Turan continues to fight

As a pensioner does not give an rusticon

Pensioner Turan Varzabetyan took part in all major protests of recent times, defended Pussy Riot and Prisoners of Bolotnaya. Now she is defended by the Public Verdict Foundation: on May 6, in Bolotnaya Square, it was beaten before losing consciousness, and accusing OMON employees of beating. The New Times met with Turana and learned the story of her life

Another Russia

The house in which the pensioner Turan Varzibyan lives is located on Vasilisa Kozhina Street, half a kilometer from the Bagrationovskaya metro station.

Gray panel high -rise building, dull view of any window. A stone's throw from the entrance - the road, on the side of the road - a wreath with a photograph of the Caucasian young man. “This is David,” the girl with a thin cigarette in his hand explains, “he hit the fire engine a month ago, and so right away - to death.”

For such yards, the only decoration is provided - a playground of variegated plastic. Three old women walk their grandchildren, two old people pull the leashes of the co-spaniel and a bolon.

If Turan Varzabetian was a normal pensioner, she would have compiled them a company.

But Turan leaves the house for three occasions: to rallies, to the courts and to the doctor.

She was born in 1945 in Bulgaria, where her parents - Apkar and Arshalus - fled from Turkey.

Turana has a short haircut, gray hair, a figure that is customary to call "girlish", and a burning, slightly crazy look. As her family was in Russia, she does not know, but she remembers her childhood very well: it passed in exile in the village of Topol, the Uglovsky district of the Altai Territory. From the age of five, Turan went to collect corn in felt boots laid by the newspaper, dragged heavy buckets of water from the well, and in the first grade told the teacher that "Lenin did not consider his grandfather Lenin, because he had syphilis brains."

The pamphlet, in which it was written that the leader of the world proletariat suffered from the syphilis of the brain, Turan found in his father Apkar, the confectioner in the main specialty and the philosopher - by vocation. Then she miraculously was not expelled from school, and when she moved to the second grade, Joseph Stalin died, and the teachers were not so strictly monitored by what their students read at home.

In 1959, her family moved to Tashkent, and in this city, initially hospitable, most of her life passed. Here in the late 60s she met her husband, a locksmith of Vagan Ovsepyan, and here she gave birth to three sons-Andronik, Arsen and Vartan.

In Tashkent, Turan graduated from the Trade Institute and even received a diploma, but she could not work by profession for a day: “All sellers drank, taught me to take bribes and work dishonestly, but I could not do that, everything in me protested against dishonesty. I could not stand it and went to work at the Uzbekistan Hawaii Yullara airline, and that was mine. I began the storekeeper, graduated from the company by the company at Domodedovo, but this was later, in Moscow it was. ”

The youngest son of Turana Arsen works in a car service, Vartan is a lawyer, and the oldest Andronik is engaged in small business: supplies potatoes to school and preschool institutions. All of them live in Moscow.

Tashkent herself left Tashkent in 1994: “Then we have terrible unrest on national soil. I remember, I went to the market, and at me the seller threw with rotten cabbage: "Get out of here, Russian rubbish." I ran to the police, and there they yelled at me obscenities. I am a straight person, I don’t like to be silent, I wrote a statement to the policeman of this, I don’t remember his last name. And in the evening he came to my husband and said: "Either you will save this bitch, or your children will sit in prison." My husband is soft, not as direct as me, he does not like to argue. In general, in 1995, I received Russian citizenship at the Tashkent Consulate, divorced my husband and left. ”

In Moscow, she married Polota Sergei Mikhailovich: he lived in a communal apartment on Novozavodskaya Street and almost could not walk after a stroke. According to Turana, they lived well, only once a neighbor Natasha, a radiologist from a local clinic, wanted to take their room to herself: “She stole our keys and wanted to give them to her father. I threw them out the window, we lived on the ground floor. I tried to catch them on the fly, stumbled on a stone and broke the ligaments, and went to the hospital. Sergei Mikhailovich alone remained at home, and not me looked after him, but believers from the neighboring church. It somehow happened that at that time he was ill with salmonellosis: I return home, and he has a temperature of forty and complete paralysis. I say: "Sergey Mikhailovich, you may have a hemorrhage in the brain!" I took him to the hospital, cut it - pus everywhere. Then he stopped chewing and died. ” It was in 1999.

