
David Frenkel
Special to the Russian Reader
November 17, 2015

On the evening of November 13, 2015, more than fifty people gathered near the Bukvoyed bookstore on Ligovsky Prospect in the Vosstaniya Square area of downtown Petersburg to mourn anti-fascist and hardcore punk musician Timur Kacharava, who was murdered at the spot ten years earlier by Russian neo-Nazis.

Mourners gathered at the site of Kacharava's murder on Ligovsky Prospect — Mourners gathered at the site of Kacharava’s murder on Ligovsky Prospect

In 2005, Kacharava and a friend were attacked by a group of young men after participating in a Food Not Bombs action in another part of the downtown. Kacharava was stabbed in the neck five times and died at the scene.

Kacharava’s murder alarmed certain segments of Russian society. Over three thousand students at Saint Petersburg State University, where Kacharava had been majoring in philosophy at the time of his slaying, petitioned President Putin to find and punish the murderers.

In December 2005, police arrested seven suspects who eventually confessed to the crime. In 2007, Alexander Shabalin was sentenced to twelve years in prison on charges of murder and incitement to ethnic or racial hatred. The other suspects were charged with inciting social hatred and sentenced to two or three years in prison. (Three of them were released on parole).

Since 2005, people have come to the crime scene every year on November 13 with flowers, candles, and pictures of Timur.

This year, police did not interfere with the mourners, although they asked them to remove pictures from the parapet and not to shout out any slogans.

Photographs by and courtesy of David Frenkel

Alexei Polikhovich: “I Had Begun to Feel I Was Born in Prison”

“I had begun to feel I was born in prison and just had been released for a short time”
Alexei Polikhovich talks about spending three years behind bars for the right to think freely
Ekaterina Fomina
November 5, 2015
Novaya Gazeta

Alexei Polikhovich after his release from prison. Photo: Ekaterina Fomina/*Novaya Gazeta*

Alexei Polikhovich, one of the few defendants in the Bolotnaya Square case who had actually been politically active before the ill-fated protest rally of May 6, 2012, has been released from prison. (We now understand this was the reason people were jailed: on suspicion of having vigorous civic stances.) Before Bolotnaya Square, Polikhovich, for example, had defended the Tsagovsky Forest and been involved in the antifascist movement. Some of those now spending their fourth year in prison after being convicted in the case had ended up on Bolotnaya Square by accident, but Polikhovich had chosen this way of life, a life of open struggle, consciously. It is a dangerous way of life to lead in our country, even if the way you fight your cause is ten times within the law. But Polikhovich consciously chose this way of thinking, and marched to Bolotnaya Square in the antifascist column.

However, on Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012, Polikhovich caught hell just as randomly as other protesters. Police pulled them from the crowd in the heat of the moment without looking .

Polikhovich insisted on his innocence at his court hearings. He knew he was being tried for his convictions.

Three years in prison were supposed to reform what? Polikhovich’s beliefs? He remained, however, true to his beliefs throughout his imprisonment. If reform meant betraying them, then Polikhovich has not been reformed, as he himself says. But he still learned something.

After his release, Polikhovich talked about the lessons he learned in prison.

__________

I have not seen people in color for three years. I have forgotten what it was like to have women and children around. Simple things seem new right now. After being in the penal colony, I think Moscow is quite beautiful.

When I got to Petrovka [38, Moscow police HQ], I did not understand how serious things were. I took everything as an excursion, a rough excursion, but an excursion nonetheless.

The wording “actively involved in destructive youth organizations” was included in my arrest sheet. The Center “E” officers [“anti-extremist” police] did not have a clear opinion about me, whether I was a rightist or leftist. What group should they assign me to? What mattered was that it should sound terrible.

The police investigators found us interesting. They had been used to dealing with Islamists and neo-Nazis. But leftists, social democrats, and liberals, everyone who had been arrested on trumped-up political charges, were something unfamiliar to them. The investigators enjoyed chatting with us. I remember one such conversation. A crowd of investigators was standing before me, and I was telling them why I was in jail. I explained I had not wanted to hit anyone, that had not been the objective. Well, I expressed it simply.

They immediately tensed.

“What was the objective? Who set the objective?” they asked. They think crudely.

Other inmates knew about our case, and I never encountered flagrantly negative attitudes towards us in this connection. On the contrary, sometimes they would see articles about us and come running with the newspaper: “Oh, it’s about our rock star.” I also encountered not very well-educated people who thought that since I had been jailed for a protest rally that meant I was a nationalist. Several times, I quite seriously cussed people out for saying this: it offended me.

