‘Don’t stress, I’m doing fine,’ Zhenya Berkovich writes her supporters from pre-trial detention

Theater director Zhenya Berkovich, who was arrested in connection with a case on “justifying terrorism” arising from her production of the play Finist the Bright Falcon, has written a letter from pre-trial detention.

Ekaterina Khorikova, a television host, producer, and the founder of the youth website w-o-s.ru, posted Berkovich’s letter on Facebook. Berkovich thanks her supporters and asks:

1. Don’t make into a Joan of Arc! I’m just a girl, I want to go home and have prosecco and a big steak. Not to be a symbol!
2. Don’t fight amongst yourselves, at least not in my name, and no eating each other (just drinking)! Let’s all be for kittens and not against one another.
3. Don’t stress. I’m doing fine. I’m happy, alive, and healthy. My family is okay! The cats are fed!
4. Katya Margolis [a Russian artist, essayist, and translator currently living abroad, who sparked heated debate by criticizing Berkovich on Facebook] has nothing to do with this. Honestly. I swear on my day and night creams, which I didn’t even have a chance to open.
5. I’m so happy for all your letters, and forgive me if I don’t manage to answer them!

In another letter, this one addressed to her mother, Elena Mikhailovna Efros, Berkovich writes that the only time she cried was when the court read out the list of people willing to sponsor her. “I didn’t think that such support actually existed,” Berkovich said.

“I won’t describe daily life in pre-trial detention, you already know about it. It’s really not bad, except it’s really cold and we’re out of cigarettes,” writes Berkovich, adding that she hasn’t been allowed out for exercise yet. It’s not clear when the letter was written. Berkovich was arrested on May 5.