Mikhail Kordonsky. Lying on the right, sitting on the left

Lying on the right, sitting on the left
Mikhail Kordonsky

Publication date: December 24, 2003

As if there will be light and glory,
have a good day and plenty of bread,
as if life will swing to the right,
swinging to the left.

I. Brodsky

At the supermarket in a poor residential area, he sold mainly products - there was a jewelry display in it. Three masked men shouted: "Don't move! This is a robbery!" - but the electorate did not believe them, continuing their sad choice. Only when the glass rang under the butts and the bullet went into the ceiling did people hide, pressing Bush’s legs to their chests. It happened on the street (sorry, you can’t erase words from the fact, that’s what the street in Odessa is called) Gaidar. By the way, it also houses the regional court of appeal.

- Why did you cock the trigger? - asks the prosecutor. - If you only wanted to scare, aren’t screams and the sight of weapons enough?

“They do that in the movies,” the accused answers.

The trial of "Komsomol terrorists" is underway . According to their testimony, they received neither a share nor remuneration for participation in expropriations. Everything confiscated from the bourgeoisie was handed over to the leader and spent on communist agitprop. The indictment, in addition to “propaganda of a violent overthrow...”, contains several violent actions, wounded - including seriously - policemen and security guards, and a murdered saleswoman of one of the robbed stores. There are nine young guys behind steel bars. The tenth girl is under age "under subscription" and sits outside the cage. The eleventh, Sergei Berdyugin, died on November 1, 2003 in an Odessa prison.

Family portrait of a revolutionary

Defendant Evgeny Semenov was born on March 6, 1973 in Aktyubinsk, from school age he lived with his grandparents in the village of Bessarabka, and for college and graduate school he moved to his uncle in Odessa. These three of his homelands are now located in three and a half different countries, because it is difficult to determine the political affiliation of Bessarabia - the PMR or Moldova. They are all so similar to Russia, they speak and live in Russian everywhere, but they are still not Russia. Dismemberment. He joined the Communist Party of Ukraine in 2002. He worked as a history teacher in an Odessa school, then returned to the village to live with his grandparents and helped them survive. He worked part-time at a local museum in Tiraspol. Compiled the history of his native village of Bessarabka.

Svyatoslav Vasilievich Belavin, born in 1939. In oral speech - Semenov's uncle, in fact - his grandmother's brother. In order to be considered a full relative (carry parcels and negotiate with a lawyer), he received a notarized power of attorney from the defendant’s mother. A veteran of the long-distance passenger fleet, he went to sea for almost forty years, including as a first mate and a “replacement” captain. He did not have “his own” ship due to a rare feature: a captain’s diploma in the absence of membership in the CPSU. The first time they tried to accept Svyatoslav Vasilyevich into the party at his place of military service, in Dzerzhinsky’s division. The previous person in line could not answer the simplest questions about the history and ideology of the party. In the end they showed him a portrait hanging over the table: “Who is this, do you know?” - “Yes! This is Nykyta Sergech Khrushchov!” The bureau voted to “recommend”, and Private Belavin turned and left, no longer wanted to join such a party.

- I have always been a sympathizer and still remain so.

Svyatoslav Vasilyevich’s pension is $40, of which $10 is an additional payment for service in “hot spots” - Cuba and Afghanistan.

- I wanted to live honestly and normally. “I will never forgive them,” Zhenya Semenov told his uncle , “for putting me in this position: with a higher education, I work in odd jobs, I don’t even have the financial opportunity to start a family.

However, he promised to introduce his uncle to his serious girlfriend for the New Year, but did not have time: in December they were arrested. When they put handcuffs on Zhenya, Svyatoslav Vasilyevich protested: “What will the neighbors think when they see it? In my house? He won’t run away anywhere!” They listened to him. Eight officers took Semenov out without handcuffs. The search was done thoroughly, but without rudeness. as a captain and special forces Although Svyatoslav Vasilyevich, who has extensive experience in dealing with the KGB , believes that professionalism has noticeably decreased.

- They took them in Odessa and immediately took them to Nikolaev to extract their testimony. There Danilov's ribs were broken. But the guys are so rebellious. Political hunger strikes were announced in prison. They probably did some expropriations, and they themselves admit it. But how do you get money for the party? But Zhenya - he never held a gun in his hands. He was involved in campaigning, conducted political classes with Komsomol members, distributed newspapers and leaflets. He published his poems. Political. I just met these Alekseev and Danilov on party business. Let's go for a walk in the park and talk. Two people in civilian clothes stopped them, demanded to show their documents, and they immediately started shooting ...