I had expected remand prison would involve total isolation, but it was like a rural village in there: everyone was connected with everyone else. It was its own society. In Butyrka remand prison, they explained to me how to “spur the horses.” In prison, “the horses” is the rope that connects cells and works like an intercom. Books were soaked with narcotics and passed on to those who needed them. Because of this, by the way, the flow of regular books into the prison slowed down. According to the internal code of inmates, formal channels for getting groceries and cigarettes into the prison should not be compromised.

The penal colony, where you are not locked up in eight square meters, seems like the regular world compared to the remand prison. You can see the sky. You can spot newcomers to the colony immediately: we all arrived looking pale. We had almost turned into mushrooms after two years of hearings and trials. I drank up the sunshine with my skin. I got a dark tan right away.

At one point, I even thought I had been born in prison. It was just that I had been let out. I had quickly found myself friends, a wife, and parents. I had screwed up somehow and gone back to prison.

Alexei Polikhovich and his parents. Photo from family archive

In the colony, you can learn to be a tailor, a lathe operator, an electrician or an auto mechanic. The phrase “Labor liberates” is written on the gates of the manufacturing zone. I studied sewing for six months, then I studied to be a lathe operator while also working as a sewing machine operator. Convicts sew sheets, pillowcases, suits, blankets, and bags. In anticipation of my release, I sewed a rucksack for myself and Tanya, my wife. I had also sent her an apron and some bags.

In prison, people have no way of filtering incoming information. They mainly read bad newspapers. They also would take out the [philosophical and] literary journal Logos, which has no pictures, have a gander at it and be amazed. If you put convicts on a diet of [the national newspapers] Novaya Gazeta, Vedomosti and even Moskovsky Komsomolets for a month, they would catch on to something. But they would watch TV constantly, then would come to me and dump on me about how bad things were in Ukraine and what a trooper Putin was. They particularly liked all the trash on REN TV about reptilians and conspiracy theories.

Few people read good books in prison. They mainly read fluffy stuff, detective novels and bad sci-fi. Books from the outside are rarely “reeled in.” Falanster bookstore and I organized a book fair of sorts: beginning with my time in the remand prison, they sent me an endless stream of books. They sent so many books I would have had to serve another sentence just to finish reading them! When I was released, I took only a single rucksack with me, containing only books and letters. When you leave prison, you have to leave as much behind as possible. Not everyone in there has two pairs of warm socks. I took the books I was certain would interest no one: William Zinsser’s On Writing Well and [Ditmar] Rosenthal’s Russian language textbook. I thought I should finally learn Russian properly, so I would not be ashamed to print what I wrote. I also brought out an anthology of lectures from the Priamukhino Readings.

These three years have happened. I cannot cut them off or cross them out. I probably would not have wanted to spend them in prison, but I spent them there. This foundation, this experience on which I now stand, I cannot push it out from under my own feet. Not because I would fall, but because I just cannot do it physically. It is difficult. It is a rock.

Am I angry at anyone? I did not suffer catastrophically over these three years. I can be angry at the system on behalf of my loved ones. They certainly did not deserve it and are not guilty of anything.

I probably have become angrier over the last three years. And a little weary.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Gabriel Levy for the suggestion

Petersburg Activists Rally in Support of Saratov Antifascist Sergei Vilkov

Petersburg Activists Rally in Support of Saratov Antifascist Sergei Vilkov
David Frenkel
Special to The Russian Reader
June 1, 2015

On Saturday, May 30, activists from the Russian Socialist Movement (RSD) organized a theatrical protest rally, entitled “#I Am Sergei Vilkov, or Pinning Labels,” on the Field of Mars in central Petersburg.

Socialist activists rallying in support of Saratov journalist Sergei Vilkov in Petersburg, May 30, 2015. The placard on the far right reads, “Antifascism is not a crime, journalism is not extremism. I am Sergei Vilkov.”

The activists demanded an end to the persecution of Sergei Vilkov, an independent journalist and antifascist in Saratov, who was physically assaulted in January of this year by two unknown assailants and has been accused by various local authorities of “extremism.” In one particular instance in April of this year, Vilkov was fined 1,000 rubles by a Saratov court for having posted, in November 2011, a caricature on his personal page on the VKontakte social network that fused the logo of the ruling United Russia party and a swastika.

