Igor Sutyagin. How my homeland changed me

Four guards - and I'm already in Lefortovo. Through the peephole of the paddy wagon, I overheard that most likely they would not be released. And then they brought me to the general, he told about the Medvedev-Obama agreement...

- Many of the Russians who did not follow your fate very closely are wondering: did the Russian scientist Sutyagin still work for a foreign government, since he was changed to agents of the SVR? Igor, please answer...

- Many of the Russians who did not follow your fate very closely are wondering: did the Russian scientist Sutyagin still work for a foreign government, since he was changed to agents of the SVR? Igor, please answer the concerned citizens: are you a spy?

- Of course not! Anyone who knows me or is familiar with my so-called case, this is very clear. Let's try to figure it out ... I was under contract with a British firm to select press reviews. There was only one interest: the British were making money. They did it this way: the consulting firm I worked with gave its clients recommendations on investing money in the economies of many countries (from Finland to Chile, somewhere in 1998 they also took up Russia) - and therefore was extremely interested in assessing political risks associated with investing in our economy (they so gently called what five years later became known to us as the “Khodorkovsky case” - when he invested money, and then uncles came and took everything for themselves; agree, for any investor It would be nice to assess the risk of SUCH a development of events in advance!). And, of course, information about those programs, investing in which would give a good profit, was of interest. For example, if we talk about the defense industry, then these are export programs.

This is the kind of "illustrative material" I just picked up. Constantly, by the way, trying to create the most positive image of my country (perhaps I was wrong, you will forgive me, an idealist, but this is the task I set for myself - that is, I worked for MY COUNTRY, and not at all on a FOREIGN government). After evaluating all the materials in full, one of the three state prosecutors of the Prosecutor General's Office at my second, already in Moscow, process directly asked me the question: “Well, you tried to defend the interests of Russia in front of foreigners. But who gave you the right to do so?!" You see: this is the reproach, and not at all that I worked AGAINST our interests.

I knew very well that the materials that I select in the newspapers for the British could in NO WAY harm Russia - and I constantly double-checked myself on this score. So you tell me yourself: to bring and read to the British newspapers and magazines bought in the passage to the metro station "Kievskaya" of the Filevskaya line - well, in WHAT side could this resemble espionage? You understand: do not rewrite the article in encryption, but simply bring the Wings of the Motherland magazine, which I regularly bought on the way to work - bring it with an article about the MiG-29SMT aircraft - you explain to me that sophisticated logic with which THIS can be take it as espionage! By the way, it was for this article by the general designer of the MiG Korzhuev that they gave me 15 years - just for reading one article. And you say: spy...

I have never worked for a foreign government - I worked for my own country! Well, what about trying to earn money at the same time ... Well, let them reproach me for this, but only those who literally give their last penny to others, leaving their children without a piece. Let them reproach - I will accept such a reproach. From others, no.

How did you find out about the exchange being prepared? Who told you about it? In general, what is the mechanics: some people in civilian clothes come to your “zone”, they call you to the “owner” and tell you: either you will be free if ... or something will happen to you?

- HOW this is all USUALLY prepared, I simply don’t know, I won’t lie - for this there are popular authors of detective novels who know everything about the methods of exchanging spies and conducting subsequent “debriefings”. I'd rather talk about what I SAM saw: how it was with me, okay?

And it all happened like this: from the very morning of July 5, there was nothing special, I continued to work on the repair of ShIZO-PKT, nothing, as they say, foreshadowed impending events. But somewhere at the beginning of the first, right after lunch, a very nice person came to me - the operational duty officer for the colony Alexander Vladimirovich - and said that I was urgently transported. Why, where - neither he nor anyone else in the colony knew this. This time, however, the escorting turned out quite well: as a result, I had somewhere around two hours in order to get together, although quickly, but not quite at a hurricane pace. (A very interesting and symbolic thing happened at the same time: a very good person, Viktor, is still in the Kholmogory colony, he works in the colonial school. July 5 is his birthday. I have developed really comradely warm relations with him - interesting, a thinking person! — so I just couldn’t say goodbye to him, and with all my 6th detachment. And Victor told me: “Today is my birthday. And on my birthday, nothing bad can happen to you !” How right you turned out to be, Viktor Nikolaevich!)

Then, somewhere around half-past three, they finally loaded me into a paddy wagon, and off we went. I rode, one might say, with comfort: alone in a department designed for ten people. I'm not sure if the convoy knew where they were supposed to take me - perhaps the task WAS set to deliver to the Arkhangelsk airport, or maybe not. And it may very well not be: when we broke down on the road and arrived in Talagi (as the airport is called in Arkhangelsk) actually to the plane itself, another convoy took me there - just sat with me in the car for three minutes, drove me to the gangway - and there I handed it over to the third convoy, which accompanied me to Moscow. I think that they simply didn’t have time to take me to the pre-trial detention center on Popova Street in Arkhangelsk, although they should have ... Although who knows for sure! ..

And the aircraft guard, too, in my opinion, knew only the immediate task - to deliver the convicted Sutyagin to Moscow, where he would hand over to another guard. And those Moscow ones also seemed to be guessing... At least through the peephole in the cell door in the prison Gazelle, in which I was brought to Lefortovo, I heard, while standing at the closed gate, how two officers from the one who accompanied us around Moscow "Sobolya" with the Fsinovsky special forces talked with three Arkhangelsk escorts: "No, it is unlikely that they will let him go ..."

