Loskutov is still at large. And we?

The campaign in defense of Artyom Loskutov, who was released from arrest on Wednesday, July 10, by decision of the Novosibirsk Regional Court, began immediately after he was detained on May 15 by employees of Center “E” (Center for Combating Extremism, former Organized Crime Control Department).

Artyom Loskutov is a contemporary artist and public figure known far beyond the borders of Siberia and Russia. Artyom is 22 years old. He doesn't smoke or drink. And still, the case contains drugs as a reason for his arrest (and only then - the charge of creating an extremist community). Artyom himself and his comrades claim that 11 grams of grass were planted on him. And, frankly, it is difficult to doubt the fact of planting, because in addition to the reasons, there are reasons and specific circumstances for opening a criminal case. As for the “extremist community,” this accusation would have been laughable if it had not been seriously put forward by employees of the organization that the modern Russian government tasked with fighting extremism (having redirected for this purpose an organization that had previously fought organized crime - and disbanded either due to complete victory over it, or due to the complete impossibility of victory).

Artyom Loskutov, a member of the social and artistic formations CAT and BPP ("Grandmother after the Funeral"), has been and is now one of the inventors and inspirers of the famous Novosibirsk "Monstration" for several years. A socially mocking annual event (organized on May 1), questioning not just the efforts of the government or the opposition, but the entire current - not even Russian, but global - political system, the very method of political expression adopted over the past tens, if not hundreds of years in democratic countries or in countries trying to appear democratic.

If there is a real counterculture in modern Russia, then the first “monstrants” fully embodied it. In the mid-2000s, gathering for the very first “Monstration”, they challenged, first of all, boredom, the ritual meaninglessness of such a political action as a demonstration, which was completely meaningless in itself. It doesn’t matter whether power-hungry political extras or supposedly opposition extras, from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to the Union-right and other other Russian bores, were engaged in meaninglessness. Driving middle-aged people, old women and poor youth to the square, to the street for loot is no longer a demonstration of the political will of these very different people, it is a demonstration of the thickness of the collector’s wallet. Rounding up people, provincial students or something like that, under the promise of dry rations, T-shirts with emblems and a free trip to the capital and back is also not a demonstration. Driving people under dusty slogans and dusty banners of a long-gone era and long-faded ideas, announcing these mournful ranks with ritual, meaningless curses, is not a demonstration. To convene, yes, even if not to drive away, to convene - those who disagree, so that later they can be beautifully “packed” into riot police “packages”, and the crowd - well, God bless them, let them choose as they know how, we are all “free people in a free country” - this is also not a demonstration of anything other than political impotence and self-promotion. This is what the “monstrants” were hinting at with their seemingly meaningless, absurdist slogans like “Yyyyt!” In the political darkness of the 2000s - it so happened - only the “monstrators” turned out to be real demonstrators, sharing this glory and this burden of reality with old women and old people against the monetization of benefits (remember this Volga region, which went around the whole country, only no longer “Yyyt!”, but “ Is Putin an enemy worse than Hitler?), and with anarchists and antifa, who, with their wild, unauthorized evening demonstrations along Arbat, Tverskaya, Nevsky, Pyatnitskaya and Novoslobodskaya, forced the political class over and over again to expand the national agenda.

And yet, despite their, as is now clear, such a careless and even dangerous proximity to (anti)political protesters, the “monstrants” completely remained on the edge of discourse, rather on the territory of art, imagination and cheerful chaos than on the territory of politics. clearly defined plans and programmed results. This is precisely what they, presumably, bribed the Novosibirsk residents, who still did not go to either one or another boring official/opposition demonstration, but went to a semi- (or even completely) absurdist “monstration”. The movement expanded, the number of “monstrants” grew year by year. Thus, performing at first only on the local, Novosibirsk stage, the “monstrants” suddenly found themselves on the All-Russian stage, and then on the world stage.

Every development has its limits and prospects. Some of the founders of “Monstration” became disillusioned with it after the first or second time, moved away from the process, and became its critics. But the social environment that fed the very idea of ​​“monstration”, an environment that should be designated as “thinking youth”, was already inflamed regardless of the will and desires of the original inventors. And when this environment felt the onslaught of power and its punitive swindlers, the police (remember the total street catching with photographing and rolling the fingers of all “informals”, all non-standard hairy, non-standard hairstyled, dressed and pierced, which happened in the winter-spring of 2008; remember Sokolniki, which in the same spring last year became a symbol of police arbitrariness of the pre-Yevsyukov period), she reacted as best she could: at the May Day “Monstration” of 2008 in Novosibirsk, a crowd of not eight, not eighty, but eight hundred people carried a large, strict slogan in front of them, white on black: “Don’t teach us to live, otherwise we will teach you.”

