Translated material
"My homeland was stolen." As a musician from the city, the bottom became a political emigrant
The musician from the city of the bottom of the Pskov region Boris Yakovlev received a political asylum in Finland in July 2019. Two years ago, he was accused of extremism: the Russian intelligence agencies saw signs of extremist activity in the texts of Yakovlev’s poems and songs, a criminal case was opened against him and condemned. True, Yakovlev was not at the trial - by that time he was already a refugee in Finland and was waiting for a decision on political asylum.
"Many do not believe that the bottom exists"
***
It was not useful to his country,
Thieves and quilted jackets - alien,
Live as they did not learn,
The gangster "Ruzic World" is not mine!
8.8.2019
***
Remembering the last three years of life in Russia, Boris Yakovlev is perplexed how people could change so much that even the closest friends turned into enemies. With the musicians from the rock group in which Boris played, he stopped communicating in 2014.
“After Crimea, everyone as if it had demolished the tower,” he recalls. -Already in recent years, we did not communicate with the guys often, because life scattered a little, someone went into business, the stomach has grown, lost interest in music. But how can the rocker be a "Crimean"? And they called me in the summer of 2014, when I already constantly lived in the bottom, and they say: "Let's finish our anti-Russian posts there, otherwise we will come to your bottom and we will pour you e ****." Well, I sent them and did not communicate with them anymore. What can we say about the neighbors in the outback, who stopped saying with me when they found out that the FSB had an extremist article on me.
"The least I want to communicate with the quilted jackets"
***
They don’t beat the bottle on the forehead,
Do not thump in the middle of the graves,
In the Finnish sauna, in the steam room
You will not be asked: "Did you serve?"
They do not steal from the budget,
Nyskaya money in offshore,
The deputies do not live
The president of the country is not a thief.
***
“I can’t even believe that finally I am at home,” says Boris Yakovlev. He brings into a one -room apartment in one of the areas of the Finnish city of Yoensu several black bags and road bags - personal belongings that Liexes brought from the neighboring city. There he lived in recent months in a refugee camp waiting for the decision of the Finnish court to provide asylum. - Wow, how much “good” has accumulated, but he arrived in jeans and a T -shirt.
In Finland, over the past two years, Boris replaced several refugee camps: he lived in Espoo, Helsinki, Liexes. “Like in the barracks,” Boris calls his bed in a room for 10 people.
Double -tier iron beds are curtained with sheets, bedspreads, towels. Behind homemade screens are neighbors from Chechnya, Georgia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Albania, Somalia, Nigeria, Kosovo. They constantly, many hours, talk with the remaining at home relatives on the phone.
Some of the neighbors in the camp for many years, managed to learn the Finnish language and even find a part-time job, but for some reason continues to live there. But such units, the rest often change: someone gives a residence permit and he moves to his own housing, someone is transferred to another camp, someone is deported.
- I didn’t have time to remember some by name, I couldn’t even get acquainted, because a constant turnover. And what should we talk about with them? Most of them, including this, refers to Russian-speaking, some kind of muddy.
It is especially surprising that the "quilted jackets" come from where, they least want to communicate with them
It is not clear at all why they were here and what they want. It is especially surprising that the "quilted jackets" come from where they have the least, I want to communicate with them. And now, when I got out of the camp, it turned out that Putinets also live in a neighboring apartment, and even a former trace. And what does he, ask, did not sit in his homeland? - Asks a question Boris, who ultimately donkey in Eastern Finland, the city of Joensuu.
***
For some, the bottom is Europe,
For me there is just an ass.
2004
***
Boris recalls the Russian “outback” not without irony. He says that the bottom, and indeed the Pskov region, is the embodiment of the Russian province. The name is so metaphorical that many do not believe that the bottom exists.
- One woman phoned a straight line with Putin. The operator asks: where are you from? - I'm from the city the bottom. - Such a city does not exist. - and hung up the phone. Apparently, I felt a catch.
