Translated material
"No one is a hero except the victim." Leo Oborin about the "Birobidzhan diary" Pavel Kushnir, who died a year ago from a hunger strike in a pre -trial detention center
Yesterday it was a year since the death of Pavel Kushnir, a writer and pianist, who was arrested on charges of “calls for terrorist activities” and died at the age of 39 in the Birobidzha pre-trial detention center after five days of dry hunger strike. The book of the Birobidzhan Diary and the personality of the political prisoner, who became one of the symbols of anti -war resistance in Russia, says a literary critic Leo Oborin.
Pavel Kushnir is a name that will always be associated with the resistance of the Russian war against Ukraine. The pianist and writer, who was widely found out only after his death in the Birobidzhan pre -trial detention center under circumstances that were not completely clarified - now we are heard from him a voice full of courage and despair.
A dotted biographical certificate: Kushnir grew up in Tambov, graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, then moved from one region to another - he worked in Yekaterinburg, Kursk, and Kurgan. His last address was the Jewish Autonomous Region, where Kushnir worked in the Birobidzhan Philharmonic, and also recorded a public program for Chopin for the local radio station. In addition, he was engaged in literature, wrote a lot - part of his manuscripts was considered lost, but miraculously preserved ..
For several years, he tried to establish contacts with people whom he considered close to himself in spirit, for example, with the writer and publisher Dmitry Volchek - the publisher of a counter -cultural, modernist, experimental prose and poetry in Kolonna Publishing House, with Pussy Riot participant Maria Alekhina*, with polyactivist Olga Misik. The only book that came out during the life of Kushnir and completely unnoticed then is the novel “Russian Cutting” . Made in the KAT-APA technique, that is, the mixing fragments of other works (from his own diaries to Soviet military prose), he comprehends the war that began in 2014. The Birobidzhan Diary, published in the Medusa Publishing House*, continues the topic and partly the method of “Russian cutting”. He was prepared for the press Dmitry Volchek-once missing a letter from Kushnir, shocked by his talent and fate, now he is engaged in the publication of his works.
The Birobidzhan Diary describes the events of 2022: shocked by a full -scale invading, Kushnir leads to its anti -war resistance six and a half thousand kilometers from hostilities. He draws up and distributes leaflets, in the fall, it starts the YouTube channel “Ino-Agent Mulder” , whose subscribers can be counted on the fingers (this, however, will be enough for arrest and accusation). The presence of the “Birobidzhan diary” belittles a huge number of daily compromises, albeit philistine prudence and is ready to declare Kushnir's behavior recklessness.
Pavel Kushnir
Anton Veselovsky
At the same time, the diary itself is arranged at all recklessly. With all the external expressiveness, with the fatalism that sees it, it was precisely that it was conceived and built, perhaps the idea of the structure did not come to Kushnir immediately, but closer to the finale of the book, it is clear. At some point, the countdown begins in the diary, it should end on the day of Catholic and Protestant Christmas-December 25, 2022. Kushnir has a hunch that he will be arrested on this day. In fact, this will happen much later, in May 2024, two months later, Kushnir will die. The fact that the arrest does not happen earlier (“today they did not give the agenda. And they did not arrest”) causes him not relief, but only the understanding that there is less and less time.
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