"I wanted to be wound"

Before the liberation, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova remains eight months, but the thought of how and what she will do when she comes out is already scaring her. During a meeting in the colony, Tolokonnikova spoke about Leo Tolstoy, about the “wrong language” and her own creative crisis

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, concluded IK-14, Republic of Mordovia, January 2013 (Elena Masyuk/New Gazeta)

 “Hera was weaned from me! Hera is shy about me! " Nadia herself is shy. It is impossible not to feel constrained in these circumstances.

The short -term (four hours, once every two months), this time passes in the negotiation room of the building located on the very edge of the colony - the entrance to it is directly with the entrance, so the visitor in the colony is actually nothing but the corridor and passing, does not see. Further along the corridor - several rooms for long -term (three days, laid every three months) of dates. Immediately-a buffet, beauty and pride of a correctional colony-14, a star of the YouTube channel of the Mordovian FSIN. There are pancakes with condensed milk, and last time Nadino was a short -term date there. Now, apparently, times have changed: we are sitting in a narrow room, Nadia - behind a desk near the far wall, and her husband Petya Verzilov and I were behind the desk at the entrance. Inspector Elena Mikhailovna sits between our desks in the chair. Immediately on the wall there is a screen with a device for video refers (one of the services offered by the portal with the romantic name “Native Communication”), and in the middle of the date, another prisoner will come in and will be laid for her for 15 minutes to talk loudly and emotionally with her son and tiny grandson, sushing and informing the important thing: that the lotion and spray from the mosquitoes must be sent cream and spirals.

Creative person

Elena Mikhailovna allows Hera to take the felt -tip pens, paper and a book brought with him and transfer to Nadina’s desk. Nadia takes the book: "Who is Andrei Usachev?" Petya is lost. I am trying to assure Nadia that Andrei Usachev is not crime (she would have heard a poem from the coloring that Hera read to me on the last trip: “I am an elegant, beautiful, neat pupa”), but Nadia opens the book and immediately discovers in it rhyme of the gender - children. “Why don't you read the classics? Do you read Harms? " Petya honestly taught Harms “Buldog and Taxik” with the hero, but time passed, hera went to the sea, and the poem was forgotten by both children and adults (and Petya sent him a separate Male on “native connection”). All three are trying to reproduce it, but they take the false engine: "The bulldog sits over the bone/with wrinkles on the forehead." Nadia exclaims: "What, the bone of wrinkles on the forehead?" None of us remember what is actually right - "a bulldog sits above the bone." But Hera is finally laughing. It gets a little easier.

Nadia draws for Hera Bulldog-signs from the book of Usachev, at least some of her use-and Hera demands that Nadia draw all other characters. “Do you think I'm an artist? - Nadia asks. “Here, ten percent of people really think that I am an artist.” Nadia herself considers herself an artist, at least from the age of 18, when she became a participant in a new group called “War”. And if here, in the colony, she is not an artist, then who? Hooligan, apparently.

It turns out that the phrase about ten percent is rather an exaggeration. It is impossible to explain that the action that she was engaged in the will is a variety of contemporary art. So the prisoners sympathizing with her rather believe that she is a "creative person."

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“Previously, my goal was to be noticed,” Nadia answers. - And then I found out that being noticed is the worst that could happen to you. "

“This is probably easier to explain by the example of cinema,” Petya advises.

“What kind of movie? - Nadia is annoyed. - Here they watch “Love and Pigeons”, they can endlessly quote “Office Roman”, even young women. No one has ever heard the words "arthouse."

“Do not know the word“ arthouse ”? - asks Petya. For a few seconds they plunge into crushed silence, and I understand that they do not joke: until relatively recently, the darkest interlocutors in the lives of these very young people were other students of the Faculty of Philosophy. They poorly knew post -strugglers and were not at all interested in new knowledge, but they knew the word "arthouse".

Who am I?

It’s not at all to jokes: the concluded Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is not only a crisis of identity, but also a creative crisis. If you look from Mordovia, then the whole audience of contemporary artists-activists is bought to a tiny point, and over time it becomes not visible at all. But Pussy Riot thought they shook the country, and the court, television, church and President Putin, who mentioned the group in different performances unprecedented six times, supported this feeling from them. And in fact, it turns out that the country does not know anything about its shock, and she listens to the singer Vaengu and the People's Rapper Dima Kartashov, whose song “Let's Stay Stay by anyone” is especially popular here.

In this sense, Maria Alekhina is easier: her main identity is a political activist. Before Pussy Riot, she was engaged in the salvation of the Utrish reserve and migratory birds, went to eco -camps and every time devoted itself to the fight completely. The same in conclusion: it became what the Americans call Jailose Lawyer-a self-taught lawyer, which scribbles endless complaints and finding new reasons and new ways of struggle for justice within the framework of at least a separate colony. For six months of the colony, Alekhina had such a clear feeling of her own place and her own mission that she withstands long heavy battles-such as an 11-day hunger strike-and is able to enjoy victory.

