Tragedy on the Spree

Russian artist committed suicide

Anna Mikhalchuk, apparently, voluntarily took her own life. The German police yesterday leaned towards this version. At the end of last week, the body of a woman described as similar to the missing Russian woman was discovered by the caretaker of the Mühldamschleuse, one of the locks on the Spree River in the Central District of Berlin.

The 52-year-old artist has lived in the German capital since November 2007 with her husband, 60-year-old scientist-philosopher and writer Mikhail Ryklin. On March 21, the day Western Christians celebrated Good Friday, a woman left her apartment for what her husband assumed was shopping, taking with her only her keys and money. Mikhail Ryklin later clarified that since all German stores were closed on Good Friday, his wife allegedly went to one of the “Russian stores.”

Her husband Mikhalchuk, with whom Anna lived for 33 years, has already identified the corpse. The forensic medical commission found no signs of violent death, so local criminologists are inclined to believe it was suicide. The case will be closed for lack of evidence of a crime.

However, the question remains open, to which there is no answer yet: what is the reason for leaving the Berlin house and the life of the artist, who was previously forced to leave Moscow due to bullying? The date of Anna Mikhalchuk’s disappearance coincided with last year’s procedure for presenting her husband with the Prize for European Understanding at the Leipzig Book Fair. The Russian representatives invited to the ceremony did not fail to express their indignation. They were dissatisfied with Mikhail Ryklin’s lack of patriotism and overabundance of criticism of Vladimir Putin, the Russian Orthodox Church and the system of “managed democracy.”

Anna Mikhalchuk herself found herself in the crosshairs of Russian critics in 2003. Then the artist took part in organizing the exhibition “Beware of Religion!” at the Andrei Sakharov Center. The exhibition materials testified to the strengthening role of the Orthodox Church in Russia under President Putin. There was a hooligan attack on the exhibition. And a trial was organized against some of the exhibition organizers, including Mikhalchuk. They were charged with “inciting national and religious hatred.” Relatives talk about the psychological trauma that trial inflicted on the artist, although it ended in an acquittal. According to Mikhail Ryklin, in Moscow they lived in conditions of anti-Semitic insults and threats - by phone and in letters.

Yuri Shpakov, Berlin