Protection

The position of the official defender of the defendants Semenov and Gerasimov, member of the Nikolaev Regional Bar Association Vladimir Khomchenko, is based on the same version of the event. He gives the impression of not being a romantic or a communist sympathizer, but a tough professional. However, he is provincial, which leaves its mark: he cannot afford such free statements as Moscow bastards, and expresses himself very carefully:

- I have been working in this case almost from the very beginning, since January 2003, and was personally present at all investigative actions with my clients. SBU investigators work completely differently from how some of your colleagues and journalists write about it.

- Did you inherit your professionalism from the KGB?

- In a good sense, you can say that. Not ideology, but the highest culture of investigation. Before each action, the defendants were read their rights on three sheets of paper. All important moments were recorded by photography and video. I was present everywhere, this can be seen in many photo and video documents. Everything was done carefully, at an impeccable legal and professional level. There is no need to talk about any “hanging over other people’s affairs”! You have just seen and heard the testimony of the accused at trial. Do they give the impression of being "knocked out"? The guys speak coherently and meaningfully, they don’t confuse the little things from the situations of very complex episodes, their testimony does not diverge from the data at the preliminary investigation and in previous court hearings.

- Are you a “negotiator” and not a state lawyer?

- Yes, the children’s parents pay me for this work, under an official contract, that’s why I go to meetings from Nikolaev. There is also an agreement with the Komsomol organization, but I have not seen any money from them yet.

- Did your clients participate in violent actions?

- Well, what do you mean “participated”? This is not a qualification. My client Evgeniy Semenov and I admit that he was present during the episode, which is charged as an “attack on police officers,” in which the Ministry of Internal Affairs officers were injured. But this does not mean that he shot or, especially, organized this action. We will clarify and prove all this during the trial.

- How do you comment on the complaints of the accused and their close relatives about torture, the death in OSI-21 of Sergei Berdyugin and the protests of international human rights organizations that arose after this?

- Death is such a thing ... it is predetermined. It should not be indiscriminately compared with investigative actions. Such a connection, if it exists, must be proven by a court and a thorough examination. No forensic expert will give a hasty opinion on such a scandalous corpse. A long-term study is required.

- In the circles of relatives and friends of the accused, there is one version that Berdyugin and others were beaten not by SBU investigators to extract confessions, but by police officers at the police department, OSI guards, guards and other employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They took revenge for attacks on their colleagues, punished for disobedience to the prison regime.

- This can't be. Police officers can use force only when making arrests or when prisoners are overtly using force. The situations in which they receive such a right are strictly specified by law. At the initial stage, from the moment of detention in December 2002 until the involvement of lawyers in the case in January 2003, anything could have happened. This is the most active period of action. It can be assumed that there were violations of the Code of Criminal Procedure. But if there were violations of the law, then they should be established by the investigation and the court, and not by speculation and rumors.

The investigation is being conducted by the SBU

The KGB building occupied almost a block on the corner of Karl Marx and Bebel. In the process of returning historical names, the ethnic composition of toponymy changed in the same proportion as the population of Odessa, and the Security Service of Ukraine found itself at the corner of Ekaterininskaya and Jewish. When rumors spread that the SBU had moved its legal address to the third, least ideological side of the block, the city council renamed the quiet Griboyedov Lane into the street of Roman Shukhevych, a general of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and a Hauptsturmführer of the SS, who died in a battle with the Chekists in 1950.

At the end of the last era, an internal prison - a “svechka” - was erected in the KGB courtyard. On its top, visible from Catherine's, in the tradition of the architecture of those times, there is a bas-relief with the year of construction. In big numbers: 1984. This prison is more comfortable, so to speak, than ordinary ones. Why were the defendants kept in another prison and taken for interrogation to the SBU? Wouldn’t it be a pity to have government-issued gasoline, and accompanying security, and time? It turns out that according to the new laws, the function of keeping all prisoners has been transferred to a special department, separate, as if it is not part of either the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the SBU. OSI-21 GDIN - Odessa pre-trial detention center-21 of the State Department of Execution of Punishments. This is how they renamed the very thing that Odessa residents since the 19th century have called “they sit on the left, they lie on the right,” the place where the tram carefully makes its way along the Lustdorf road between the prison and the cemetery.

Other times

Evgeniy Semenov is a graduate and postgraduate student of the history department of one of the oldest universities in the empire, the former Novorossiysk, now Odessa State University named after Mechnikov. Twenty years ago, being the age of the current Semenov, the pet of the same mother’s alma, born under the same zodiac sign, threw a brick at the window of the Moscow court where the dissident was being tried . The user of the weapon of the proletariat is now our editor-in-chief, and the defendant in that trial is Russia’s main human rights activist regarding the rights of prisoners and the prison regime, Valery Abramkin . A brick, of course, is not a bullet from a sawed-off Mosin rifle, but among the current wards of the head of the “Public Center for the Promotion of Criminal Justice Reform” there are those who fired with larger calibers.