Vilkov has blamed his troubles on Saratov businessman and Saratov Regional Duma deputy Sergei Kurikhin. Earlier, Vilkov had published articles in the local monthly news magazine Obshchestvennoe Mnenie (Public Opinion), exposing Kurikhin’s dubious political and business dealings.

Activists at the rally on the Field of Mars held placards demanding prosecution for the persons who, allegedly, assaulted Vilkov in January and decrying censorship.

Symbolizing the alliance between the authorities and business, two activists were dressed as a judge and a “new Russian,” who wore a crimson jacket, popularly regarded as typical attire for gangster businessmen during the “wild nineties” in Russia.

“New Russian” and “Judge” at Saturday’s protest rally

The “judge” and the “new Russian” brought with them a criminal case file full of labels, such as “foreign agent,” “atheist,” “fifth columnist, “tolerast” (an insulting slang term applied to people regarded as having excessively politically correct values), “forbidden by censorship,” and “offends religious sensitivities.” These labels and epithets are typically applied to critics and opponents of the current Russian authorities.

The two men hung and pinned these labels to the other activists who were present in order to “make them feel like Sergei Vilkov.”

“Judge” labels activist a “tolerast” at Saturday’s rally.

The socialist activists are convinced that Vilkov’s case is not an anomaly. Travesties of justice in the courts, political crackdowns against opposition activists, censorship, corruption, and the fusion of political authority and business are rather typical of Russia, they argue.

All photographs by and courtesy of David Frenkel

Alexei Gaskarov: “If the Way to Freedom in This Country Runs through Prison, We Are Ready to Go”

The verdicts on the second group of defendants in the Bolotnaya Square case will be announced in Zamoskvoretsky Court in Moscow on August 18. The prosecutor asked the court to sentence Alexander Margolin and Alexei Gaskarov to four years in prison; Ilya Gushchin, to three years and three months in prison; and Elena Kokhtareva, to three years and three months suspended, with four years of probation. All four defendants have been accused under Article 212 Part 2 (involvement in rioting) and Article 318 Part 1 (use of non-threatening violence against a public official) of the Russian Federal Criminal Code.

On August 4, 28-year-old antifascist Alexei Gaskarov made his closing statement in court. This is the complete text of his speech.

Alexei Gaskarov

The so-called Bolotnaya Square case has been symbolic in the sense that through it the public sees how the authorities interact with the opposition, with those people whose viewpoint differs from the general line.

The first thing I wanted to talk about is something that was not addressed in the trial, but which I think is important: why on May 6, [2012,] despite everything, so many people decided to be involved in certain events, rather than simply stand another two or three hours in queues, and ultimately did not permit themselves to be beaten with impunity.

The May 6 demonstration was the seventh major event staged by the opposition [during the 2011–2012 fair elections protest movement]. Whereas earlier, before December 2011, a few thousand people attended protest rallies I had witnessed, when you-know-who said the idea of rotating governments was not the best thing for Russia, the core group of protesters increased significantly. And these people did not go organize riots, but went to observe elections in order to understand and record the way the political processes that occur in our country are legitimated.

Elena Kohtareva

Everything fell into place on December 4[, 2011, when parliamentary elections were held in Russia]. Despite the fact that the institution of elections had been destroyed much earlier, the large group of people who went to the polls as observers saw how the legitimacy of the current government was shaped. I myself was an observer at those elections, and what we saw was quite straightforward. Indeed, it is a strange situation when you are trying to find at least one person among your acquaintances who would say they voted for United Russia. In fact, such people did not exist: there was no mass support for the government. When they tried to counter the Bolotnaya Square protests with an event on Poklonnaya Hill in support of the current government, they could not gather more than a thousand people.

This subject itself was extremely important, but unfortunately it was not sufficiently popular with the authorities. Fair elections are still the only legal way of changing the political system, and once it has been changed, you can solve social and economic problems. A huge number of people took to the streets. There was almost no reaction on the part of the authorities. The protests were peaceful, the protesters were numerous, and it was obvious the demands they made and the problems they talked about were real, but instead we saw only a reluctance to engage in dialogue and, at some point, flagrant mockery.

A lot of people now do not like what thuggish characters in Ukraine are calling people from Southeast Ukraine. But here in Russia the same thing happened: when people came out on Bolotnaya Square, the country’s president called them Bandar-log and made many other unflattering comparisons. We were told we amounted to only one percent, that only one hundred thousand people in a city of ten million came out to protest, that it meant nothing at all. But later, when they actually allowed a fair poll, as happened during the [September 2013] mayoral election in Moscow, it turned out it was not one percent, but forty percent, a significant segment of society. And I would like to say that we should be glad on the whole that the events on Bolotnaya Square happened as they did.