Verzilov brought a stack of legal papers: he is eager to apply here the experience accumulated in the Perm Territory, where he helps Alekhina. Nadia brushes off with irritation: “I am not at all interesting at all. I do not believe in the courts. " Petya tries to apply different arguments, including this: "Masha does not understand how you can not love legal subtleties - she plunged completely."

“She was lucky in this sense,” Nadia admits. “I find myself an excuse that everyone has their own language.”

“But this is a circulatory system,” Petya insists. “This allows you to feel how the Russian state works.”

“I feel so good now how the Russian state works! - Nadia laughs. “I'm finging with him!” “Bringing” in the language of the colony is to whisper, discuss something by shifting your head, duging for a minute with the interlocutor in a separate world.

"Promka" and "Living"

“Here everyone has a goal - so that time goes faster,” Nadia explains. “In this sense, all sorts of trips to the courts and so on are not good, because time is inhibited.”

“I thought time is inhibited due to monotony,” Petya admits.

"No. Here the days pass quickly. "

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 *At the beginning and end of the shift, the gate between the "industry" and the "vein" opens, and this is called "divorce". “I was divorced for the first time in my life,” Nadia laughs*

“The days consist of work on the industrial zone -“ industrial ” - and life on the“ vein ”. At the beginning and end of the shift, the gates between the“ industry ”and“ vein ”are opened, and this is called“ divorce ”.“ For the first time in my life they divorced work, ”Nadia laughs. At the“ prom ”, they sew overalls, and there are more or less depending on the size of the orders, for example, from the police. For example, housekeepers are added to work on Promka - now, for example, prisoners carry stones for repairing a workshop and land that forms the digging of trenches for gas pipes in the colony, which decided to lower the stones, and the ground are in bags - huge baulales, exactly those in which the prisoners store personal belongings and products in the captures of the same. Baulah is snowing.

After the industrial zone and the households of personal time, there is no remaining at all, which means that the days really pass quickly. Turning to Hera, Nadia all the time says: “I’ll go out ...” and then what? He will teach the ger to read finally, and read what is needed, and not some Usachev there. But what to do with yourself is not so clear.

“I understand that when I go out, I can find people who can understand me with whom I can act together. But I understand that only a limited circle will understand us. This is a kind of crisis. I am not interested in classical forms of art, but this way can explain everything to people. The task is facing me, using Pop Mechanics, to do something of my own. This is a difficult technical task, so I am in some confusion. ”

And it turns out that this conversation in the negotiation IK-14, conducted through the head of Elena Mikhailovna and at a volume, sufficient to shout out the convicted person, explaining to her home, that she needs a cream from mosquitoes, leads us to Leo Tolstoy, whom we study the broken hour. We are talking about his campaigns to the people - this is inspiring Nadia, and “war and peace” does not inspire me at all, ”although Petya claims that it is impossible to read Tolstoy's pamphlets. We are talking about the excommunication of Tolstoy from the church. “Then he was noticed as“ blasphemy, ”says Petya. “Previously, my goal was to be noticed,” Nadia answers. “And then I found out that being noticed is the worst that could happen to you.”

Poster on the wall of one of the rooms of the IK-14 building, where dates are held

 This is the topic on which the circumstances of our conversation allow us to speak with less constraint than, I think, we would have experienced in the wild. I notice that the task standing in front of Leo Tolstoy was at least not complicated by the fact that the language in which he tried to speak with the people was systematically used for deception, in order to call black white.

“Language is very felt here,” Nadia picks up. - This is an inverted tongue. And at each step, while the message descends, people feel it, but they are afraid to lose the position that they receive precisely due to this incorrect use of the language. ”

I ask if this is why in her last word in the August trial in the Hamovnic Court three times the inconsistent word “sincerity” was heard, and Nadia is unexpectedly embarrassed again.

“In the last word, I had an absolutism breakthrough. This is because I overheated. I began to talk about the truth. This is because these streams of lies ... "

“This is very strange to me,” Petya turns on. - These are not political concepts at all. This is some kind of modernist discourse. ” The “modernist” in this context is more likely abusive, akin to the word “stupid”.

“I wanted to be understood,” Nadia admits. - I could use the constructs of modern philosophy that describe this more accurately. But I wanted to be understood. "

Only in conclusion does it become clear how very rare it is to be understood. Perhaps this is precisely the freedom, which is deprived of Nadezhda Tolokonnikov.

 Photos: Masha Hessen, Elena Masyuk/New Gazeta