A Russian Diary (42 page)

SERGEY SHIMOVOLOS
(human rights campaigner from Nizhny Novgorod): “The wearing of masks by OMON agents during the ‘cleansing’ makes it impossible to bring them to justice. Only those who were not wearing masks have been accused in the Blagoveshchensk case. How do we proceed?”

GERASIMOV
: “ It is impossible to do without masks completely; they are essential when guarding particularly dangerous criminals and when catching armed bandits where a guerrilla war is being waged. Certainly the use of masks should be regulated, which is not the case at present. For the time being, the OMON agents in Bashkiria have escaped punishment. The position of the procurator general's office is that, where masks are used, agents must wear numbered badges; after Blagoveshchensk, it transpired that the Bashkiria militia did not have a single badge, and the same is true of many other regions.”

IRINA VERSHININA
(human rights ombudsman for Kaliningrad Province): “Are you going to review the legal situation concerning the wearing of masks? There are constant scandals, but nothing is done about it.”

(There was no reply to this at all.)

SERGEY KOVALYOV
: “We are not just talking about the ten officers accused in connection with Blagoveshchensk, nor even only about the Interior
Ministry of Bashkiria. That is not the point—the situation is much worse. Where did these filtration points come from? From Chechnya. This sort of thing has been going on there for more than ten years. They have been suffering from filtration points and a harsh regime under a state of emergency even though no state of emergency was ever formally declared. This simply creates conditions for brutality. We are speaking about individuals of very high rank. Indeed, we have to ask whether this is not state policy. I fear it is.”

*

(At subsequent meetings of the commission those whom Lukin referred to as “outsiders” were banned. These included victims of the Blagoveshchensk “cleansing,” and an apparently unwelcome number of human rights campaigners and journalists. At the next meeting an act of collective suicide by prisoners in the penal colony in Lgov was under discussion, where, simultaneously, around a thousand prisoners slit their veins in protest at the tortures to which the guards were subjecting them, but the discussion was restricted to “insiders.” Insiders, to Russia's official champion of human rights, are senior officials of the Ministry of Justice, which runs the prisons and penal colonies of Russia.)

June 29

In Dagestan, Geidar Jemal has been arrested. He is the chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia, one of the most authoritative Islamic philosophers of the present day. He lives in Moscow. Jemal went to Makhachkala at the invitation of the Religious Board of Muslims of Dagestan, an entirely official institution. He was arrested by agents of the Makhachkala Directorate of the FSB, along with another twelve people who had come to discuss how to maintain peace in the republic, where a war is brewing.

This arrest of unarmed individuals was carried out in a highly aggressive manner by armed agents. Jemal was insulted and beaten up, then taken to the Dagestan center for the struggle against terrorism. Subsequently, all except Abbas Kebedov were released, but this is unbelievable
behavior. Jemal is too serious a figure in the Islamic world to be treated like this.

The officially stated reason was suspicion of sympathy for Wah-habism, with which Jemal is totally unconnected. What nowadays we call Wahhabism is in fact the cult of Basaev.

June 30

In the Nikulin District Court, Moscow, the trial of the National Bolsheviks who occupied an office in the presidential administration building on December 14, 2004, has begun. They were led into the courtroom fettered to each other like slaves, looking like something from a textbook about the ancient world.

The trial is without precedent. In the first place, there are thirty-nine accused, and trying to find a sufficiently large courtroom with cages to hold them all is well nigh impossible. Cages are an invariable feature of trials in Russia now. In the second place, the state authorities are going out of their way to emphasize that the trial is political.

At first they were accused of “violent seizure of power in the Russian Federation” (Article 278 of the Criminal Code). The charge was subsequently reduced to “organizing mass disorder” (Article 212, Part 2), which carries a term of three to eight years’ imprisonment. The case is being handled specially by the procurator general of Russia, Vladimir Ustinov, and the investigation was conducted by a team from the Moscow procurator's office (whose leader, Yevgeny Alimov, was to be dismissed in July in connection with a different, corrupt investigation). For over six months thirty-nine of the forty National Bolsheviks (fifteen-year-old Ivan Petrov from Tver was released) have been held in detention cells awaiting trial.

By midday, when the hearing was due to begin, the court building on Michurin Prospekt was surrounded by concentric security cordons. There were OMON agents everywhere, militia arriving, dogs, people in camouflage fatigues and plainclothes agents at every turn. They were openly recording on video those who had gathered, and even looking
over the shoulders of journalists to read what they were noting down. There were no liberties here, as there had been at Khodorkovsky's trial. The National Bolsheviks were not brought to court in elegant off-roaders with tinted glass, and parents had no opportunity of seeing how their children were looking.

The accused were transported in windowless prison vans, which were immediately driven into a basement. They were brought up internal staircases to the second floor, which today was completely closed to anybody not actively involved in the trial. To round off these extraordinary measures, militiamen were posted every 10 yards in the outer cordons, as if Putin was expected to show. The only person who did turn up was Eduard Limonov, the National Bolshevik leader, although neither he nor the parents were allowed into, or even anywhere near, the building.

“We sympathize, but this is what the judge has decided,” the colonel in charge of the cordon explains amicably. The judge is Alexey Shikha-nov, who has been brought over from the Tver district court. The hearings should have taken place there, where the alleged offense occurred, but the courtroom isn't big enough.

It has to be said that putting as yet unconvicted people in chains and cages seems something of an overreaction; not even terrorists and serial rapists are brought to court in chains. As we can see, those whom the state authorities really fear today are dissidents.

