Again about the Turks

An interview with Oksana Shalygin , a cohabitant, or, as she prefers to speak, a colleague of Peter Pavlensky, makes a difficult impression. She talks about the household atmosphere of this family: there is no furniture in the apartment, Pavlensky threw the wardrobe in the trash, the clothes are hanging on the nails, the children (two) do not give meat food, and when they once asked for this, the mother said: well, let's go to the market, buy a living chicken, and then you will cut it and cook it yourself. Children refused horror. Now another woman has appeared in their family, on what grounds, it is not quite clear from the interview, but you can guess.

Oksana says that their whole life was built on the uncompromising truth expressed without delay, and when she once did not immediately tell Peter about something, he could not like it, she chopped off her finger. The interviewer recalled Rakhmetov several times, who slept on the nails. The part with a severed finger makes us remember the "Father Sergius" Leo Tolstoy.

These paintings really force to recall the famous Russian nihilists: Rakhmetov’s invented, and the true Znamensky commune of Vasily Sleptsov , and the irreconcilable moralization of Leo Tolstoy, who did not see a single criminal in the inhabitants of Russian prisons (see his “resurrection”). Of course, all this was a sign of the doom of the then Russian life, the harbinger of inevitable disaster. She occurred in 1917. And now the same signs are accumulating, which testifies not only to the quirks of the individual psyche, but also of distress in the social atmosphere. And above all - about the alienation of people from society. Is it to wait for a new disaster?

Let us return from Olga to Pavlensky himself with his recent action of the arson of the doors of the FSB building. Of course, this is a very spectacular action, but stylistically different from its other shares. Recall: he sewed his mouth, entangled his naked body with barbed wire, nailed the scrotum to the paving stones of Red Square. And here it must be said about another difference between Pavlensky’s corporatism from other known shares. Before Pavlensky, the current Russian actionism was essentially mischief - although Pussy Riot paid for this in a prison term. But this characterizes not them, but the authorities. Let us recall the sensational cases: Alexander Brenner masturbates on a tower for jumping into the water, or in the picture of Van Gogh draws a dollar sign, or defecates in the same famous paintings. Or shares of the “War” group: turning the police cars, a collective copulation in the Zoological Museum, a member drawn on a foundry bridge raised opposite the Gabuhah building in St. Petersburg, the notorious large house.

It seems that there are no civilized means left to influence the Russian authorities or tell her something important

The shares of Pavlensky are of a completely different character: they are serious, one might say, deadly serious. Each time we are talking about srubbing your own body. The similarity of Pavlensky shares with the practices of prisoners, with a camp life, is striking. This is a stylistic lesson, it is they sew their mouths and pin the scrotum. Still swallow spoons. Or - here is already a connection with the last action of Pavlensky - they make a tattoo on the forehead: a slave to communism or a slave of Khrushchev. Such coincidences make Pavlensky's Epistence the maximum: the country, the current Russia is a camp. And if now this is not entirely true, then it goes to this, and Pavlensky desperately signals this.

There is a significant text of these camp practices belonging to the pen of Andrei Sinyavsky, an experienced camp, - this is his speech at the international conference in Switzerland, dedicated to the topic "Loneliness and Communication". Sinyavsky says that such self-coating is the last means to say something when no other means exist. All rights, any means of communication are taken from the camp, only his body has his own body. And this body, its kaularization is made a means of communication, if you like, information. Pavlensky wants to say that the current Russia is a camp area.

The fact that such shares went beyond the camps is an ominous sign. It seems that there are no civilized means to influence the Russian authorities or tell her something important. Power does not rule well, and now we know that power is always to blame for all social disasters. For her, the destruction of the fabric of social being can not be unpunished for her: public amateur performances, truthful information, labor activity, and finally, the family. And it does not leave that some deadlines are nearing, that difficult trials are underway - and that the Turks are by no means interfering with normal Russian life. And if the Turks, then the "internal", as Nikolai Dobrolyubov wrote about this and a half years ago .

Boris Paramonov-New York writer and publicist

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