Not conscience, but fear

The head of Rospechat, Mikhail Seslavinsky disavowed a statement about the reasons for his absence at the Dovlatovskoye Reserve Festival in Pskov, published on his behalf at night on the website of the department. The new statement on behalf of the official, placed on the same site, reads : “Having looked at the text of the press service of the Federal Penitentiary Service about the festival in the Pskov region, I want to say that my colleagues spoke out unsuccessfully and my position was incorrectly. The Dovlatovskiye festival will visit the acting head of the agency Vladimir Grigoryev, since I am on vacation.”

In the previous statement, the text of which is still available on the site, it was said that Seslavinsky abolished the trip to Pskov "amid suspicion of involvement of the Governor of the Pskov Region Andrei Tourchak to attack journalist Oleg Kashin."

“Building an official post and being closely connected with the media, I'm afraid that my arrival will be incorrectly interpreted, and I do not want it to be perceived as moral support of the leadership of the Pskov region,” Seslavinsky, according to the report, said.

The first Dovlatov festival ("Dovlatovfest") opens on September 17. It is carried out under the patronage of the Pskov governor at the expense of the Federal Ministry of Culture.

The Kremlin pool journalist Andrei Kolesnikov, who was going to celebrate the birthday of his magazine Russian Pioneer, was the first to refuse the festival to participate in the festival. In Pioneer Readings, Turchak was supposed to take part. “I canceled all this. We cannot,” Kolesnikov wrote on Facebook on September 7, afterKashin published the names of the suspects and announced the disclosure of the case.

On September 16, the wife of the arrested Danila Veselov confirmed in an interview with Kommersant that the attack on Kashin ordered Turchak. After that, poets Sergey Gandlevsky, Polina Barskova, Alexey Tsvetkov refused to participate in the Dovlatov festival. At the same time, writer Viktor Erofeev, film director Alexei German Jr., film critic Andrei Plakhov confirmed their participation. “We are going to Dovlatov and Pushkin, and not to the official structures of the Pskov region,” Erofeev explained in an interview with the Pskov province.

In turn, the poet Vera Polozkova explained that as a curator of the poetic program of the festival, she is responsible to the organizers invited by authors and spectators. “Just throw everything halfway and bring people because of - yes, monstrous - the agenda that arose a few days before the festival was simply unprofessional and vile,” wrote Polozkova.