This first day, with the public excluded, the defense tries to have the young defendants released on bail, if only the three boys who are minors and the nine girls. This hardly seems radical, given that the damage they are said to have caused (a torn sofa, a broken safe and a door) is minuscule. Even if they add holding an unsanctioned meeting, that is an administrative offense, not a crime.

Judge Shikhanov, however, emphasizes how very serious this all is and what grave concern it gives rise to. He will announce his decision on whether to continue to hold them in jail at 7:00 p.m., after everybody attending other cases has left the court, in case those National Bolsheviks still at liberty cause a disturbance. That is a pretty clear hint that the ruling will be negative.

The judge need not have been so anxious about causing a riot. By
evening, with the rain sheeting down, only the most dogged supporters remain; the quiet, sad mothers and fathers huddled under their umbrellas whose only weapons are their tears. The party comrades have gone for tea and Limonov too is absent. It is unbecoming for leaders to stand about in the rain. The decision is announced: keep them in jail.

All the trappings of this trial show us how scared the authorities are of committed political opponents who believe in standing up to Putin.

They need another show trial. First there was Yukos, now they are trying to crush the dissidents, which is the role ascribed to the National Bolsheviks today. Their slogans are “Stop the war in Chechnya!,” “Down with this antisocial government!,” “Putin out!” What is worse, they don't set about other people in gateways: they read books and think thoughts. What makes their offense all the more heinous is that the authorities haven't been able to break them, even though they have subjected them to all the disgusting methods that our security agencies excel at in places of detention. The authorities have got nowhere: none have appealed for clemency, none have pleaded guilty.

Garry Kasparov is now the leader of a United Democratic Front that, so far, unfortunately, hasn't managed to unite many democrats other than the few like-minded souls who used to work for or support the Union of Right Forces. He continues his travels through the south of Russia. Everywhere Kasparov and his team are refused accommodation in hotels, cannot get meals in restaurants, and are denied rooms in which to hold their meetings. The owners refer to a ban—naturally only verbal—by the authorities of the southern federal district. “You will go back to Moscow, but we have to stay here. They are likely just to shut our hotel and restaurant down if we agree to accept you.”

Why is Kasparov so alarming? He has only talked to people, sown seeds of doubt about the “good Putin” in the minds of some. That is all he has done. His persecution is the doing of the “good” Dmitry Kozak, Putin's political representative in the south of Russia, a supposed democrat. Many, even in the democratic ranks, see Kozak as the best hope for democracy after Putin, though he looks good only because of a total lack of alternatives. Most in the government are sluggish and cowardly. People felt sorry for him when he was appointed the presidential representative
in the south, which was seen as a dead-end job, but Kozak showed that he was no coward. He was prepared to come out and talk to people about their discontents. He helped them let off steam.

Gradually, as he moved from one act of civil disobedience to another through the towns of the south, Kozak started gaining popularity in other parts of Russia. His real political complexion, however, is to be seen in this petty persecution of Kasparov. He is completely on Putin's side.

July 1

In Makhachkala, Dagestan, ten people were killed on the spot and two more died in hospital when almost sixty conscripts from 102 Brigade of the Interior Ministry's special operations unit were blown up outside a bathhouse they attended on Fridays. The homemade mine had an explosive power equivalent to 15 pounds of TNT. This is the sixth terrorist act in Dagestan in the past month.

July 6

In Moscow, Russia's Heroes have gone on hunger strike. This is unheard-of for a group traditionally considered the mainstay of whichever regime currently occupies the Kremlin. They should be heroes for the leaders of the state, but something has gone wrong.

Five Heroes, representing 204 Heroes of Russia, of the Soviet Union, and of Socialist Labor, have decided they have no other way of helping to improve relations between the Russian populace and the state authorities than to subject themselves to public self-mortification. They are conducting the hunger strike in a former research institute on Smolny Street on the outskirts of Moscow.

Each hunger striker represents a group of Heroes: one, those twice awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union; another, the cosmonauts of Star City; a third, the Heroes of Socialist Labor and full Cavaliers of the Order of Glorious Labor; a fourth, those who are both Heroes of the Soviet Union and of the Russian Federation; and so on.

The Heroes have lost patience. On June 13 the Duma adopted at the
first reading new antibenefit amendments, this time relating to the Heroes. The amendments propose a reduction not of income, but of tokens of respect from the state toward those who have served it exceptionally; for example, Heroes will not henceforth be buried with honors: no guard of honor from the Military Commissariat, no farewell volley, unless their estate pays for it.

This is bureaucratic insanity of the highest order. The Heroes are incensed, having always supposed that the state had an interest in honoring them. In April, while these amendments were meandering through the machinery of government, the Heroes wrote to Putin, Fradkov, and Gryzlov. Two hundred and four of them asked the authorities to meet their representatives, to hear them out, and understand that they felt these amendments were humiliating and unacceptable.

There was no reaction whatsoever. No glimmer of understanding. The bureaucrats of the presidential administration, Duma, and government spat in their faces. The Heroes were then struck by the thought that if this was the response they themselves got, how would anybody else in the country fare? They decided to go on hunger strike in order “to draw attention to the problem of dialogue between the state authorities and society.”

“We consider it time to start a protest moment, and to be the ‘sparks that light a flame,’ ” Valerii Burkov says. “So that civil society should follow our lead and a law be passed ensuring that the voice of citizens is heard when the state institutions are drafting laws. Our hunger strike is intended to provoke a broad public debate about how political decisions are made, about a citizen's right to his own point of view and about how the state should be governed. Otherwise the Russian Constitution is just another idealistic Declaration of Human Rights. Where is the intelligentsia? Where are the writers? The members of the presidential council? Let us hear what they have to say on the issues that have prompted our action.”

RUSSIA AFTER UKRAINE, BY WAY OF KIRGHIZIA