Valery himself sat heavily, perhaps heavier than all the Soviet human rights activists. The same amount of years was added to the “standard” three years. Formally - for something there, but in fact - for leftist (there is such a meaning of this word) legal services, consultations with other prisoners. In the zone, Valery provided them to everyone who was pressed by the administration: murderers and rapists, Baptists and communists, thieves in law and lowlifes. This is probably how it should be: at the very least, criminals can be kept in captivity, but for legal lawlessness, barbed wire is not a barrier, it is breaking out.

Now three Russian citizens and one Transnistrian (whose is this?) do not have the funds for qualified legal defense. Most lawyers are appointed by the state, that is, they look semi-student and behave like they are in a boring seminar with an unloved professor. They patiently stare into space, and when asked, they sluggishly answer “yes,” “no,” and most often, “at the discretion of the court.” The two look more respectable with their age and demeanor. We have already met one, the other, according to rumors, is paid by his Muscovite parents, and he himself is local. There is also a price difference between Odessa and Nikolaev, although the distance is not much more than from end to end of Moscow. Another Russian lawyer was not allowed to participate in the trial due to the lack of a Ukrainian certificate of legal practice. Some lawyers believe that this point of the law is not so categorical and is left to the discretion of the court. was refused However, it should be noted that Anatoly Rekant, who became famous for grabbing a Moscow judge by the robe, .

Only - oh, this great and mighty - left-right defenders help. The money goes to a charity account created by the party, and relatives receive it from the regional committee against a receipt. Hardly enough for transmissions. Some of them are really leftists - beggars. Real, correct, right-wing human rights activists have lave from Western grants. Including for terrorists... with other parameters separated by a dash.

Did they beat the boy?

Everything that has not been proven in court does not exist. Street children don't steal, cops don't beat you, there's no vodka in the stalls, officials don't take bribes, and they don't sell drugs on the streets. How beautiful this world is! How blessed he would be if we did not have, in addition to dogmas, common sense and everyday experience.

According to the published testimony of Maria Plevo, the wife of one of the defendants, 20 days passed between the disappearance of her husband and the official recognition of the arrest in front of the Russian consulate; the arrest was issued later than it was made, and therefore there is nothing to protest at the official level. Her husband's note reached her: " ... we were all put under pressure, with the hands of cops and prisoners from the press huts, extracting testimony ... " Later, the court terminated the powers of one of the public defenders for illegal correspondence. The defendants repeatedly stated that they were being tortured, and these statements were published. At the court hearing, Sergei Berdyugin filed a petition to change his preventive measure due to his health condition. This condition was visible to the naked eye. The court refused. A week later, Sergei died, handcuffed to a hospital bed, in the presence of his mother. Until then, not only visits, but also correspondence with relatives of those under investigation were not allowed.

When a 20-year-old guy accused of active use of force dies in prison, one can, of course, assume that the same brick fell on him or that he swallowed an Occam's razor that accidentally fell into the soup. Posts citing statements from officials mentioned fulminant cancer, pneumonia, liver failure and "his general poor health." There are other publications, with a reprint of the full text of the forensic expert’s report : retroperitoneal hematoma, liver ruptures, closed abdominal injury. finding out what really You and I have no more chance of happened there than of seeing craters on the far side of the Moon. For some reason I think they are there.

I dare to suggest that during the legal proceedings, some violent episodes will soften, or even disappear. But not all. They may have “labelled” something, but I personally have the impression that in some places Komsomol members are even proud of their participation in ex-executions.

- When the guard twitched, Danilov sharply pointed the gun at him.

- And what, did he shoot?

- No. I got ahead of him!

But that they did not obey the prison regime, this version seems very plausible. Political hunger strikes were announced, suicide attempts and self-mutilation were made - this was on a large scale, documented and recognized. And as for the little things, for which it’s easy to get your brains and other parts...

The meeting continues...

In the court corridor, mothers and communist grandmothers are queuing at the metal detector. “I only have Limonka!” one proudly declares, raising it like a banner in her hands raised for a search. “ Which newspaper are you from?!” - a categorical question, otherwise there will be silence. The audience is clearly not an Internet one, they are hearing for the first time: “Well , Russian, - and which one?" There is no document in nature that I am a correspondent for RJ. I present two red-skinned books: a certificate from the Union of Journalists of Ukraine and a printed version of "RJ - Favorites 2003" with my article about street children. Communist grandmothers are collectively studying this and, showing a kind of political literacy, they line up around: “Tell Putin...”

