‘Women don’t get a life sentence’

Two Moscow theater artists, charged with ‘justifying terrorism’ for producing a documentary play, describe learning to cope with the absurdity of Russia’s justice system

On September 6, a Moscow court remanded the jailed playwright Svetlana Petriychuk and theater director Zhenya Berkovich for two more months. The two female theater artists have already spent more than four months in custody, awaiting trial for allegedly “justifying terrorism.” What prompted the charge of terrorist propaganda was Berkovich’s prize-winning production of Petriychuk’s documentary play, “Finist the Bright Falcon,” which tells a true story of hundreds of Russian women who were recruited by ISIS, later finding themselves in trouble with the Russian authorities. The remand hearing started hours behind schedule, but journalists in the room were permitted to speak with the defendants just before the proceedings began. Their remarks, made through the glass barrier of the defendants’ box, were transcribed from a video made by the journalist Basil Polonsky for the YouTube channel NO.Media iz Rossii.

High hopes, low expectations

Petriychuk: Zhenya and I differ on this. I’ve decided not to reconcile myself to this (recording unclear). Zhenya likes to besiege me with her hopefulness.

Berkovich: It really got to me, too, this time around. I’m spending so much energy on keeping myself from hoping… So I’ve decided that, if the decision is what it is, at least until then I could be like, “Wow, here comes something awesome.”

Petriychuk: We’re going to be disappointed anyway — but of course we need these expectations, to get some oxytocin in our brains.

A message for the loved ones

Petriychuk: I think it’s best to speak to each of our loved ones personally and separately.

Berkovich: I know what I want to say! I’ve heard this from others: “A prison ain’t a grave, a sentence ain’t made of rubber.” And women don’t get a life sentence. The earth is round — and I’ll see you again.

Letters of support

Petriychuk: There’s lots of them. I have a whole bag of them, and another stack, this high from the floor. (Gestures to show a tall stack of letters.)

Berkovich: Regrettably, I have to throw most of the letters out — otherwise I’d get kicked out of the cell. It’s cool to have so many. I don’t get quite as many as before, but there’s just lots of them. And there’s quite a range [of people writing] — from retired ex-military to pediatric oncologists from Toronto.

Petriychuk: Lots of them had never heard about us before.

Berkovich: Lots of them write, like, we regret we didn’t know about you, but now we do, we’ve watched or read something.

Coming to terms with arrest

Petriychuk: I had no idea we were going to be arrested. They came up to me at the airport and told me I was being detained for the play Finist the Bright Falcon. I just burst out laughing — it was just so absurd! But the day went by, and by evening things began to feel real.

Berkovich: From the moment I realized that my kids know where I am, and that responsible adults know where my kids are, it was all more or less (recording unclear). […] It’s only thanks to the lead investigator that I didn’t sign some confession […] during the apartment search. I would have signed anything, because I was, like, holding one screaming kid in one arm, another screaming kid in another arm, trying to keep the cats from bursting out of the apartment with the third arm, and trying to get dressed with the fourth.

Petriychuk: It all seemed completely unreal to me, until after the court hearing they moved me (recording unclear). By then, I hadn’t slept for some 60 hours, so my mind was really starting to drift. But then, things started getting clearer.

Life in custody

Berkovich: To be honest, we really are in a slightly altered reality, where even time feels different. We haven’t been in jail all that long, by these standards (recording unclear). When I first heard how long someone had been there — “Not that long, just two years or so” — I was like, “Dang, really, that isn’t long?” But, by the jail’s standards, we’re still newbies. It’s pretty hard to describe it, talking like this through the glass. I don’t mean to say that everything is fine and don’t you worry about us. Everything feels very slow — and this itself is starting to feel like the norm. To me, that is — not to Sveta.

It’s starting to feel normal to me, because it would be unbearable if it didn’t. On the one hand, you’re spending energy on trying not to get depressed and keeping a sense of humor. But you also have to hold on to the sense that this isn’t normal at all — that this is a dreadful and arbitrary injustice. But that drives you to such a rage you’re ready to bang your head against the wall.

Translated by Anna Razumnaya.