Heavy broom

The Arkhangelsk activist was sent to the colony for 2.5 years for the repost of the Rammstein clip

“Today I saw a son. We went to the ultrasound. Seventh month already. It is so strange that I am already an adult and already a father! It all seems that I'm still small. No, I am 33 years old, I'm father! Son will be born! "

Andrei sits in front of me happy. He does not think now, does not want to think that he will not meet his wife with a newborn first -born. That the son, who smiles, is frowning in muddy pictures of ultrasound, will see him, Andrei, only after three years. He does not want to think about it, because today he first gave slack. Hefty, two -meter, loud, like a young Mayakovsky, he laughed all six months and ships in the face of those who wanted to make him inaudible and invisible. And today I suddenly realized that there was silence around.

There are no more interrogations of witnesses on which he brilliantly brought informers to clean water. There is no interview and a murmur of supporters who were stubbornly not allowed to court. There are no streams that he calmly led from the courtroom over himself, mocking attempts to isolate the shameful process from prying eyes. Silence. Two days before the sentence.

Borovikov had no doubt that he would be indictable. Not for that they started a shameful, absurd business to justify.

Not for that, the court, a whole court, and not a hearing, were closed - from journalists. He, in general, knew what he was going on. And he did not try to run away. He's just alive. And he is scared to step into the darkness.

Two days later, I stand in front of the Lomonosov court.

“Without hope in our business is impossible. Otherwise, you don’t need to do anything. Recall the story. 20 years of the current regime - for the history of nonsense, ”says Borovikov, encouraging those who came to support him. On the porch of the Lomonosov court, his parents, wife, brother, lawyer, archangel activists.

There are many people. Snow cereals are sprinkled, people are squeezing under the visor on the porch of the court. No one is allowed inside: with full freemen and open karaoke and concert halls, the Lomonosov court, as if one on the front edge of the fight against Covid - was already allowed into the regional court and other regional journalists, and this one holds the defense.

The “new” in response to the accreditation request was first recommended to write an official request, then they thought about the answer for a week, and then wrote, they say, coronavirus restrictions, the entrance was closed. Together with colleagues, we still storm the court, armed with press cards. “You can’t let it down, the chairman of the court forbade,” the unsophisticated bailiff answers at the entrance. The process, I recall, is open. “You violate the resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court,” I say. “What a plenum? The chairman banned! " - the bailiff is surprised.

Close the doors when it is a shame. We are standing on the street. Journalists, activists, pregnant Dasha Borovikova.

And Andrei is standing, only he stands there, inside, from where only in a car zone and in a pre -trial detention center. The court has strong walls. And the windows are closed. But we hear everything, and every word of the sentence is heard to us. Andrei leads the last stream for us.

“The name of the Russian Federation,” begins Judge Valkov. The Russian Federation is us. This is the sentence by our name by a quiet person in a mantle with slurred speech. By our name, he certifies that seven years ago, having retained on social networks the official video of the Rammstein group, not banned in the Russian Federation by any court or supervisory authority, Andrei Vladimirovich Borovikov, born in 1988, underwent a crime under paragraph “B” of part 3 of Art. 242 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Illegal circulation of pornographic materials using the Internet)."

“The comrade is leaving for the distant land,” Till Lindemann sings carefully, copying the intonations of Mark Bernes. Sings well. The clip broke the hit parades. No wonder he paid money to the Film Foundation for the film by Bekmambetov, which is this video. I wonder if there was a dilemma in front of the judge: a pornograph German Till or the Soviet Patriot? After all, if a pornograph - how is the Film Fund? And if well done, over whose video the patriots let a tear, then what is the deadline for the fan?

In the last word, the defendant fidgeted, recommending to interrogate Lindemanne, and the address said: “Berlin, Hurtstrasse, 37, ask Ramstein.