I heard about the idea of ​​the exchange only at ten o'clock in the morning the next day, July 6, when I was taken to the office of the head of Lefortov - and there, according to tradition, our general, who did not identify himself, announced the agreement reached by two presidents, Russian and American. (“Alexander Vasilyevich” - that’s all the general said about himself. I even deduced that he was a general by deduction, asking the Lefortov employees to meet “at least with one of those GENERALS with whom I recently spoke”, - and heard in response that “one of those GENERALS is right here now, so we will arrange a meeting.” About the second person present from our side - there were also three Americans - I don’t know anything at all.)

And you say: they come, they call, they report! That's what happens in detective novels. And in the daily practice of the domestic system, everything is done quietly and secretly. I’ve been sitting in Lefortovo for a long time, and they almost exchanged me for someone (at least all the conversations were already going on and even passed), and the Arkhangelsk department of the Federal Penitentiary Service was still the only thing that could report, so this that "the convicted Sutyagin was transferred to Moscow to resolve the issue of the place of further serving of the sentence imposed by the court." They come, they report ... Yes, no one knows anything - no one, never anything! (Here I, perhaps, on the basis of the experience acquired over the past decade, even dare to generalize.)

And all the punishments that will fall on your head in the event of a “wrong” decision, by the way, you also begin to recognize only directly at the moment when it begins to fall. Only after nearly eleven years of communicating with that “venerable company” that our organs represent, it’s already somehow very easy, convex and distinct - “taste, color, squeak, crunch!”, as Zhvanetsky said, - you begin to imagine WHAT could these punishments be...

- One believes in such things right away or a certain conspiracy mechanism is turned on: again some kind of set-up ... Did you quickly make this decision? What were the arguments for and against?

- Similar things happened to me somehow not too often so that I could generalize to such a level - "I believe right away." It is probably better to put it this way: people in prison in general, as far as I have noticed, develop some kind of bestial instinct for the motives, seriousness, and truthfulness of your counterparts talking to you. And for some reason you feel, and sometimes very clearly, that this is - yes, a set-up or smacks of something filthy; but this - yes, this is for real, this is good. I checked it on myself more than once: my intuition is able to tell you quite accurately. This time it was quite obvious: this is the real thing. These people really needed me to agree and leave. It wasn't about me, it was about them. It was THEIR interest for the deal to take place, and the interest of both ours and the Americans. You should have seen how nervous our general was when I immediately began to refuse to accept this "offer that cannot be refused"!

This, by the way, was one of the arguments "for" - and one of the strongest pressure factors: it was quite clear to me that this time the door was really wide open. And to stand at the open door, knowing that, take only one step, - and you really, without deceit, will leave the damned "fence" ... You know, I had one favorite joke there, in the "fence": "Yes, I don't care It's time to release - I've been sitting for the SECOND MILLENNIUM! (He sat down in the 99th, in the second millennium, now we have the third millennium in our yard.) And now, the second millennium, sitting, having sat out many who returned before my eyes to the “zone” in the second (and some in the third! ) once, having seen how sergeants grow to captains, stand at the wide-open door and think: should I take a step there - or turn away and step back? ..

Alexander Podrabinek, deeply respected by me, reproached me, reminding me of Tatyana Velikanova in 1987, when Gorbachev released political prisoners from prisons who refused to sign a petition for pardon. The thought of the position - and the example - of SUCH people like Tatyana was for me one of the most important arguments "against". Slightly paraphrasing Eduard Asadov, I would say, perhaps:

Decisiveness, apparently, is of different heights: from the hill - and to Kazbek. Depending on the person.

Tatyana Velikanova is INCOMPARABLY taller than me. As sad as it is for me to admit it. And Alexander's reproach - that's exactly it, and not others who are now happily screeching - I will fully accept HIS reproach. Only SUCH people have the moral right to reproach me ...

It was very difficult to make a decision. You know, if I were completely alone, I would almost certainly continue to ram the paths covered with gravel near the village of Danilovo, Kholmogorsky district, Arkhangelsk region. (Or rather, something worse would have happened to me in case of refusal, and much, but that’s not the point.) But one of my favorite books, through the mouth of a fluffy red beast, says: “We are forever responsible for those we tamed.” You see, I somehow developed very close and strong ties with my surprisingly close-knit large family - and that's when, along with a quite understandable, I think, desire for freedom, the understanding that my relatives, undoubtedly, it’s better to see me at large ... especially when they assure me that I will retain our citizenship and no one will interfere with either my return or the arrival of my relatives where I might be ... - then, with this redoubled force, the two arguments “for” outweighed .

(There was also a third one, I don’t know if you understand it. Only someone who has spent VERY long years behind bars can truly understand it: the thought “I won’t wish this on anyone” is fair at the level of the heart, not rational calculation. This you just have to try for a very long time WHAT a prison is in order to understand WHAT it is true, this idea ... So, of course, I was much less interested in the fate of those ten who were tried to be rescued from America, and those unknown - and I thought at that moment that there were also nine more - already sitting in OUR prisons ... It was such a little scarlet, but an appendage on the scales, which is “for” ...)

Well, “against” - well, everything is clear here, in my opinion - I immediately objected to two things: the requirement to admit my guilt and the condition of a flight to Britain. (I didn’t explain about Tatyana Velikanova to the generals: they wouldn’t understand, I think. Although in fairness it should be noted that if the white-headed general who talked to me in Lefortovo was in fact the same young then officer who came to me in 2003 and assured me that I would just give up lawyers, defense attempts and trial by jury - and by the 300th anniversary of St. After all, he REFUSED to give it. That is, after all, this strange word “honor” means something to him ...)

To be continued in the next issue of Novaya