She says that she was worried for a long time and could not find a place for herself. Then the place was found - in the Party "Apple".

"The power should be modest."

The three -room apartment of the Turans is littered with many papers: here is the protocol of administrative detention at the Pussy Riot court, and here is a certificate No. 4030, issued by the emergency room at the clinic No. 58, where Turan entered on May 18, 2012 with the “multiple bruises of the right and left shoulder, the right forearm and the bruises of the right button region”. Turan explains: “It was I who went to the Barricade metro with a friend to meet. I look, the girl is so white, around her - twenty people, they talk about the Khimkinsky forest. I stopped listening to, and then autozaks drove up, Chirikov, poorly, twisted, dragged into the bus. I climbed to beat her. Then the two policemen grabbed me, twisted and took me to the Yakimanka police department. And the wife, I remember, even dislocated a finger, animals! ”

In a separate red folder with yellowed cloth ties - “apple” stickers “Power should be modest!” and a certificate issued by Turan in 1999 at the headquarters of Yabloko. Signature: A.N. Shokhin. December 19, 1999 Varzhabetan T.A. She was an observer in the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the third convocation, polling station No. 2652. The protocol was extremely strange by parties: “Party of Pensioners”, “The Interregional Movement“ Unity ”(“ Bear ”), the Russian Party of Protection of Women and even the VOPD“ Our House - Russia ”. Only 28 parties, including Yabloko and ATP.

Turan says that in those elections, the “apple” and Yavlinsky won, “but then they brought a disk with new results to Tick - and the final protocols were falsified. We learned about this in the morning when nothing could be done. ”

So a citizen of Russia Varzabetian T.A. I first encountered falsifications in the elections.

She still regrets that Yavlinsky was not allowed to “call the country”, but admits that she experienced certain hopes with respect to Vladimir Putin: “I thought that Putin would be like this, my beloved, with the FSB. Remember, he was still not given to work? Ah, I remembered! Yuri Andropov. I really liked him, because he was a principled person. " Turan prefers not to say at what point she was finally disappointed in Putin's personality.

A fragment of the statement of Turana Varzabetian to the Investigative Committee, in which she reports about the beating by riot police in Bolotnaya Square , click to increase the picture

Again swamp square

She went to the square, like many others, in December last year. “I was everywhere,” Turan explains proudly, “in the camp, Abay spent the night and gave money to the juice: once ten rubles, the other - five. When Ksenia Sobchak came to Abai, I said to her: “I didn’t like you, while“ Dom-2 ”was led, and now it’s good.”

She was on Sakharov and twice - in Bolotnaya Square. It was there, during the famous rally on May 6, that Turan Varzabetian, according to her, received a club on the head from one of the riot police.

She went to the rally with her friend Lily K. Lily younger Turans for five years, constantly lives in Bryansk, but often goes to Moscow to visit her son.

From her son, Lily explains, she “infected with the ideas of Alexei Navalny”: “I like all the thoughts of Navalny and how he exposes all these sechins, the whole gang.”

Friends came to that rally early: they passed the turnstiles on the Yakimanka, took first places at the stage, and there nobody.

“ When I came to Abai Sobchak, I told her:“ I didn’t like you while the “Dom-2” was led, and now it was good ”

"Then they decided to return to the small stone bridge." I saw the provocations with my own eyes,-Turan is getting excited,-the riot police held the deputy of Ponomarev right by the hands. Then the call was one riot police in the walkie-talkie, and they began to push us. Ponomarev said something, he went away, and the man was abandoned, abandoned the backpacks. Masks threw the checkers in us, and here the riot police and the riot police began to kick two guys from the crowd. And then a blow to the head, and then I don’t remember anything. ”

I ask her why she intervened, and Turan shouts: “But I am such a person, yes! I will die myself, but I won’t let others go! ”

Turan in Bolotnaya Square. May 6, 2012

On May 6, at 19.30, at the emergency and emergency medical care station named after A.S. Puchkova received a challenge No. 669 215: “To a citizen of Varzhabetan Turan Apkarovna, 64 years old. At the address: Bolotnaya Square. Message: head injury, bad. It has been established: bruises of soft tissues of the right region, perineum. ”