It seems that the trial was carefully prepared from the very beginning, as a public trial of the communists. Death, a serious lady, played on two stages at the same time and made it revealing on both sides. Complaints are pouring in to Ukrainian, Russian and European authorities. The communist press awarded the “Komsomol terrorists” the proud title of “new Young Guards.” Participants in the international forum "The Future of the Left" (and among them there are real foreigners - the British and all sorts of other Norwegians) in a letter of protest call the death of the Komsomol "premeditated murder." Deputies of the Ukrainian parliament, at the insistence of the communists, honored the memory of Sergei Berdyugin with a minute of silence , thus putting him on a par with Gongadze, the victims of the Holodomor and the Columbia astronauts. The far-abroad press once again thought about the democracy of Ukraine. The joint work of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and international leftist forces to create the image of a communist martyr was crowned with crushing success.

In the presence of a judge, everything happens in an extremely meticulous, demonstratively procedural manner. There is audio recording of the entire process and video of the most important episodes, but everything said is recorded manually by the secretary. Judging by the pace, without the use of shorthand, which is outdated in the computer era. The judge asks you to speak more slowly. They are interrogated in alphabetical order. It takes two days for “A” (“B” is missing...), everyone blames the leader, and he - I Kovenko - at the preliminary investigation completely denied his guilt. Until it gets to him, and if he starts to refute the testimony of the accomplices, then the circle will roll all over again. Now Yakovenko is demanding that his free lawyer be replaced.

- Well, your comrades do not have the financial means to help you?

You can guess and sympathize with the irritation carefully hidden under the mask of judicial impartiality. The process is dragging on. At the beginning, the judge told the UNIAN correspondent that the trial would take six months if there were no delays. But they already exist. An official request to the Bar Association and their search for... a volunteer. What is it like to look for something free these days?! However, the law is the law, and the meeting is once again postponed for two weeks.

Look in the mirror

Our conversation with Svyatoslav Vasilyevich Belavin takes place in the editorial office of the newspaper “Pravoe Delo”, where, after the arrest of his great-nephew, he “inherited” the position of night watchman. The editor and owner of the publishing house, Leonid Shteckel, a constitutional democrat of indescribable rightness, believes that there was no terror, and the whole process from beginning to end was a provocation of the SBU. A radical is always a radical. He knew about his former employee’s Komsomol membership; it didn’t bother him. A liberal is a liberal everywhere. He and Zhenya had already agreed on a promotion from guards to... editors. A communist in a right-wing newspaper? Yes, with piecework wages. Lenya Steckel, whose political views are not blinded by intuitive practicality, is even more right than he himself realizes. Whether willingly or not, for ideological reasons or for entrepreneurial and personnel reasons, in fact he tried to re-educate Zhenya Semenov. Although liberals cannot stand saying this, this is how this procedure is called in pedagogical terms. What else do you, reader, suggest to do with such guys? With these, by name, it is more or less clear: to judge - which is what happens. With others who haven't fired yet? Is it banal and naive to educate? Nothing more than grab and plant. My main profession is a teacher, I can confidently speak only about what I know and can do. He who knows something else will do something else.

I recognized one of the defendants sitting in the dock. A regular partygoer for informals of all stripes. There you can often see representatives of other factions who come to look for allies. I saw this, including among... skinheads. What, somehow it doesn’t work out according to Remarque? A communist comes to agitate the fascists and leaves alive, not even with a beaten face, but also with neophytes. Different times, different morals. All these window-smashing fans, Tolkienists slashing with swords, schizoecologists chained in chains, beating black fascists and expropriating com-terrorists with shooting have much more in common than they are different. Not to mention the fact that they are all our children, flesh of our flesh and spirit of spirit. Moreover, this is a unique psychophysiological type. They need daring, fame and risk. "A good negative is always useful. The main thing is what's on it?" - says one of the best experts in extreme pedagogy in Russia, Yuri Ustinov. Their niche could be mountaineering, parachuting, hang gliding and, dare I say it, alpine skiing. But these kinds of activities are expensive, and the guys are all from poor families. Even when trouble strikes, there are not enough lawyers and transfers. They can make good soldiers. If they believe that there is something to fight for, something to protect. They are from a completely different category than the lads (“don’t believe, don’t be afraid, don’t ask”), for them, in the words of the Stalker, this organ that they trust has not yet atrophied.

In fact, they believed it. Let us think about why they turned out to be guilty and not right.