After all, if he distributed porn, then it is necessary to attract the manufacturer. And here he is, who is being removed in Moscow for a month. Silence. From Lindemann in response to the letters of Andrei (both our letters and the requests of the magazine "Spiegel") are also silence. I did not descend neither to the comment, nor to the words of support. Toxic, probably, to support the persecuted when you shoot in Russia in an expensive project. Or maybe simply, I did not understand what it was about and how it could be.

And, true, how?

But how. In order to put an activist who was fighting against the construction of a landfill at Shiies, who spoke at anti -muquilo rallies and breathed his life into the local headquarters of Navalny, the police needed a sent Cossack, or, in police jargon, “torpedo”. This role was played by the local loader Durynin, who, hung with video equipment, appeared at the headquarters, where he used to be a volunteer. He asked Borovikov to show him the cherished clip, and when Andrei did not understand what it was about, he himself helped to find a record among the video preserved in his account. And after viewing, he suggested that they can attract this, they say, porn is. Borovikov was surprised, but just in case I immediately deleted the video.

This did not prevent the police from initiating a criminal case against him under a difficult article.

It is curious that, as Borovikov told journalists, “special operations” were preceded by some problems in Durynin himself: he allegedly left a comment on the Internet under the record of the self -tapping terrorist Zlobitsky in the building of the Arkhangelsk FSB (history, for the commenting of which more than one and a half dozens of criminal cases to justify terrorism have been instituted in the country). “Durynin was caught and said, they say, either you will be responsible for extremism, or put on the camera and the microphone and go to Navalny's headquarters. But I have no documents to assert one hundred percent, ”Borovikov quotes DW.

There were still a couple of witnesses who allegedly accidentally saw the clip on the page of Borovikov’s unfamiliar (at the record of hundreds of reposts) and mentally injured. One of them in court admitted that the police themselves went to him and offered to testify, and what was in his biography more than once.

There is an examination in the case, which recognized the creation of the German group with pornography and did not find artistic value in it.

Based on this, the prosecutor asked Andrei for three years of strict regime, because by the beginning of the consideration of the case the activist had an outstanding criminal record on the “Dadin” article. In the framework of that case, Borovikov was recognized as a “memorial” (we are forced to indicate that the Ministry of Justice considers the organization a “foreign agent”) a person persecuted for political reasons.

The court then appointed the activist for mandatory work. They came to an end, when suddenly there was a new reason for criminal prosecution. By that time, Andrei was also involved in a number of administrative articles: for propaganda of drugs and demonstration of Nazi symbols, for example, all this for the videos not prohibited by the court in VKontakte.

On the day of the sentence, the prosecutor asked to resume the judicial investigation to announce another examination made in Yekaterinburg. Its authors also recognized the video not by a work of art, but porn. The discs with the records attached to her were in envelopes opened by someone. True, the state prosecution suddenly softened its requirements, and instead of strict regime, I asked Andrei to send to the general.

And the judge had gone for six months. “Two years six months with serving a general regime in a colony,” it sounds in the hall.

Dasha turns pale. For three hours she stood at the court in her thin white coat, embracing her stomach with her hands. She does not cry to the last. She just does not understand. The court did not have a car carrier before the announcement, and for a conditional term still hoped, even though Borovikov came with things.

People are indignant. Over the years of the struggle for Shies, 70 of his defenders were brought to administrative responsibility, three to criminal. Now, when the new Arkhangelsk governor is exposing himself as the main defender of nature, these matters are not revised, and the repression is actually ongoing.

We stand for a long time at the lattice corridor, from where Andrei will be taken out. Auto -zak rises on the lawn at the court. "They don't give so much bandits!" - Grandmother speaks with Pomeranian dousing on the sidelines.

- We dispersed, who allowed you to shoot here? - shouts the Muzzle Warrant Officer.

“The law,” the journalist replies.

- Law! - The ensign grunts and demands that Dasha remove her hands from the grate.

She was not allowed to say goodbye to her husband.

"Don't be afraid, friends!" - manages to shout Borovikov.