"Freedom Zone"

The three-day sawmill festival has ended in the Perm region. Since 2005, human rights activists, musicians, and civil activists have been gathering here, on the territory of the former Perm-36 zone, where both ordinary criminals and political prisoners were imprisoned. Perhaps this year they gathered on this site for the last time. As sources in the organizing committee told PublicPost, after Viktor Basargin replaced Oleg Chirkunov as governor of the Perm Territory, funding for the festival was sharply reduced. Instead of the promised 5 million, only a quarter was received, and much was done in debt.

"Pilorama" is like a pioneer camp, but for adults. Or as "Antiseliger". Guests live in tents on the territory, in a factory dispensary in the city of Chusovoy, eat porridge and soups cooked according to kindergarten recipes, listen to music, talk, and sometimes quarrel. Thus, at the opening of the festival, human rights activists - state and not so - entered into a skirmish. Sergei Kovalev from Memorial (he once sat in Perm-36) told the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Vladimir Lukin, and the head of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, Mikhail Fedotov, that although they are civil servants, they must reflect their personal position, and not the state one, because “when everyone is responsible for themselves, there is order in the country.” PublicPost photographed them and other festival guests and participants.