“I'm a fanatic. Fanatics cannot be frightened "

The article The New Yorker about Lyubov Sobol - as short

In childhood, Love Sobol loved the Soviet series about Sherlock Holmes. She wanted to be a private detective, but adults said that such a profession no longer exists, so she decided to become an investigator. But then I read the speeches of lawyers in the courts of pre -revolutionary Russia - and went to study as a lawyer. Sable specialized in corporate law.

At the university, she began to read the blog of Alexei Navalny in the Live Journal. And a year later, in 2011, she went to work for him. She was paid two thousand dollars (much less than she could earn a corporate lawyer), but Sobol was ready to work for free. In 2012, she married a social anthropologist Sergei Mokhov, and in 2014 she gave birth to a daughter Miroslava.

In the team of Navalny, Sobol studied the purchases of Russian state -owned companies and once drew attention to firms related to businessman Evgeny Prigozhin. In 2016, the Navalny team released an investigation about him, and a month later the husband was pricked by unknown liquid. Nobody suffered the responsibility for this, and Mokhov was convinced that "in Russia there is no and will never justice."

Sobol again collided with Prigozhin in 2019: his company was connected with a flash of dysentery in Moscow schools, the FBK issued an investigation about this. It all ended with a series of lawsuits from the businessman. The courts obliged Sobol, Navalny and the FBK to pay him more than a million dollars. Due to these and subsequent lawsuits Prigozhin, Sobol must pay him compensation from his salary. At the end of 2020, she quit FBK, becoming a volunteer in the Navalny team. Her colleagues think that Prigozhin perceives her as his personal enemy.

In 2019, Sobol wanted to participate in the elections of deputies of the Moscow City Duma, but she was not allowed . She kept a hunger strike for 32 days, lost almost 11 kilograms and all the last week without food was constantly on the verge of fainting. Elections to the Moscow City Duma led to the emergence of "Moscow business." Then Sobol escaped criminal prosecution - but at the end of 2020 she was accused of an “apartment case” . While she was under house arrest, her husband went to work in the UK. Mother came to help with her granddaughter. After the next police visit, Sobol rented a small apartment not far from her own early in the morning and her daughter began to live alone. In April 2021, she received a year of correctional labor conditionally.

In the same month, the prosecutor's office demanded to recognize the structures of Navalny extremist. Sable had to refuse to participate in the elections to the State Duma. She remained one of the few key associates of Navalny, who had not left the country yet. She does not want to leave Russia - although her husband does not see another exit. “Lyuba says that I knew what I got involved when I married her, but I did not know. I married a young lawyer, not opposition policy, ”says Mokhov. “I am a fanatic by nature. Fanatics cannot be frightened. The only threat to fanatic is disappointment. But my faith is justice, and I cannot be disappointed in it, ”says Sobol.

This is an approximate retelling of the article by journalist Masha Hessen for The New Yorker. You can read it completely here .

Rethered by Olga Korelina