Journalist Alexander Podrabink took the ambulance, he willingly restores the events: “On May 6, when the riot police attack on the demonstrators, I saw that a woman was lying on the asphalt. I used to work on an ambulance and easily determined that it is unconscious, in a superficial coma. According to eyewitnesses, she was hit on the head by a police club. Someone and I dragged her to the side of the road, and then carried her to the ambulance. I have not seen her anymore. "

There are two amazing things in this story-firstly, having recovered in an ambulance, Turan immediately abandoned hospitalization. He explains this way: she lives in a seriously ill pensioner at her house, Misha Kalinin is called, “black realtors took the apartment in Golyanov, and they stole it, they took it to Ukraine, then he got to Moscow with difficulty.”

Secondly, on May 7, on the day of the inauguration of President Putin, that is, a few hours after the injury, Turan went in a non-crushed column of people with white ribbons, taking an active part in the so-called “protest party”.

As the same Lily testifies, on May 7, in the area of ​​Tver Boulevard, they "collided with the Namers." Turane again became bad, and at 13.14 at the emergency and emergency station named after A.S. Puchkova recorded a call No. 676 831. It was established - “Breaking through the brain”.

For the third time, a message about call No. 797 478 at the same ambulance and emergency care station was recorded on May 17, 2012 at 21.47. Barzabytians recorded soft fabrics - a trophy after a meeting with Chirikova on Kudrinskaya Square.

In May, Turan had a chance to visit an ambulance carriage in order to increase the picture

"Watering"

It turns out that for the sake of the opposition, Varzhabetans desperately climbed into the very pitch, completely not sparing herself. “This is in her character,” the eldest son of Turana, businessman Andronik Ovsepyan, gently complains. “She is engaged in civil cases exactly as much as I remember her.”

Andronik is sure: his mother in the blood “a heightened sense of justice, she reacted to evil and injustice in Soviet times.”

He recalls that when he graduated from school, Turan worked at the Tashkent airport: “This place was connected with corruption, it was impossible to get tickets, they were sold in exorbitant prices. At that time, a war was going on in Afghanistan, my mother came home, because she put the military on airplanes for free. ”

Andronik admits that his mother was little engaged in raising children: “I was always full, dressed, secured, but I can’t say that I felt the care and affection of my mother. And my brothers are less, they are younger. She is interested in and gives strength only the struggle. After she was beaten in Bolotnaya Square, I tried to stop her, but quickly realized that if you are drowned out by this engine, then you would never run it again, and it is better not to stop it. ”

The motor works constantly in all directions - if you enter the surname "Varzabetian" into the search line, several links to the court protocols come out: so, since 2007, Turan has been suing the citizen Kozlova T.A. For the rights to possess a country house in Naro-Fominsk, and since 2010-with a citizen Safronov I.A. For compensation for damage in an accident at the 37th kilometer of the Moscow Ring Road in 2006: the Ford-Festiva car belonging to Varzhabyatyan collided with I. Safronova Despite the fact that the accident occurred due to the fault of Safronov, Varzhabutian did not receive monetary compensation.

Her last clash with the authorities on the basis of politics happened on August 17, 2012, on the day of the sentence in the case of the Pussy Riot group, which Turan calls Pussirai. Turan was boiling to court, she was not allowed: “I had a“ Russia without Putin ”on me, and there was a thick -skinned Kagabashnik, he noticed me, shouted:“ In no case should I let this woman, she is on our hook! ” And I to him: "It is you yourself on our hook, and I am to these girls - mother!"

And a month and a half after the verdict, on October 29, 2012, Turan submitted to the Main Directorate of the IC of the Russian Federation an appeal about the "unlawful actions of police officers during the" Million Marshist ".

Why couldn't she file this appeal before? Says, sick.

Did she receive the answer from the UK? They write - there is a check.

These elderly women who constantly go to rallies are ten. Alexander Podrabinek describes them like this: “When the protest movement is declining, these women probably suffer. After all, our opposition leaders are so cautious, shy, indecisive, and for a turning point, bold, passionate people are needed. ”

Maybe like these women.

Photos: Elena Rostunova, Nadezhda Filatova