About everyday life and holidays of the youth of the Saratov opposition

It all started much earlier. On Thursday, November 1, a group of oppositionists - all young people in their twenties - was detained three times. Allegedly, according to the description, some of them resembled criminals. And I spent National Unity Day at police station No. 3, where activists and organizers of the “anti-fascist picket” were held for about five hours.

On Moskovskaya, opposite the building of the former Kirovsky District Department of Internal Affairs, lives oppositionist from the capital Lesha Sheremetyev. He is young and hot and is already known, it seems, to all the police in the city. He goes out on single pickets, draws the attention of townspeople to election fraud, political repression and the dominance of swindlers and thieves in power. Since September, he has been the main “headache” of the city’s law enforcement system.

On Thursday, I already visited the third police station, where I filmed how Saravia’s car, which had been arrested for no reason, was accepted by the lawyer and the driver according to the inventory. The car was opened, the seals were removed, but everyone understood that this was inevitable when dealing with our police.

Twenty minutes later I was back at the police station where Sheremetyev and several Saratov activists were detained. They went to a picket about the falsified election results and carried with them blank sheets of Whatman paper. They were already waiting at the entrance: “There is a landmark with a description of a robber similar to you, let’s go through.” It's around 12 noon.

They were kept for the “required” three hours; of course, there was no comparison of appearance. They let us go, and the guys went to have something to eat. There was an hour left before the picket.

At that time, I stood at the station and listened to the deputy chief of police for Saratov, Mikhail Polubabkin, shouting at policeman Akram Aliverdiev, why he had let the activists go and how to catch them now. It really wasn't difficult. When the oppositionists left the cafe, several dozen police officers were waiting for them. Marina Tishchenko, an activist who defends a school stadium in the Leninsky district, is trying to shame the newly minted lieutenants: “Young people, I have children, do you even realize what you’re doing?” The lieutenants look at the floor and do not answer. Again, three hours lasts a long time, and it’s already dark outside. No charges, no protocols. People were taken away to stall for time and disrupt the picket. Single and not requiring approval, by the way.

By the way, they did not give up and came out with placards already after dark, standing much further than the required fifty meters from each other. “Putin - go away”, “Re-elections”... It’s on the posters. A thin girl, artist Marina Churikova, with a sheet of whatman paper on which is written “Freedom for political prisoners,” stands under the orange autumn light of the street lamps on the avenue. People come up to her, squint in the twilight, read, say: “Well done, you and I,” and go further into the comfort of home in the evening.

I ask Lena Pashkova - she was also going to picket, but managed to leave when the police detained the guys for the second time: “Len, why do you even need this?” “Well, why? Who will take part in them then? There are few crazy people... And, probably, that’s good,” she answers. “Don’t you think that this is some kind of political foolishness - by your example, force people to pay attention to what is happening around them, in the country?” “Naturally. It doesn’t suit many people, but not everyone will go “active”, it can backfire... But in our country it’s every man for himself, that’s the kind of society, and in this sense it won’t be possible to shake it up unless you make him think a little.”

Twenty minutes later, the picketers were detained for the third time that day. They are accused of violating the legislation on organizing mass events. None of the police officers care that according to the map there are seventy meters between the blocks of the avenue; they decide that it is less than fifty.

I photograph oppositionists and police officers and understand that several dozen people in uniform and with shoulder straps spent the whole day chasing children of twenty years old with placards. Officers who believe that their work is important and meaningful perceive these children, who have their own opinions, as enemies and the main threat to statehood. How much has the system of government administration and its protection degraded!

On Sunday, National Unity Day began for me with a call: “The police burst into Sheremetyev’s apartment. They took him to the police station, and Nikita Kolpakov is being kept there for no reason at all.”

I put a few flash cards in my pocket so that if they take it away, I can quickly replace it in the camera, and I go to the Kirov department on Moskovskaya.

There are already several journalists there and Mikhail Polubabkin, of course. Sheremetyev sometimes calls and says that he is interrogated over and over again. He and several other oppositionists were supposed to participate in a rally against nationalism. At night, one of them hung a homemade banner from the window: “November 4 is the Day of Fascism and Power.” The police tore it down when the whole house was asleep, apparently through the neighbors. Later my neighbors will tell me that they were conducting police training. That's what they were told at night.

At this time, Nikita Kolpakov, a former opposition candidate for the City Duma, is being interrogated in an abandoned apartment. He came here before the rally, suspecting nothing. Investigative activities are carried out in the apartment: fingerprints are taken, things and documents are described. For some reason they are taking away the Constitution and the Law “On the Police”. Apparently, as material evidence. They don’t let us in, they swear that journalists have come, and swear from behind a closed door. I'm at the entrance with my camera at the ready. Vremya correspondent Katya Fedorova is nervous and smoking.

We hear how the owner of the apartment, a drunk man who told the police that the activists were living with him illegally, despite the lease agreement until November 18, curses and tears out the Internet wires and asks the police: “What are they filming, can they break their camera, yes?” ?" I think that, perhaps, for the first time in his life, this man felt that he was supported by the entire law enforcement system of the state, and he, probably, now can do anything - break a camera, and break his face, if he wants.

Kolpakov, by the way, is only eighteen, he is a student, and the police call an employee of the military registration and enlistment office. The employee will arrive despite Sunday and a national holiday. Because, if necessary, all these cogs of the state machine work flawlessly, but never of their own free will and out of a sense of duty. Sheremetyev will be kept in a locked interrogation room for much more than three hours, released on his own recognizance and facing charges for extremism - this is for a banner that he did not even have time to see, and for invading someone else's home - and this despite the lease agreement. They hug him, take pictures, and I understand that the people who had been waiting for him all day had lost so much faith in any kind of justice from the state, were tired of seeking the truth and “not living by a lie,” that they were ready for anything. Besides, for example, that student Kolpakov will be “by mistake” taken into the army, that Sheremetyev will not be released and will be pointedly “punished” so that others will be discouraged from picketing and holding rallies and defending their opinions. And this would not surprise anyone.

But I still celebrated National Unity Day. At police station No. 3, journalists gathered, liberals who supported the detainees with their presence, anti-fascist anarchists from the rally, gopniks who beat up the Caucasians on Sennoy, these same beaten and bleeding Caucasians... Why not popular unity?