Translated material
A letter to you!
How several lines can be saved from torture loneliness
For the past four years, the St. Petersburg philologist Elena Efros has been writing letters every day. Almost all of them are addressed to institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service - colony and investigative insulators. And almost all of them are written by people whom Elena personally does not know. These people are political prisoners.
“How did it all start, Lena?”
- It began for a long time and my mother, writer Nina Katerli, who was friends with the late lawyer Yuri Markovich Schmidt. Through him, she became interested in the case of Yukos and the history of Alexei Pichugin, sentenced to life imprisonment, began to correspond with Lesha. These were alive, paper letters, I remember how I took out the Pichugin’s envelopes from the mailbox, went home - and my mother immediately: you are again a letter from prison. That is, this example was before my eyes.
- And there was, therefore, a fear of writing to a political prisoner?
- There was no fear, of course, all the more the correspondence was not forbidden and permitted by law. When the repressions of the “swamp business” began, I wrote to the children convicts, wrote to Sergey Mokhnatkin and Peter Pavlensky, they answered, I was very proud, showed everyone: look, I sent a Pavlensky letter to me ... But these were some episodic things. And then, remember, the end of 2015, the engineer was imprisoned by Vanya Nepomnya for two and a half years for a blow by a police umbrella during the events in Bolotnaya? Further-the story with Ildar Dadin, the protest wave somehow subsided, the rallies did not lead to anything, I felt completely lost and did not understand what I was doing in this world, why I was sitting evenly, seeing around around ...
- That is, complete confusion and shame, what can not help?
- Well, yes. And then my daughter Masha once says: we cannot fight on the barricades, but we can come up with a project to support people in conclusion to do something to direct the existence of those inside. We began to think. And she and her children had such a game: they sat under the table, covered with a tablecloth, and to endlessly told each other fairy tales, it was called “Tales in the Dark”. And I was very hooked by the word “fairy tales”, I thought that it was possible on a permanent basis to start a correspondence with political officers and write to them not only about the news, but also to compose or search for stories that would be interesting to people.
- To do so, first of all, so that the person who is sitting behind bars regularly receives letters and know that he is not alone?
-And the jailers will see that he is not one, that a person is of an interest in society and, accordingly, at least some control ... They will not dump-there is a chance.
Now I know that some sidelski read our stories in whole cameras, this adds popularity to the owner of the letter, which is very important in the colony.
- And where did you start?
- From the group on Facebook called "Tales for Political Persons." The “May 6 Committee” (supporting prisoners from Bolotnaya Square) helped create a table where all the information about the guys were entered: the names where anyone is sitting, a birthday and where to send what stories not to be repeated. By the way, we are now leading this table now, and anyone who wants to write letters to political and can see us for help. And then, at the very beginning, I personally wrote to all the prisoners of the “swamp business” who were sitting at that time. It was such a fan newsletter - in fact, spam, with a story about this project and the main question: is it interesting?
- And who was the first to respond?
- Anarchist Dima Buchenkov, candidate of political sciences, sitting at that time in a pre -trial detention center. Dima was so interested that he wanted not only to receive letters from us, but also to write stories for our “fairy tales”. The prison bestseller was his satirical fairy tale about the new adventures of the pig’s piglet: they arrest the pounds, judge, and then he escapes. Sometimes Funtik had problems with censorship, then I had to send something else ...
- And who is now participating in the spelling of “Fairy Tales for Political Persons”?
-My mother Nina Katerli all the time sends unpublished stories, specially for our sidella, Tatyana Bonch-Osmolovskaya began to write, she lives in Australia and talks about this country. By the way, as a result, a whole book turned out to be from its stories, it was published and called “Eucalyptus Leaves”. These stories were read by Sergey Mokhnatkin, Mikola Karpyuk, Yuri Dmitriev, Bogdan Golonkov and others. We have many amateur authors, unprofessional, I myself compose something. Well, those who directly send letters are ten people. We have very active volunteers in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and there are outside Russia-they not only write letters, but make programs, send books with political prisoners, order products in the online store for them. We have no funding, we send everything at our own expense.
- How many letters per month do you personally write?
- I write about fifty, but others even more.
- The existential crisis, as I understand it, has left?
- Fully. Sometimes there is a panic on the verge of hysteria that I do not have time.
-Do the tastes and requests of political officers change?
- More! Nobody needs a pound. New youth, who sat in resonance affairs, refers to the texts more selectively, consciously. Many people just need the news of political life, non -price - from the series “TASS is authorized to declare”. Often they ask to send texts in one or another field of knowledge - who is about biotechnology, some in history, and recently sent to Penza, which contains the guys in the case of the “network” ( an organization banned in the Russian Federation. - Ed. ), Excerpts from Mayakovsky’s article “How to make poems” at their request. It used to be simple: I took a fairy tale, attributed something to it, and now you are sitting, doing research, monitor the Internet, looking for an answer to the question. It all fascinates me all!
I’m not even saying about scientists: here is the 80-year-old scientist Vladimir Ivanovich Lapigin sitting in the Tver region, he is terribly interesting to news about space, in general, everything that happens in his science, while he is excluded from it-well, we are looking for space news. By the way, in the colony he works in a prison library with Alexei Ulyukaev.
- Probably, you will be happy to participate in "fairy tales for political prisoners" professional writers and journalists writing on a variety of topics?
- Without a doubt. Let them just write me a personal message in our Facebook group.
- Well, what to do to an ordinary person? What to write the first letter about?
- Yes, so write, standard text, such as: Hello, I learned about your business from the media or from the Internet, whether you want to correspond with me, if so, what topics are interesting to you. And do not worry in any case, if you are not answered, just write to someone else.
- What is the best way to send letters and is it an expensive pleasure?
-The most convenient, of course, is through the Electronic System of the FSIN-Subject, it is simple and accessible. After receiving the letter to the institution’s address, the censor is viewed, if he does not miss him, you will be immediately notified about this, and the answer (it needs to be paid in advance) your addressee writes by hand on a special numbered form, which will be scanned and sent to you to e-mail. Unfortunately, the FSIN-Subject does not operate throughout the country, and it costs much more than a simple letter. There is also a non-profit volunteer project “Rosuznik”, which is engaged in a purely technical transfer of letters-this is for those who write from abroad, who are completely lazy to reach the mailbox or who has absolutely no money ...
- As I understand it, you can also invest in a simple letter?
- Certainly. Both photos and postcards. In people who are sitting for a long time, sensory hunger occurs, they sit in these gray walls, colors, they definitely lack flowers, so we often send reproductions, plus pictures always more easily pass censorship than letters. True, there are also curious cases, one such was with Roman Suschenko: our volunteer sent him a beautiful postcard with sunflower, and he answered - why did you send me a postcard since November 7? Then we realized that the sunflower just liked the censor ...
- What is the most pleasant for you in your "fabulous" project?
-When one of our wards is released and stops writing to us.