Boris decided to leave from the bottom in July 2017. Then it became clear that the case of extremist songs and posts on the VKontakte network will most likely end with a real prison term.
Boris calls the history of departure from Russia a series of random and curious coincidences, luck, but also an acquitted risk. Yakovlev considers investigators of the FSB who worked in his case inexperienced sludge. After the first search, he was brought to Pskov without documents: they didn’t even take an internal passport from the house, not to mention the foreign, which later came in handy. Later, one of the investigators admitted to Boris that on top, they say, there was an instruction to send him to a pre-trial detention center immediately, but on the spot they decided that he had nowhere to go from the bottom and nothing: an unemployed 45-year-old musician caring for an old mother-mother. Yakovlev was released home "under the subscription of the lower way."
***
They do not plant humble in prison,
The repost of cats is not prohibited.
Plant those who interfere with a lie,
Who spoils the nits of a sweet dream!
August 9, 2019
***
- If they put me in a pre -trial detention center, no one would have recognized about this case. And so I immediately left the interrogation and called Lev Schlosberg from Yabloko, who brought me to Dmitry Dinze’s lawyer, ”recalls Boris.
Boris does not hold evil to the investigative group, calls them "inexperienced villains." He recalls how he joked with them during a search at home (“I’m about Putin, they are about Putin”) and during the first interrogation (“where are you tortured?” - “Wait, in torture later, while drinking coffee”). He says that the investigator who called him for interrogation, from his own pocket gave money to a return ticket to the bottom to the bottom.
But Yakovlev also found real well -wishers: one of the local residents, constantly wandering between Pskov and Stockholm, not only advised a relatively safe route through Belarus, but also went with Boris. As a result, they ended up in Sweden (they helped this person’s connections on the Russian-Belarusian border).
***
Flicker outside the window of the house, forests,
Show must go on plays in headphones,
The vile tear shines in eyelashes -
He leaves the house forever.
January 31, 2019
***
- Honestly, I wanted to stay in Sweden, but my friend said that there is a Dublin agreement, and that in any case I would have to go to Finland. He put me on a ferry and sent me to Helsinki, in jeans, a T -shirt and a pack of cookies. So I fell into the arms of Finnish policemen, ”Boris recalls.
"Even if the Finns eventually refused me"
Finland is not the most hospitable country for political refugees. Including from Russia. The latest data from the Migration Service of Finland suggests that the refuge for Russians is provided only by one of the seven petitioners.
In 2017, the Russians became the second largest, after the Iraqis, a group of suppliers of political asylum. This happened after the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia recognized as extremist and banned its activities.
The Finnish News Agency Yle quotes the ex-head of the ESCO refugee department of ESCO , who recognizes that “changes in Russian legislation immediately affect the number of refugees”: in 2013, after the law on the prohibition of propaganda of homosexuality among minors, the number of applicants from among sexual minorities increased. Many statements are submitted by political activists and residents of the republics of the North Caucasus, primarily Chechnya. However, the Finnish authorities do not disclose detailed statistics on the categories of asylum of refuge. The Finnish journalist Mikko Sauli calls the provision of political asylum to Russian citizens a rare, but "not incredible" case. So, in August 2019, Finland provided the asylum with a passing witness in the case of the "network" Ilya Kapustin.
“I was never interested in statistics,” Yakovlev retorts, “I had no choice.” And, honestly, if the Finns eventually refused me, I would still be grateful to them for the two years that I spent here. I had where to live, what is and what to buy cigarettes.
To make a positive decision, the Finns had enough arguments: all the materials of the case, interrogations and searches were handed over to the Finnish migration authorities along with the media materials and a letter of support from Leo Schlosberg. In addition, after his mother, the musician’s mother, after his departure from Russia and the second criminal case excited by the Investigative Committee, spoke of the lasting persecution, which also increased the chances of the positive response of the Finnish authorities.
