"Do not wait for philosophical steamboats"

I understood the essence of the current regime for a very long time: his aggressive inhumanity and futility and one of the first to formulate the slogan "It's time to bring down!" - True, not in the meaning that has become the main years, but in more interesting connotations and contexts ... But I’m used to living on the principle of “do what it should, and what will happen”, so I tried to act against my own forecast for all my modest forces. Because too much for me is connected with Russia, I do not want to give it to the bastards too much. And, most importantly, until the last I hoped to reach out to the minds and hearts of the same freedom -loving people - hoping to convince them not to disappear one by one and not trying to adapt, making one after another unreasonable concessions to arbitrariness, but to move to a more meaningful, decisive and consolidated resistance of growing abominations. He proved that it was difficult to achieve its positive transformation with an external pressure on the authoritarian regime - it is certainly necessary to organize smart pressure from the inside, systematically building an alternative. I thought I would be the last who, leaving Russia forever, will turn off the light ...

And now I’m not in Omsk, from which, as the famous meme says, "you should not even try to break out." And not even in Russia - but in Ukraine, in Kyiv.

Briefly about why I still decided on a sudden evacuation (yes, I insist that this is not emigration and refuge, at least for now, namely, emergency and forced evacuation) and whether it is possible to draw any general conclusions from my private case.

The case of "human rights activist-terrorist"

To understand the situation, I remind you of the key points of the absurd business, which the TFR started against me on the notorious Art. 205.2 last May. Nominal investigation of nine months was carried out by employees of the department for particularly important cases of the management of the Investigative Committee in the Omsk Region, and the real customer of this case is the FSB. They began to cook it back in 2017 and did not hide that my human rights status was the main motive for my persecution - as the coordinator of the International Protection Committee Boris Stomakhin . In the criminal case, in which I am still listed as the suspect, I am accused of allegedly “deliberately, in order to propagate and justify terrorism, I posted several materials on the Patriophile website (the radical publicist’s performance with the T.N. was the last word in the third process in April 2015, as well as a publicist-literary material” kill him! or three poets ”, in which three famous poems by Simonov, Nesterenko and Stomakhin are reduced). The absurdity of this accusation, of course, was not embarrassed: neither investigators, nor prosecutors, nor "judges", who recognized the criminal proceedings, and a meaningless and merciless search with the removal of a huge number of personal belongings of my family members again. Selling experts made a whole set of research and conclusions in which they managed to justify even ... my authorship of texts written and pronounced by Stomakhin. And all this in order to discredit independent human rights activities as such, striking the journalist and human rights activist as an accomplice of terrorism.

It has long been clear that the regime will not organize neither philosophical, nor blogger, nor any other ships to give all dissidents to calmly leave the country. So, the salvation of dying from the inability to live in this system is the work of their own hands

The Corba case was recognized as an obvious act of political repressions a number of authoritative Russian and international human rights organizations, including: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, "reporters without borders", the trade union of journalists, PC "Memorial". Under the demand to immediately terminate the criminal prosecution, thousands of people were signed. Far and close friends helped me and my family cope with difficulties because of making me in the list of Rosfinmonitoring, loss of work, withdrawal of all gadgets and computers and blocking all accounts. Colleagues-guards helped with a lawyer and guaranteed all assistance at the "court" stage. I myself was quite ready to defend myself and do everything possible to make this process indicative. Morally, I was even ready for the most unfavorable outcome (knowing very well how all the affairs ordered by the FSB end in modern Russia). But by February 2019, I keenly realized that all this lost its meaning. That I am highly likely to become just another victim on a long list. I will be awarded in several human rights monitoring. I will receive the status of political prisoners, etc. But all this will not particularly worry anyone, except for the narrowest layer of close and active people. And the saddest thing is not to make it shake and break out of the vicious circle of a doomed adaptation to all worsening Russian reality and start acting at least a little more systematically, and not in the format of clip shows or one -day news reasons ...

And, although for me the very prospect of “throwing everything” and forced, suddenly, without preparation, to move to a completely different environment seemed (and still now it seems now) an equally difficult choice than the conclusion, I still lost the arguments of friends and relatives and decided to take this step.

"Save General Korba"

So in a joke, paraphrasing the name of the famous Hollywood film, in communications with friends, I called the operation on the emergency movement of my body from Omsk to Kyiv.

The main complexity of this operation was caused by an almost complete absence of my own skills in an independent movement according to a more complex scheme than buying a ticket and registering for a flight via the Internet, a taxi call and accurate subscription to the signs. The stressful state was intensified by the highest uncertainty of the situation, the unknown of scripts that could play the security forces if they had set the task of not letting me out of the country. On the one hand, I formally had one of the softest regimes of restriction of freedom (the obligation to appear on the first call of the investigator). On the other hand, no one could guarantee that the FSB completely removed the unspoken supervision and would not delay me anywhere in the route, as they did in May 2018, when I did not have any preventive measure at all, but this did not prevent them from taking me off the flight Omsk - Moscow.

