Lessons about what's important

Family portrait of a Tver “activist”. The criminal case against Sergei Neverov was dropped - let’s count this as a victory halfway...

In the story about Sergei Neverov from Tver, we are slightly lacking in drive; it seems to sag in the middle with a question mark: what next?

And it’s good that this is the case for now - the ending could have been worse: Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code (repeated discrediting of the armed forces) for several posts on social networks threatened with five years. But the lawyer turned out to be strong, and the case was put together somehow: the examination was carried out by a “theologian” and not as it should be, then the prosecutor was swept away for a bribe in another case, and the case was postponed over and over again until the judge, with a sigh of relief, stopped it in November due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. Such a happy ending today can be considered a victory, but Neverov is not going to stop there.

My wife Yulia answers my question about the family’s prospects: “He’s a big boy—let him decide for himself.” At home they talk little about politics, and besides their wife, there are four children of preschool and school age, two dogs and a cat. The eldest daughter Marusya, when asked whether they are told everything correctly at school during “lessons about important things,” looks inquisitively and answers that yes, everything is correct. Then “zugzwang” - any next move leads to defeat on either one or the other board.

When Center “E” came wearing masks for an “examination” the first time, it was a little scary, but the second time, at 6 a.m. on April 28, 2023, it was no longer so. The “eschniks” had a grinder and a sledgehammer with them to open the door, but the owner opened it himself.

He just refused to be filmed in his underpants, and gave out what he was looking for voluntarily: a phone - here, a laptop - please, he admits the posts, but he is not guilty, just don’t make noise, some of the children are still sleeping.

The dogs, wagging their tails, poked at the knees of the “eshniks”, not understanding why they were not petted: they grew up in the belief that all people are kind. Maybe these weren’t evil either, it’s just their job. The investigator walked around with a stone face, and the detective, left alone, talked with Neverov, asked why he needed all this, and he explained as best he could.

Major Piskunov probably expected to see a different house and a different owner. Still, anti-war posts on social networks bear the stamp of anguish; we also assume this trait in the authors, expecting to see another urban madman. But no signs of hysteria are visible in Neverov’s face; on the contrary, he is invariably friendly and tries to patiently explain everything. He's not even a rebel.

In Tver, Neverov is a sought-after manager; he explains his successes by the fact that “people have forgotten how to talk to each other,” and from somewhere he got the ability to seat them opposite each other so that everything begins to work out. At the age of 7, the coach appointed him captain of the hockey team of boys born in 1979, and guessed: the captain should take care of others, be both on his own and in the team. The boy Seryozha lived by hockey and didn’t think about anything else. He remained captain until the team collapsed in the mid-90s because there was no time for games.

During those difficult times, Neverov, who had two younger sisters and his father left them, started renovating apartments at the age of 14. And he bought his current one on two levels at the local “Rublyovka” about five years ago at cost in a complex whose construction he himself supervised. He is here and the chairman of the homeowners association, today he has both honor and plenty of everything, 45 years is the prime of his strength and talents. So sit on your ass straight, why stick your head into the wolf’s mouth over and over again?

But the fact is that at some point Neverov discovered his own opinion. Since it exists, something needs to be done with it. He had never asked himself this question before, but when he asked me: when he discovered this rare quality, he didn’t answer right away, he thought about it. Well, maybe here...

At the age of 18 he wanted to join the army. I signed up for courses at the military registration and enlistment office, but had a bite with the commander who encouraged hazing, and he, as a former team player, could not tolerate this. I demanded the documents back, but they could only be returned through the military registration and enlistment office. The military commissar lectured the new guy for about twenty minutes, and he listened and nodded. “Well, did you understand everything?!” - “Yes, I understand.” - “What did you understand?” —

“I understand everything about your army, and why the hell am I going to join it.” And he “declined” - he entered an industrial technical school, and Tver State University came later, in parallel with work.

Or this. He worked in a paint and varnish association, building a new plant. In the club it was necessary to hang posters with illustrations for future sellers, Neverov climbed up the ladder to the ceiling and fell. But he is not the kind of person who will retreat - he climbed again, fell again, it hurt. He lies there, and suddenly the thought: “Why am I even doing this crap?..” The next day he submitted his resignation. Yulia was in a panic, but it was as if some force was guiding him: a few days later they offered him a new job, and after the case was opened they didn’t even fire him: let’s wait for the verdict, they say, who knows...

“A samurai has no goal, a samurai has a path” - this is how he explains himself. I told him that this is the philosophy of Tao, which is translated as “the path.” But this is a path beyond which, on the one hand, you will not jump, and on the other hand, you partly direct it yourself.

We will not quote the “samurai’s” posts on social networks, but he himself believes that Center “E” did not come across them by chance—it was a denunciation. Neverov connects this with his social activities. He participated in the resistance to the destruction of local self-government and in protests against the construction of a new high-speed railway, and in 2021 he ran for the legislative assembly from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, of which he was not a member. He wandered around the area and, although he was not able to explain his point of view to everyone, he took second place, and in the end he realized that everything had been planned in advance, and he was simply dumped.

When the case was opened, the court ordered a ban on him from attending mass events, so in September 2024 he called the investigator to ask: are elections a mass event or not? He said: “Well, I don’t even know”... And our “samurai”, as he had done before, went to the elections as an observer.

There was no stuffing in his presence, but he observes the faces with which voters approach the ballot boxes: in those faces he observes a seemingly apologetic expression.

“Every people has the government it deserves.” But from this fair observation, which was made by the envoy to the Russian court, Count Joseph de Maistre, at the beginning of the 19th century, it does not follow that nothing needs to be done at all. Therefore, listening to the conversations of teachers - members of the TEC at the polling station, Neverov sometimes carefully intervenes, trying to explain an alternative point of view.

I ask: “Well, you’ve observed, what next?” - "Nothing. I just understand why people feel fear”... Otherwise! Just a few years ago, Tver was a vibrant and diverse city; the Living Word lecture hall operated here, where federal-level “stars” came—we won’t list them, half of them were already “foreign agents.” The lecture hall was also declared a “foreign agent” - everyone was rolled into asphalt, and everyone I asked about Neverov in Tver warned: “Just don’t write about us.”

Zygmunt Bauman, the author of the concept of “liquid evil,” considers the main reason for it to be the state of mind TINA (There is no alternative). Not only Neverov in Tver probably retained the ability to judge, but others prefer to sit quietly in this “TINA”.

Nobody taught Neverov this, he became like this himself. In 2014, she and Yulia vacationed in Egypt and met the people of Kiev. They became friends until they asked how he felt about Crimea. And there was no way to answer the way they wanted to hear, but he said that, probably, Crimea is Russia after all. And he is still embarrassed for this act. “Why, you said what you thought then?” - “I don’t know, I’m probably ashamed of what I said automatically.” Didn't have my own opinion, in short.

It seems to me that he is a ready-made politician, but not for the kind of “politics” that we have in Tver. Neverov’s whole fault is that he learned and has not refused to think since then. But should we teach this to our children? They themselves will soon learn from such a dad. Will it be easy for them to lie? Maybe they won’t need it - they (unlike me) still have so much time ahead...

Tver — Moscow