In all developed democratic countries, protest rallies, the opportunity to express points of view that differ from that of the authorities, generate political competition, which enables countries to find the best way of developing. By the way, certain problems in the Russian economy began precisely in the third quarter of 2012, because it is impossible to build a stable economic and social system when you completely demotivate and exclude such an essential part of society. And it was obvious that this part of society was essential.

The first signal that comes from our case: does the right to protest, which exists in all developed countries, exist at all in Russia? As we see now, Russia has been deprived of this right.

And the second signal, which it is impossible to ignore: has the rule of law survived in Russia? Individuals must be protected from the actions of the authorities not only by a system of checks and balances but also by the possibility of appealing directly to the law in the way in which it is worded. I think this can be seen in our case. There is Article 212 of the Criminal Code: it may be poorly worded, but it is worded the way it is. And it is wrong, I think, to raise such obvious questions at the trial stage, because the law is worded quite clearly. We read a lot of commentaries to the Criminal Code and nowhere did we find that the corpus delicti of “rioting” could be defined alternatively, based on the evidence listed in the charges. Nevertheless, this has been consistently ignored. Even in those decisions entered into the case file, this subject was roundly rejected.

In and of itself, the rule of law is the most important of the institutions that protect the rights of individuals from the state. And, of course, we cannot ignore the selective application of the law to citizens. I realize that Russian law is not based on precedent, but it is impossible not to notice that if, for example, you are a nationalist, block roads, and set fire to shops, but refrain from speaking out against the actions of the authorities, you are only guilty of disorderly conduct. If you go to protest rallies where people shout, “Putin is a thief!” you are, accordingly, liable to serious criminal charges.

Ilya Gushchin

There is one last point following from our case to which I would also like to draw attention. I think a signal is being sent: if you are loyal to the authorities, you will enjoy the most favorable conditions; if you are disloyal, you will go to jail. This concerns the evaluation of the actions of demonstrators and the actions of police. It is too obvious that not all the police behaved as they should have behaved. I understand this was not specifically the matter in dispute in our case, but not a single criminal case has been opened against the police. Practically speaking, they have tried to turn the police into a caste of untouchables as part of our case. When there was a public debate on the Bolotnaya Square case, the same phrase always came up: “You cannot hit police.” Even in our group of thirty people charged in the Bolotnaya Square case, only three people actually struck police officers. And yet the whole complexity of this situation was primitivized through a single phrase: “You cannot hit police.”

Alexander Margolin

But it seems to me this way of posing the question dismisses and completely destroys any criticism of the government. We cannot forget that many terrible things have happened in our country (for example, during the Great Terror [under Stalin in 1937-38]), that people in uniform committed all these crimes, and everything they did was legal for all intents and purposes. But now they tell us there should be no critical rethinking of this situation, that it is necessary to stupidly obey the thesis that was endlessly repeated during discussion of our case.

The main thing I would like say, your honor, is that I really would not want it to happen that, after our trial, speaking of the law as an expression of the principle of justice became a sign of bad taste. I would hope that our trial did not pursue any other political objectives that have been imposed on it, that have been set for it—and all that is in the case files—but that we be judged for the things we really did. But if, in this country, the way to freedom runs through prison, we are ready to go. That is all.

Originally published, in Russian, at Grani.ru. Photos courtesy of Bolotnoedelo.info.

Afterword (copied from People and Nature‘s first publication of this translation)

On July 24, two other defendants in the Bolotnaya Square case, the left-wing activists Sergei Udaltsov and Leonid Razvozzhayev, were each sentenced to four and a half years in prison on charges arising from the May 6 demonstration. Supporters of Alexei Gaskarov and the other three defendants being sentenced this month fear similarly harsh penalties on August 18.

Solidarity makes a difference in such cases. While the Russian government claims to be championing “antifascism” in Ukraine, it is sending antifascists and other oppositionists in Russia to jail for long periods. The more support for these activists from antifascists internationally, the better.

Please copy and republish this article; demonstrate or protest however you can; write to the Russian embassy; and look on the Free Alexei Gaskarov site and the May 6 Committee site.

Update. On August 18, Alexei Gaskarov and Alexander Margolin were sentenced to three and half years in prison; Ilya Gushchin, to two and a half years; and Elena Kokhtareva, to a suspended sentence of three years and three months including three years’ probation.