Taisiya and Katrina

My wife was still in the maternity hospital when I went to the registry office to draw up Katrina’s birth certificate. Simple aunts of the Soviet type, writing down their daughter’s name on the birth certificate, asked me several times if they had heard it correctly. I did not explain to them the background to the appearance of this name, since I assumed that these women might not understand my motives, and I had neither the time nor the energy to enter into a discussion with them.

Although the story itself is quite simple. Katrina was born in November 2005, and about three months before her birth she began to show herself very violently, desperately beating Taisiya from the inside. It was August 2005, around the same days the media reported about Hurricane Katrina, which was raging on the US coast. The idea for the name came from here. Katrina continued to behave so actively in her mother’s womb that everyone even assumed that Taisiya would have a boy. But the ultrasound showed that it would be a girl. Moreover, the doctor who performed the ultrasound had to try very hard, because Katrina was constantly moving, not allowing her to be examined properly. After that, my wife and I finally decided that she apparently had a “hurricane” character and decided to name her Katrina...

The “hurricane” character implies not only activity, but also a certain power and strength. Katrina got it, first of all, of course, from Taisiya. At the age of 18, having been whipped with carnations by the Smolensk governor, “chekist” Maslov, she behaved with dignity during that investigation and trial, constantly expecting arrest or other nasty things from this tyrant. Then, for a bouquet of flowers, Taisiya was charged with two articles of the Criminal Code, under any of which she could have gone to the zone for 5 years. It was 2003, the “nuts” of repression had not yet been fully tightened, and Taisiya was given a suspended sentence. But during this time she suffered the death of her mother, a series of searches in her apartment, threats and intimidation.

After the verdict was passed, Taisiya and I lived in Moscow. In 2005, already pregnant, she went to Smolensk to undergo a full medical examination at her place of registration and stay there to give birth. As it turned out already in Smolensk, over the past two years a lot has changed in terms of the fight against “extremists”. Local regional departments for organized crime were involved in this task. Well, their methods of “fighting” turned out to be appropriate. In September, Taisiya, who was then seven months pregnant, returned home from a walk and discovered that gas was leaking from all four burners of the gas stove in the kitchen. Someone broke into the apartment and opened them. The only thing that saved her was that it was still quite light outside and she did not turn on the electric lighting at home. This incident was then written about in the Smolensk press. The prosecutor's office twice refused to initiate a criminal case on this matter, and the prosecutor's office investigator who conducted the inspection told Taisiya in a private conversation: "You understand that I can't do anything with THEM...".

Thus, Katrina, even two months before her birth, was subjected to political repression. By the way, the same operatives (Savchenkov, Smolin) who would later “find” drugs at Taisiya’s house were working at RUBOP and were working hard on us. In 2004 and 2005, they actively pulled our activists into conversations, threatened them, demanding that they stop engaging in political activities.

Returning to Katrina and her character. “Whatever you name the yacht, that’s how it will sail.” Katrina fully lives up to her name. A very active and positive child (pah-pah), despite what she has to deal with at such an early age. She is, of course, very worried about the separation from her mother, from whom she was practically never separated before her arrest. Katrina tries not to show it, showing strength of character. The child psychologist who examined Katrina confirmed this. True, he noted that now her children’s psychological defense mechanisms are triggered, which are unreliable, and further continuation of separation from her mother can lead to serious consequences. But Katrina is holding on now, not forgetting for a minute about Taisiya. Sometimes, the truth can’t stand it and asks me: “When will mom be released?” And when he sees the police car, he shakes his fist at them.

I noted above that Katrina has a strong character like her mother. Taisiya’s very first lawyer in the current criminal case told me that she had not encountered such behavior from female clients, especially those who went to prison for the first time. According to her, they usually immediately “fall apart,” cry, or are in a state of shock. From the very beginning, Taisiya was calm, confident, and full of desire to defend her innocence. The TsPE (formerly RUBOP) opera, who for the first month after her arrest went to see her in prison almost every day, faced with a nature stronger than theirs, retreated. They threatened Taisiya with ten years in the camps, knowing the serious state of her health, and promised that she would not live to see her liberation. They promised to send my daughter to an orphanage. But they achieved nothing. At the trial, these operatives now deny that they demanded that she slander her husband.

Earlier I wrote that even the most frostbitten bandits in the “dashing 90s” did not touch their wives and children and did not involve them in showdowns. At least they had some morals. The current bandits in uniform have no morals at all, so I see no point in moralizing and putting pressure on their absent conscience. I just wanted to point out that even if the women through whom they are trying to achieve their goals turn out to be morally and psychologically stronger than these “brave” guys, then apparently we have every chance of defeating them. And Taisiya will be free, and Katrina will see her mother. I'm sure of it.