On the enemy field

While the state pretends that there are rules, we must also fight according to these rules.

Our courts are like our elections—the outcome is almost always known in advance. After all, the authorities arrange elections for themselves, instead of immediately announcing the extension of their own powers, only out of a vague feeling that this is how it should be. Citizens brought or summoned to court know for sure that nothing depends on what they say to the judge - the verdict was written yesterday. Claimants suing the state or its near-state incarnations come to court only to register themselves. Indeed, without passing through the ritual of national justice, they are not allowed into Strasbourg.

But on December 21, Comrade Stalin's birthday and the day after the Day of the Chekist, it was interesting in the Savelovsky Court. Judge Svetlana Lysenko considered Igor Stepanov's lawsuit against Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and invisibly present in the hall was not anyone, but Felix Dzerzhinsky himself, whose position today, figuratively speaking, is replaced by Alexander Bortnikov, director of the FSB.

Stepanov had the audacity to petition for Bortnikov's summons to court.

Of course, they refused him, but they showed humanity and did not punish him for this trick.

A year ago, on the eve of the centenary of the Cheka, Bortnikov gave a lengthy interview to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, modestly titled "The FSB sets accents." Arranges convincingly! Shot, for example, according to the sentences of the so-called. open trials of 1938 are not so innocent - after all, the followers of Trotsky Stalin wanted to kill. And repressions are excesses on the ground, which means that the victims of repressions are actually just victims of specific crimes to which the state has nothing to do. And many violators of socialist legality - those who went too far - were punished. What else do you want?

But during these excesses, Igor Stepanov's relatives were killed without counting, and he also collected documents. And he asked Rossiyskaya Gazeta to let him speak on this topic, because, as he, Stepanov, it seems, Bortnikov did not paint a completely complete picture and that our wonderful state had some relation to repressions. It is the state, and not just individual ghouls.

Rossiyskaya Gazeta, of course, refused him. And Stepanov, instead of wiping himself, as a citizen of the Russian Federation is supposed to, filed a lawsuit. Judge Lysenko - you will be surprised - the lawsuit was also denied. There will be no answer to Stepanov Bortnikov on the pages of Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Then everything will go according to the thumb - the second instance and Strasbourg.

Stepanov is a strange person in general. Being a Colonel of Justice, an entire senior prosecutor of a department in the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia, head of the department of international legal assignments, he refused to go to work in the Investigative Committee, which was separated from the prosecutor's office, because, you see, it was created in violation of the Constitution. By the way, for an appeal to the Constitution, one of his ancestors was shot. And Stepanov has been out of work for a long time.

The state demonstrates the already familiar mixture of cowardice and arrogance. No, it's not us, it's separate, already punished by us, the issue is closed. "Sorry!", as written on the official monument. And at the same time: we, the knights of the revolution and their current heirs, are always right in everything. And what we did was not a crime at all - and don't you dare compare us with the Nazis, and stop reading names at the Solovetsky stone - but a feat. And when six of us broke into an unarmed man - a feat.

And when they shot in the back of the head - do you think it's easy? And when they moved into the apartments of those who were killed yesterday.

How to answer it? Cursing, tweeting, going to rallies? Yes, sure. But Stepanov, a lawyer of the highest qualification, filed a lawsuit, transferring the discussion about repressions and the criminal nature of the communist regime as a whole to the enemy’s field, to courts completely subordinate to the very state that denies the criminal nature of its predecessor. This does not cancel rallies and publications, enlightenment and monuments. But while the state pretends that there are rules, we must fight, including according to these rules. In court, after all, you can say things that are practically impossible anywhere else - you just need to make sure that you are heard outside the walls of a tiny hall. And the verdict of Strasbourg can also be made audible. Once upon a time, a “tape recorder of the Yauza system” and four copies of “Erika” were enough, now there are incomparably more opportunities. So let's not fall into the sin of despondency.

Igor Stepanov will win this case, we will all win this case. Although this is a very long process,

will end, of course, not in the ECtHR, but in our home, when the truth about our tragic history becomes clear to everyone.

In the meantime, at the first, very first stage of this long process, the judge of the Savelovsky Court of Moscow, a quite pretty woman Svetlana Vasilyevna Lysenko, refused Igor Stepanov the right to answer Bortnikov, that is, she ruled in favor of Joseph Stalin, congratulating him on his birthday.