Blue flower freedom

We continue talking about the main thing with a colleague prisoner Abakan Mikhail Afanasyev

A new letter from Mikhail Afanasyev from the Khakass colony IK-35. The journalist received five and a half years for a note dated April 4, 2022 about how and why 11 fighters of the Khakass riot police refused to participate in his. The court recognized this by the spread of "fakes" about the army.

“-... I am writing to you on the eve of my 49th anniversary, the fourth birthday for barbed wire. Periodically, a dull thought comes in itself: could everything be different? Could I be with my family and children now? And the same inconsolable answer to oneself.

But to be honest, it’s good that everything happened that way, and not otherwise. Then my life, too, would definitely have gone at all, according to the worst scenario for me. Paradoxically, it was the conclusion that made it possible to maintain himself as an integral person. And do not fall apart into a few hating parts. Although I had to pay a very high price for this, and the loan has not yet been closed. Another thing is that it seems absurd to defend his wholeness through the prison.

I have everything more or less. Compared to the same time last year, confidence in the correctness of its choice was added to remain on the human side. And with her more and more calm.

As Peter Vyazemsky said: "I am just a notebook where life plays the role of a scribe." Neither add nor take away.

From the house, the news is alarming. Mom became seriously ill, and all sorts of thoughts climb into my head. He asked her to turn to our common acquaintances in Abakan for help, but she says, even in the little things were refused. So it will not ask. So it remains for me to squeeze my teeth in impotence.

Danil was taken into the army and, given the Morok, the corresponding anxiety. In addition, as I understand it, an incomplete and people are very required everywhere. But he promised everyone that (...) he would not sign the contract. Of course, his mood calms down, but anxious. (...)

I'll tell you one story from my camp life. In the spring, when I was returned to work back to the greenhouse, I first went around the whole territory to tear out the dried up last year and the current weeds that have already been breaking through. At the entrance to the garden, an weed of several stalks from one root began to grow. The hand already reached out, but something stopped me. Either an unusual appearance of the stem, or a certain barely captured nobility of the plant - I have never seen such a thing anywhere. In a word, I decided to leave and see what kind of character will grow out of the world of biology. And he never regretted that he then pulled his hand away.

Today I take care of the plant no less than all cultures in the greenhouse. This is a flower, I called it Svobodych, and the name quickly took root among those who work on the industrial zone.

Svobodych is not a simple flower. Now he already has about 50 stems of root. Each of them has a very beautiful blue flower, saturated with color. And the unusualness of Svobodych is that he spreads the flower on the stalk only at night and blooms only in darkness and until dinner during the day. In daylight, each of the 50 flowers is laid out strictly in the sun, and they turn behind the course of the heavenly luminary. Where the sun is there.

The second unusual feature of Svobodych is that after lunch he drops everything to a single flowers, every day covering the earth around him with a beautiful blue blanket. But by seven o'clock in the evening, new flowers begin to form and break out on the stalks to bloom in the darkness of the night and until the next day. And so every day.

I don’t know what kind of flower and what wind and where it brought here. I have never seen this. I have a friend here, Taezhik, also says, I have never met such a plant.

Svobodych fell in love with everything, no matter how difficult it may be, every day he meets us with beautiful blue flowers that they sway at a dimensional breeze.

As if welcoming every miserable with a hard fate. Svobodych in the photo, but filmed at a period of time, when he had already begun to throw flowers slowly. In addition, on that day they were not so rich in blue. I also send our common photo with my comrades-colleagues at work on the industrial zone.

And on June 2, in the morning we remembered the children from Khakassia and all the victims of the railway disaster at Minino station. Just sat, drank tea, I talked about the tragedy in general. As he first came to the fraternal churchyard, as a catastrophe, gradually erased from the memory of the homeland and its victims seemed to have succumbed, and the circumstances of the tragedy began to clarify. And most importantly, gradually the haze of oblivion gave one surname of the victims after another. As icons cried in my eyes in the temple of Father George, and in the 20th year I was almost 100 km on the road from Krasnoyarsk to Abakan, an rainbow over the car accompanied me. He told a lot, and looking at the brothers in life behind the barbed wire, he again became convinced that the dead 66 years ago to this day have been lying lives to this day. And it also came to mind the idea of planting the Children's Pogost in Minino Freedom. But this is if I am alive. "

***

The necessary explanations for the letter.

Svobodych is Lenon. So blue, so ancient, all the way with a person. More precisely - with civilization.

Danila is the eldest son, Mikhail Five , with the last two, Elena, forced Russia, was forced to live with the last two children, and Afanasyev himself insisted on their departure: the family was deprived of the apartment, savings (only recently they returned the court), from work in the bank, Elena was forced to leave ... They promised problems with the future in local media. Dating with Misha, calls were not given in principle.

Mothers leave if the fate of their children depends on their choice; Mishina Mom, Elena Mikhailovna, remains in Abakan - the fate of her son can no longer be changed.

The series was about the Mininsky disaster in 1959; In the last years, Afanasyev was the main engine of the investigation of her secrets, and showed her heroes and scoundrels , her victims. The specificity of that tragedy is that in the mass grave there is a large detachment of pioneers who returned to Khakassia from Krasnoyarsk from a rally and a holiday on the occasion of International Children's Day. And while the parents of those who burned in the wagons were still alive and were able to, they came, looked after the grave. But there was no one to extend the memory, and since the 90s the burial was overgrown, it started. Afanasyev with like -minded people again offended him.

The last time the comrades of Afanasyev were on a mass children's grave on June 29-traditionally they wanted to check if everything was in order, mowed the grass, but before that someone had already managed, it was clean and light. He asked the cemetery worker with a benzocosa - wasn't he? No, he says, this is apparently schoolchildren. Yes, the Mininsky school also periodically comes and puts things in order.

Planted by Afanasyev cedar is growing up.

Father George (Kozgov) - rector of the temple of Cyril and Methodius of the village of Elite (neighbor to Minin). In 2018, Afanasyev accidentally met him at the cemetery, and he easily, without hesitation, without plunging into thoughtfulness, agreed to go and served a memorial service for unconferential lads and ladies. We all stood and listened to his wonderful words. Archpriest walked with Kadil through dull herbs around the bulk hill.

In addition to the villages, the elite and Minino, Father George nourishes the Akyskoye. In it, the village-forming enterprise was IK-7, a colony of strict regime for first-time. She recently closed , like a number of other colonies, - the prisoners went to her. Father George said that he baptized and blessed the prisoners to participate in a special operation, called the figures three -digit (according to our data, then the prisoners of several surrounding colonies participated in the rite). "I handed out crosses, belts with the 90th psalm" Living in help ", icons ..."

If you decide to write to Afanasyev, here is the address:

655017 Republic of Khakassia, Abakan, apt. Molodezhny, 11, IK-35, Afanasyev Mikhail Vyacheslavovich, born in 1976

This colony is also connected to the FSIN-School service. Convenient, but not cheap, and letters are also lost . I say this from my own experience of interaction with this service: despite the notifications that the letters “have passed censorship and are awarded to the addressee”, they may be abyss. Or here's how the penultimate letter from Afanasyev, which came a few days before the paper: only two pages of Mikhail’s response fell by e -mail, although I do not lay him less than three to the answer, I don’t buy it. Perhaps two was written by him, but before that he somehow never broke himself in half a word and always said goodbye.