But Yakovlev was not going to wait for a decision, lying on a bed in a migrant dormitory: "friends" on a social network helped to quickly find a job. One of them proposed an unofficial part -time job, which was not bad for the first time. A few months later, Boris officially got a job as a cleaner in the hostel. But when the hostess-Estona found out that Boris criticizes Putin, she did not extend the contract.
-The hostess of the hostel asked me somehow what I was doing in Finland. I replied that I was running away from Putin. After that, the contract did not extend with me, ”says Boris.
***
Tänämen on keskiviikkona
Kello yhdeksän kaksitoista aamulla
Mina Menen Suihkuun Ja
Syömään Juusto, Tomatti, Omena, Banaaneja ...
[Today is Wednesday
Nine in the morning
I take a shower
Bananas, apples, tomatoes, cheese eat]
December 19, 2018
***
But in the veterinary clinic, where the cleaner was also required, no questions were asked. There, Boris worked until the camp was disbanded to Helsinki, and he was not sent to the city of Liexes, in Eastern Finland, almost on the border with Russia. During his life in Helsinki, Yakovlev taught Finnish (courses were organized right in the camp) and began to learn English. And even began (in a joke) to compose poems in a foreign language, wrote a verse for the Day of Independence of Finland.
***
Fruits do not crush the tractor,
Removing from children,
They do not plant reposts
Those with criticism of the authorities.
Do not spit on a person
Luxury - stupidity, Moveton,
Labor and mind is the key to success,
The law is respected.
Never, no one
Will not give you so
The happiness of the Finnish people
Conquered in battles.
December 6, 2018 (Independence Day of Finland)
***
"Nobody wants anything"
Boris plans to stay and work in the city of Yoensuu, the twin of Karelian Petrozavodsk. Here he likes the fact that this is a province, like his native bottom, where "a little people." True, unlike the Russian hinterland, in Joensu there is everything that is needed for a normal life, including work. Despite the fact that Finnish laws guarantee everyone who is granted refugee status, social benefits, housing, insurance, Boris does not plan to sit on the state of the state:
No work, even the most prestigious, does not break off
- Any work that is suitable for health will arrange me. I can’t work at a construction site, and I can’t wear severity because of a sick leg. But no work, even the most prestigious, is breaking away: in Russia I worked as a manager, and at the factory, in Finland and toilets in the hostel washed, and was cleaned in a veterinary clinic. I’m ready to do something like that, ”says Yakovlev.
In the bottom he had relatives - mother, son, cousin. He is most worried about his mother, who is alone and there is no one to take care of her every day. The son of Boris lives in another city and cannot constantly visit his grandmother. Mom was the first person to whom Boris admitted that he decided to escape from the country, and she made this decision, approved, although she was shocked. The brother did the same.
***
Mom today is 71. Live as long as possible, dear!
Life is more dramatic than tears from the screen,
The finale cannot be predicted.
Do not cry, dear
Quiet, mom ...
Maybe we will meet
Who knows ...
It was not possible to resist
Sniff
Keep silent
Now you have to hide
To continue to expose.
July 18, 2019
***
- Father would also approve if he were alive. He greatly influenced me in the late 80s with his critical attitude to what was happening in the country, this is his upbringing. He did not see the future with the Soviet Union, and I do not see it from today's Russia. My homeland was stolen, they all stole it from us. Our people do not understand that without freedom of speech there will be neither sausage nor "beautiful Russia of the future." Unfortunately, most are satisfied with what is, ”says Boris. - Modern people have forgotten how to defend their rights. Especially in the provinces. I'm from the hinterland. I know the mood of the masses. Nobody wants anything. When they started the case on me, my friends looked at me like an idiot. They stopped greeting me.
However, pessimism in relation to the future of Russia is not always reflected in creativity. In Boris’s songs, “Beautiful Russia of the Future” appears, and people who woke up at some point defeat the “ghouls”.
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0:00 0:04:54In Boris's social networks, thousands of subscribers are still popular his posts. Yakovlev himself understands that those who repost his critical notes about events in the country are very at risk. He wrote several times that he did not advise spreading his thoughts on social networks, but people continue to do it.