And this time I flew to Moscow absolutely legally, with the permission of the investigator (his last replica in the SMS: “Okay, Viktor Vladimirovich, fly calmly, and when you return to Omsk, we will agree on the meeting”), but still psychological stress was limiting.

All the details of this special operation, in which about one and a half dozen people were involved in different roles, I will not disclose for obvious reasons (how to use this experience, see at the end of the publication). I can only say that I had to move around the Russian-Ukrainian border, with an “untreated” telephone, I first presented a passport for the Belarusian border guard, who put a stamp without unnecessary questions (as it became known just a day after my successful transfer, soon the Russian and Belarusian bases will be combined and the situation will change dramatically), and there were no special problems from the Ukrainian side, but, apparently, but only because only because only because only because only because only because only because My friends met me and I had invitations from the residents of Ukraine. In general, in Ukraine they were waiting for me with good, and I got out of Russia without love, but also without obvious problems, not counting the terrible nervous state ...

New life. Start

So, at the age of 54, I suddenly and forcedly ended up in a completely unusual environment. If you know that I am an extremely “household conservative”, and I took only a small backpack and bag within the strict norm of hand luggage, it is easy to imagine that I was called disassembled for the first few days in Kyiv. And I am almost sure that I will not be able to fully get together soon, despite the fact that not only my numerous frends, but also many completely strangers offer help in adaptation. So for now, in this component, I, if I can share, then only with my plans, hopes and ... fears. No, okay, I won’t share fears-I will try to overcome them on my own and, conversely, convey the battery of optimism :-)

Despite the evidence of my situation, I do not want to ask for political asylum. But I do not exclude such an option if it becomes a forced measure (the investigator has already informed me that he was ready to put me on the wanted list). I expect to get the status of a residence permit as a journalist of an independent media. If it doesn’t work out, I will watch other opportunities for legalizing my status. Well, or the Putin regime will still collapse and suddenly, as the hopeless optimists predict, and we can all return and build the PRB with new forces ( "beautiful Russia of the future." - SR ) or free Siberia ... There should be a "sad sarcasm" here.

Of course, I would like to find the opportunity to implement in what I am most strong: in creativity, in media, in project management, in the analytical or human rights sphere. But I understand all the difficulties and restrictions related to my current status, and I do not have any illusions.

Do with us. Do better than us

There is an opinion that the Russian security forces are not at all so bloodthirsty and quite often hint that it is better to leave the country as a defendant of another political business. There is even such a term “squeezing”, and there are many similar examples (from the most famous you can recall Harry Kasparov and Andrei Piontkovsky). But there are a lot of examples of the opposite: when people are grabbed, they are kept in jail for months and years, and then they put in camps and prisons for many years. In the system of legalized arbitrariness, it is impossible to see clear logic, and it is precisely by that it is terrible: its soullessness, accident and seemingly absurdity of violence.

It has long been clear that the regime will not organize neither philosophical, nor blogger, nor any other ships to give all dissidents to calmly leave the country. So, the salvation of dying from the inability to live in this system is the work of their own hands.

Since 2005, I tried to convince friends, colleagues and associates to make one of the main priorities to solve the problem of civil self -defense. He proposed different approaches, tried to initiate the creation and promotion of effective samples (the most successful were the “meetings of free citizens” and the “Omsk civil coalition”). At the Constituent Conference of the Russian National Assembly, the only resolution proposed by me was adopted - it was about this, about the need not to try to replay the regime according to its rules and its field, but to build its own forms and institutions of civilian self -organization ... Meanwhile, the repressions are growing, not leaders, but "ordinary", activists Or even random people. But all the forces of the “opposition” are still spent on the performance of meaningless rituals after the year, and the funds on the “lawyer support” of sublopathy procedures and the numerous “monitoring of the increase in the abomination”. It is not possible to even keep the attention of society on this problem - even the most acute plots in clip perception live only a few days, inferior to new information farms. The theme of public and personal security is smeared among hundreds of less significant or, even worse, completely devoted to the mercy of the most repressive state machine.

My personal experience of many years of resistance within the country and emergency evacuation from it once again confirmed these general grades, adding new bright details to them. And I am ready to share them in private, or better - together, building a reliable system of civil self -defense. In all components and at all stages of the confrontation of free citizens and authoritarian milk.

Victor Corb - sociologist

The "Opinion" expressed in the heading of the point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial office