Enter the dusk and return

Svetlana Bakhmina - Tips for Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Enter the dusk and return (thoughts to yourself)
IK-14, the village of Parza, Mordovia-this is now the address of the soloist of Pussy Riot Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. She got a colony in Potma, which is notorily famous since Gulag times. In this colony, the lawyer of Yukos Svetlana Bakhmina sat in this colony. At The New Times, she wrote about what Tolokonnikova has to go through what can be surprised or scared after two years in a “covered” prison, where you see the sky in a cell, and with my husband you communicate on the phone through an armored glass?

The zone is good, the grass grows there, the sky above the head and four times a year long dates, and most importantly, all these endless and meaningless courts are completed where you can keep silent or recite Krylov’s fables - there is no difference. With such thoughts, you expect a zone, while experiencing fear of changing fate, farewell to your family, Moscow, that former, life. The next few years (years!) You will spend in another world. We must prepare. It is impossible to prepare.

And one day you, like a bag of potatoes, are taken somewhere, no one answers any question, while you clearly understand that your natives will go crazy for several days, not knowing where you are.

Dogs bark at the back for the station, between the doors of the car and the train car there is more than a meter - I am poorly prepared for jumping, and even with the Bauls.

The Stolypin car - a return to the historical past, well, at least at least cattle are not nearby, although this is a controversial issue. During the day of movement or standing on the half-steers-to get into the toilet twice, to sleep in turn on a hard shelf in a compartment-camera for two places, where four female creatures go to the unknown. Behind the wall, the agriculture of criminals: in the car there is only one compartment with women.

And then the low lead of the Mordovian sky, from which the anxiety, accompanied by this mournful path, develops into deaf horror and at the same time apathy.

You jump with a high step and, according to the still remaining intellectual habit, look with your eyes with who would give a hand. I got there.

Pictures, as in a bad movie of the 90s-a crowd of women in the same blue quilted jackets and gray scarves, someone smiles at a wide toothless smile. Hello you.

In general, people are one of the main discoveries. Who are all these people - where and how they lived, and where did I live then?

How to communicate? I remember my first mug of coffee - this is not at all what is in the wild. This is a ceremony. If there is an occasion to talk or there to someone with some request, and sometimes just chat-a large official aluminum circle of soluble coffee is brewed (so that a couple of tablespoons on a glass of water), then cast a little into another (less hot) cup, which is allowed in a circle. In that first circle, both the killers and the mother, who transported a kilogram of hash, and ... HIV-infected girls, were next to me next to me. It is impossible to refuse. So they establish relationships, so they show respect, resolve issues, start friends, so they live there. Although there are probably no friends there, just as there is no love - this is all surrogate. In virtual reality - in the dusk - there cannot be true love and friendship.

At the very moment when you are ready to hide in a corner, not to see or hear anyone-there will be 10–20-30 people around, someone will definitely ask something (often asks), discusses, requires your response. They want to tell the next story in which there is not a word of truth, they are borrowing the next pack of tea or cigarettes, so that I will never give, but I will “give it down.” They ask dead end questions like: why are you reading a book? Loneliness in the zone is an unacceptable luxury.

A separate chapter in a book on Zonovsky etiquette is a culture of communication with the administration.

“At the sight of a representative of the administration, it is necessary to quickly stand up at the“ Smirno ”rack, politely say hello. If the convicts are in the group, one should command: "Women, attention!" - Chorus "Hello". Well, if you hear in response, through your lip: hello. And then, after all, some 20-year-old girl with snot on the uniform is striving, a half from your education to shout: "What are you, insolent-the scarf is tied with you?" And you should in response: "Oh, sorry, Mar Ivanovna, it will no longer be repeated." And yet-from a loved one: once a lieutenant’s boy came from the department, who, with some imagination, could be my early son (pah-pah), and we are with an intelligent colleague, which is ten years older than me, roses, so we plant that their eyes appeal to. So, he tells her: "Well, how do you, girls, here you like to bother with flowers?" Simple scene.

No, no one has canceled the human factor-people are different, there are conscientious, non-sound and even pleasant in some ways (do not forget that we are freed, and they are all in their entire term in Mordovia, sit). The question is in the system - and the system sees in you ... But it does not see anyone. There was no man and no. They put you, deprived of freedom - this is not enough, should feel, experience the entire course, so to speak, treatment: hunger, cold, humiliation, sometimes beatings. It is good when all the progressive humanity and the world community are harnessed for you, then you will be a human unit, and if you are unknown to anyone Ivanov from Pokrov, and you have no relatives, then you are “convicted”, “convict”, there are no responsibilities, fuzzyly described in the internal rules.

Rules are a separate story. There are written and unwritten rules (which must be carried out in the same way as the written). Why can't you store pajamas under the pillow? Why can't you sit on the bed during the day? Why can't you put a sweater with a “throat” under the form? Why is it necessary to wash and wash once a week, why, finally, treated a neighbor with a chocolate or cigarettes - a serious violation of the regime? You can’t dye your hair, you can’t do a manicure, but - great news - you can begudi! For breakfast, lunch and dinner, we strictly build - take the fives. By the way, eating is a regime event, the absence on it is a jamb, a couple of passes-a schizoma. You can not eat anything (especially since this is a separate test), but it is obliged to be present. And the view of the shape of clothing twice a year on the parade ground with marching for patriotic songs of all, including a pensioner detachment, is an unforgettable spectacle. By the way, somewhere in the bowels there is a record with my marching, in terms of height I am in the first five, it is impossible to hide: someday after the opening of the archives I will boast of the dressing.

You cannot understand this, which means it is easy to break. I violated - received a penalty - closed the way home at parole.

When you realize all this, there are two options: to become a nervous maniac, to be afraid to break some kind of nonsense, become imaginary or do not give a damn about everything and just wait for the end of the term. I had the third option - a tantrum turning into apathy. Only thoughts about family, children help to return to yourself and help. Sooner or later, one way or another it will all end.

In the meantime, this is only the beginning. But the beginning of the movement is home. We need to find the road, find good in bad, funny in sad, light on dark.

That is why the main advice is to find strength and remain man. To leave the dusk, to leave the person.

It will be difficult, it will be scary, it will be sad, it will not be easy.