Revolution is needed

From the editorial office: Vsevolod Chernozub continues a series of interviews with young leaders in the Moscow opposition. Previously, RG published conversations with Matvey Krylov and Oleg Kozlovsky . This conversation is with Peter Verzilov , an activist of the Moscow War, one of the organizers of Antiseliger.

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Vsevolod Chernozub: If not Putin, then who?

Petr Verzilov: You can develop complex multi-ways ... Someone was delighted to avert the intellectual part of society from the Church. To divide the conservative, dark Russia, blindly trusting the first channel, and people who use the Internet living in large cities.

V.Ch.: How did it happen that Pussy Riot Have you become an international scandal?

P.V.: Margarita Simonyan wrote with hatred in the first week after the arrest that Western correspondents were not interested in anything except Pussy Riot. The history of the Russian punk group is too illustrative, too picture, too indicative, it is the fruit of Western culture and is very clear to the Western viewer.

V.Ch.: And in Russia, how do they perceive everything?

P.V.: Naturally, more complicated. Religious context, appropriate, is not smart ... Punk-graben is versed in the context of the traditions of war, in the projection of a large protest movement. Western journalists, of course, do not dig so deeply.

V.Ch.: Interestingly, for the traditions of war. What did you want?

P.V.: Mobilizing people on bright protest actions with their own methods and forces. For example, Navalny has analytical abilities, and he came up with a bright form of their report to the viewer and the people. The bureaucratic writings from time immemorial in Rus' was the most tedious in our reality x ** that, and Navalny made from it a phenomenally enchanting show. War - experts in the production of visual, plastic metaphors. Our art shows how this can work in political reality. If a person is interested in political speaking as such, he must find his own methods, points of application of his own skills to obtain his result.

V.Ch.: Have you turned to the "creative class"?

P.V.: We are not very correctly called “creative class” people with iPhones and iPeds. The European creative class is just those who go to the districts and fight the police. Although they are in Greece, Spain and England built into the bourgeois political system.

V.Ch.: The orientation of the National Bolsheviks, War and Pussy Riot is the twisting spiral of the conflict. You say, quoting Letova, “do as we do - do better than us” and put the bullet into the temple. It is difficult for you to imitate.

P.V.: It is difficult to imitate the war because it does not have a single visual image - the war is complicated, the main thing in it is spirit, stylistics and intensity. But Pussy Riot has such a single design. A huge number of people wear balaclava and imitates Pussy Riot.

V.Ch.: Maybe they are simpler than the war?

P.V.: No, in art it is generally impossible to speak in the opposition “easier-more”, but Pussy Riot offers the visual scheme available to everyone. In the end, it can be used by both Madonna at a concert in Nice and an activist on a picket in Syktyvkar. The war did not have this. Scheme - put on a balaclava, replacing a person with an idea and image.

V.Ch.: The subcommandant Marcos ...

P.V.: Yes, when you need anonymity and action - you put on Balaklava. Madonna said in the olipmpian “I Like to Live Dangerously”, put on Balaklava, was exposed to the underwear and sang “Like a Virgin”. Madonna is a smart person and very accurately designated this: you say “I Like to Live Dangerously” and you begin to act in your own way.

V.Ch.: But the war of the repeated still did not ...

P.V.: War can become repeated, if you are a powerful artistic radical, very brave, very inventive, stubborn and live and breathe the history of Russian art.

V.Ch.: If it is impossible to surpass the war, what will be contemporary art?

P.V.: We did not surpass Kabakov or conceptualists, we did differently-the art of each generation works differently. Our things have much more momentary media resonance, and Pussy Riot influenced political reality as no one from the world of culture has been influenced for many years.

V.Ch.: And when the media wave falls - will Pussy Riot disappear?

P.V.: The influence of the punk group is so powerful that Pussy Riot is already an integral part of Russian history. This is a global event of 2012.

V.Ch.: That the plane landed in the Red Square, or the word “X*” was laid out on it with bodies - several people know about this.

P.V.: Everyone who was able to know about it is known about this, do not about several people.

V.Ch.: War became stars at a very young age. Will you go crazy without glory?

P.V.: We work with resonance as with political technological tools, it is an instrument and part of creativity. Glory drives crazy only rock characters, whose creativity and the body of which it sometimes crushes.

V.Ch.: War without media does not exist?

P.V.: Yes. As Russia 00s does not exist without Putin.

V.Ch.: If you disappear for a couple of years, like a St. Petersburg faction, will you put you, for example, the story will end?

P.V.: They disappeared not because of the arrest, but because they have no desire to do something. For creative reasons. They turned the wheelbarrow, burned the car carrier, we must continue to do things in the same vein. These are worthy and bright actions, but organizationally very complex. Such a desire towards the seaside partisans. A very interesting direction is artistically, but complex.