Is this already politics? Is there still art? Or on the verge?

Some people apparently didn’t like this slogan and this new scale. Someone must have hidden it .

But this direction of artistic and political expression, personified by “monstrants,” certainly has a certain history, a certain tradition. It can be dug up in almost all centuries that our inquisitive mind can reach, even starting with the ancient Greek “philosopher dogs” (cynics). The most obvious predecessors are medieval jesters and street theaters (more like booths; but let us remember how persistently and maniacally Ivan the Terrible fought against booths: contemporary artists of that time, bearers of the tradition of street art, critical thought and straightening, liberating laughter, were killed en masse, musical instruments were burned - well yes, what happened then? balalaikas, domras, harps, tambourines and bells). Further, the line can be drawn through puppet theaters, lubok and anonymous letters straight to Mayakovsky of the times of the yellow jacket, to Dada and the surrealists, from them through the beat generation to the Situationist International of the 1950-60s, to the spirit, meaning and slogans of May 1968 in Paris ( remember? “Under the pavements there are beaches!”, “Everything is fine: twice two is not four!”, “You can’t fall in love with the growth of industrial production!”, “It is forbidden to prohibit!”, “All power to the imagination!”), then to punk ( if you really understand what it was and is; of course, this does not mean beer, garbage dumps and provocative appearance), to the Polish "Orange Alternatyva" of the 1980s (starting from the "Day of the Spy", which they held in Wroclaw at the height of martial law, from a four-thousand demonstration with slogans and chants like “We love Lenin” - in the eighties, in Poland, well, well, until the uncrowned king of these street jesters, Voldemar Fidrich, nicknamed “Major,” put forward his candidacy for the presidential elections - in defiance of both Jaruzelski and Walesa, under the slogan “Better an orange major than a red general”), to the late and post-Soviet Movement “for Anonymous and Free Art” (ZAiBI) in some of its manifestations, to “Ours-2000” and the May Day demonstration inspired by them in Moscow in 2000, on the tail of the monster of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (conversation on a police radio: “The clowns are turning towards the metro. What to do? - Let the clowns turn wherever they want!") and then - directly to "Monstration", which developed from a few people to several hundred people, becoming one of the calling cards not only of Novosibirsk, but also of Russian contemporary art in general - yes, yes, precisely in the world, and not just in the Russian-speaking arena.

Now think about it - chasing jesters, clowns, buffoons, poets, artists, wits and wits - how does this look simply from a human point of view? Only serious maniacs and mass murderers from the authorities like Ivan the Terrible (but we, of course, know examples in different countries, and closer, in the 20th century, should we name them?) decided to do this.

But the power of the bureaucratic wheel is great. In the 1920-1930s, the terror of the CPSU(b)-NKVD also began with the bureaucratic inability to disobey, with the desire to give a figure, to increase the indicators, even though it was the number of arrests, the indicators of executions. The task has been released - it must be completed. "We are small people."

Any bureaucratic structure must justify its existence to its superiors. The newly-minted Center “E” and its regional branches in each region, territory and other subject must justify their existence. Due to the lack of real extremists in Novosibirsk, they apparently decided to turn their attention to the fake ones, but who have been sticking out like a pimple on the ass for many years now - to the “monsters”. According to well-known police logic, every phenomenon, be it even semi-spontaneous, even completely spontaneous, must have a Chief. For some reason, the Chief liked the policemen Artyom Loskutov, a 22-year-old artist who does not smoke or drink, but is not timid, talented and able to think outside the box. They called him in for a conversation. Artyom rightly believed that the conversation does not have any legal status, the conversation is not an interrogation, the rights and obligations of the parties are not defined by any code, which means that the police can interpret the results of the conversation as they want, that is, against him, Artyom and his comrades too. So I didn’t go. The police were offended, presumably. A detention followed on May 15, 11 grams of weed were “discovered,” and an “extremist” conspiracy surfaced.

It is very good that there were many caring people in our country who wrote letters, held pickets, rallies, concerts, painted pictures on the street - all this in protest against the arbitrariness in the Loskutov case. It is also good that the Novosibirsk Regional Court heeded the voice of reason and justice and canceled the preventive measure of arrest against Artyom Loskutov, replacing it with a recognizance not to leave. But it’s not at all good that the case against Artyom has not yet fallen to pieces, that his dashing cutters have not yet flown from their posts wherever they look, and this absurd story itself with the discovery of imaginary extremism and clearly alien grass has not yet become a negative lesson - how there is no need to do it - for all similar cutters in our entire country, which seems so vast, but at the same time so explainable in words, understandable to the mind and covered in coverage, be it general or private.

And that means the story is not over yet. Not only according to Fukuyama, but also this Novosibirsk story, which, not without the help of Center “E”, has already become completely all-Russian, and even worldwide.