V.Ch.: Nadia told me that after the deadline she was thinking of shooting cartoons. And what would you do?

P.V.: I now want to continue working with formal methods by which we are changing Russian political reality.

V.Ch.: If you are in prison, you will not be able to produce artistic images.

P.V.: Nelson Mandela sat and reproduced himself as politics more and more every day. This is the problem of authoritarian regimes - by planting Pussy Riot, they made them a symbol, equivalent to Putin. When Putin is piled on the entire state power on Pussy Riot, the punk group grows to its scale. Such a dialectical process occurs.

V.Ch.: Now Khodorkovsky is now interesting to anyone.

P.V.: How is it?

V.Ch.: Do you read his articles?

P.V.: Yes, they are not very interesting formally, but everyone is waiting with lust when Khodorkovsky will come out. And I feel the agitation of this moment.

V.Ch.: If you conduct research now, it turns out that it has gone into some historical context.

P.V.: I still see such an agitation. If he comes out and unfolds stormy social activities, everyone will be interested. Everyone will follow, respect and communicate. If he does not leave to write books, raise children and cows ...

V.Ch.: What will happen next with protest? Say as an artist, politicians have no answer now ...

P.V.: It sounds corny, but the protest should be exposed in all directions. Its radical part should be exposed. So that not three thousand people fought with riot police, but thirty. To grow his Naval-Internet part. To grew up the white-level-milled part. People who put on a white tape and solemnly went to a rally should not be one hundred thousand, but five hundred or million. I am also interested in what will happen to the idea of ​​primaries. Will it be the same stuffy air as many structural and organizational ventures of the opposition?

V.Ch.: What do you think about Navalny?

P.V.: It is very different from most politicians with an absolute understanding of the modern cultural situation. When I gave a lecture on the war in the special receiver ( in December 2011, Peter and Alexei were arrested after the action in pure ponds and spent part of the term in the same cell ), Lesha asked questions until four in the morning, argued and fell asleep last.

V.Ch.: Do you see the current activists a desire to find out what happened before them?

P.V.: People consider activism something divorced from the historical space, momentary. It is believed that you can come and move your so -called “creative”, absolutely torn from context and reality. It is natural to understand Russian history, how the protest of all zero developed. It is a pity that people have no desire to cover and master what was done before them, to understand and digest it.

V.Ch.: The artists have more and more clear, there are questions of professional growth. You want to outline the predecessors, activists believe that there are no predecessors.

P.V.: The activist has a political result. There is a political and social result of its activity.

V.Ch.: Which one? After all, they say that they do nothing ... only they say.

P.V.: Standing with a white ribbon is a full -fledged activity. If you are, in addition, a programmer, an employee of a real estate company, follow Navalny’s proposal: “Ten minutes a day I devote to protest.” An hour once a month. If you want to become a professional activist for whom this is the most important area of ​​existence, you must understand where your result is. Activist's product is organizational. The ability to qualitatively turn the organizational situation. For example, I believe that my work on an antiseliger and the last fall helped to make these events qualitatively different.

V.Ch.: How?

P.V.: It was easy to attract the brightest representatives of the artistic, political communities, interesting musicians to the antiseliger. Collect a critical mass of people charged with meanings. Now this is happening on a different scale with the campaign in defense of Pussy Riot. We have connected a huge number of adequate people supporting the group. And there is an insignificant, insignificant number of speakers against, such as Elena Vaengi.

V.Ch.: Okay, enough about politics. Come on personal. They know almost nothing about you ...

P.V.: It seems to be known!

V.Ch.: Where were you born?

P.V.: In Moscow. Until the seventh grade I went to school here. Then it became possible to go to relatives in Canada and learn in Japan.

V.Ch.: What was interesting there?

P.V.: A romantic story happened in Japan. I met my classmate’s older sister, I was sixteen then, and she was twenty -two. She fell in love madly, so only the Japanese can. If they begin to play punk, it is ten times more punk than in America. Everything is brought to the limit. The girl turned out to be the daughter of the head of one of the most influential Yakuza clans. Over time, I received the semi-official status of the groom, we hung in underground Yakuza clubs, many relatives were without fingers. The house in their hometown is built in a traditional style, with sliding walls, an amazing garden. Everything is elegant, as in the film Kurosava.

V.Ch.: Then you returned to Moscow ...

P.V.: Yes, he entered the Faculty of Philosophy.

V.Ch.: What did you study?

P.V.: Ancient philosophy. Then he became interested in contemporary art. Nadia entered the philosophical when I was already in the fourth year. We were somehow introduced, introduced and surprised me that a freshman from Krasnoyarsk is well versed in contemporary art. And a few months later, together with Oleg Vorotnikov and Natalya Sokol, we created a war.

V.Ch.: Do you often refer to Prigov and Limonov, why did they become your heroes?

P.V.: Prigov created an autonomous, but very powerful and influential cultural line, which largely determined the face of Moscow conceptualism. Limonov made a similar in literature. A young man needs to understand that autonomy, his own lines, methods and methods of work is more important than random and momentary noise, success or glory.

V.Ch.: You are reproached with the violation of spiritual and moral principles ...

P.V.: Centuries -old!

V.Ch.: ... although near you look like a Russian family. In the same “Tomorrow” (Andrei Gryazev’s film about the St. Petersburg war), anyone can see. Love, children, everything is very conservative ... How is the “Dad Verezilov Day” goes?

P.V.: Usually Hera runs into the bed in the morning, begins to push, demand that I play. I wake up and we are doing exercises. For breakfast, traditionally, is oatmeal in milk. An hour or two we are doing something at home, and then we have a walk, we study the area, interesting places, dogs and cats. We return home, eat lunch. Hera in food is conservative like all children. Further entertainment, we look at the classics of the Soyuzmultfilm, Disney cannot be watched. Day sleep and evening walk, we ride bicycles or slides. Dinner and cultural leisure. Cartoons, books, drawing ...

V.Ch.: Hera draws well?

P.V.: Yes, I love to draw very much. She has special easels. She handed Nadia to prison several plans for how to destroy the walls and run away. Details drawn. Feigin ( Mark Feigin, Tolokonnikova’s lawyer ) showed her.

V.Ch.: Many people think, they say, in order to have a child, you must first make money. And you just love each other and give birth.

P.V.: Of course, because he is such an integral part of you. No one says that I need to make money first in order to keep my wife. If you want to have a child and communicate with him, then you do not need anything for this.

V.Ch.: You may not, but the child needs medicines, diapers ...

P.V.: This is all the conventional expenses that you are already carrying.

V.Ch.: The war has the glory of the provocateurs, dragging on promotions with a child.

P.V.: A child is part of you. Masha Hessen six came to Bolotnaya with two young children. Does someone call it a provocateur? The hero and I were a couple of times on strategy-31. Ideally, you need to involve children as much as you yourself participate in something.

V.Ch.: And who is a woman for you? How ideally to build relationships? Again, is it necessary to save for a wedding?

P.V.: It is absolutely pointless to reason here in the credit plane. If you are interested in this - robk banks or trading promotions, maybe you will earn something. And the woman is an integral part of you.

V.Ch.: It sounds patriarchial ...

P.V.: No, no, it does not belong to you. There is a need to communicate, to produce something with this person, to experience emotions together. This is necessary and integrally. As a need for friendly relations. If a woman is considered as a person who becomes as close as possible to you, then the factor of necessity is important and should be. We have a very close relationship with Nadia, we are very complemented by each other in a professional sense. Without it, I do not have time to lie down, read, even sleep normally. Everything is completely on me, and after all, she does many things super -professional and better than me.

V.Ch.: This often interferes. Creative is transferred to personal and vice versa.

P.V.: Well, sometimes we get wildly, it happens, but ultimately we go to consensus.

V.Ch.: Limonov describes literally everything, as he fucks, drinks, fights with women. His personal and in general any life is the context of an artistic statement.

P.V.: No, no, my personal life is not closed, but it exists according to another laws than an artistic statement.

V.Ch.: What does our generation have to do? Young artists, politicians, managers, musicians?

P.V.: Revolution. It should not be satisfied with the theses of Ksenia Sobchak and achieve a designer transformation of the regime into a more humanistic. Even if the regime stops planting people, he must still be defeated and destroyed. This is the task of the generation, and it should reach it by any means.

V.Ch.: So that a European bourgeois society appears? Are you ready to make a revolution for the sake of boring?

P.V.: In Russia, this is a priori impossible. We are sitting in a bourgeois cafe, but there is still a torn Winzavod around. Moscow is energetically and politically not a calm bourgeois city. Sit somewhere in Venice in a cafe or in Madrid, completely different air, centuries-old reassurance and cultural arrangement. The revolution will lead to other, new, complex forms of political existence. It is necessary to engage in their construction and categorical overthrow of old forms.

V.Ch.: The Bolshevik approach is such.

P.V.: The only acceptable approach to a person who is outraged by almost all the functioning of political reality. Can one of the methods of work of modern officials or system politicians stay? No, everything is in the root, everything is unacceptable, you need to completely change their methods.

V.Ch.: Do the next generations need such a revolution, to whom now twenty, fifteen?

P.V.: Of course. They even need her. They see that Russia, where they plant girls for singing in the Church, is a rotten damp that moves towards North Korea. They are unpleasant, do not and do not want to live in such a country.

Photo by Oleg Kozyrev