Recently at the House of Journalists in Moscow a book launch event was held by Igor Sutyagin - who is well known not only as a fellow of the USA and Canada Institute, but also as one of Russia's most famous political prisoners, after getting a 15-year jail sentence on a fabricated case by the FSB. There were a lot of people there, with majority of them being human rights advocates. There were practically no journalists, which isn't really surprising: once a person is sitting in jail in the name of the FSB, then in a state that is all FSB through and through, and to whom practically all the mass information media belong, there is practically nobody to write about such people as Sutyagin.
At the launch spoke all those same persons that speak at such events always: chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group Ludmilla Alexeeva, president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation Alexey Simonov, leader of the faction of the greens in the Yabloko party ecologist Alexey Yablokov...Igor's parents spoke, read aloud an address from the sitter [i.e. prisoner--Trans.] to those gathered (the sense of the address - «don't be silent!»). They gave out the book.
I listened to the speeches and caught myself at the thought: an innocent person has sat 10 years behind barbed wire and continues to sit. For 10 years human rights advocates are demanding of the Putinite power his release. And for 10 years the powers are ignoring the laws and public opinion. Such is the bottom line. True, they have permitted the unlawfully convicted one to put out a book. They might have not permitted it. Someone of those appearing, I think it was the human rights advocate Lev Ponomarev, brought such an example: one of the prominent politicians told him at a rally: after all, we here, on the square, are speaking only because they are still allowing us this. I too got such an impression that much of what we have is because they are still allowing it: the radiostation «Echo Moskvy», for example, or «Novaya gazeta»... Books such as this one, Sutyagin's, which the publishing house «Prava cheloveka» [Human rights--Trans.] issued in a print run of a thousand copies. But after all, we do understand that all this the current power can put the lid on in one day. And there will come the life described in «One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich» of the late writer Solzhenitsyn (who did not write, by the way, a single line in defense of the multitude of false-spies and scholars convicted by the Putinite Basmanny courts!).
We read Sutyagin's book and marvel at the talent and courage of this person. There really are talented places in the book . And to write in those conditions - is not this courage! We recall the errors which, thank God, we learned already not to commit. There were errors in the case of Sutyagin too: essentially, Igor, having believed in the decency of employees of the FSB, personally talked some twenty volumes of the criminal case for himself. Yet he could have kept silent, after all. Silence according to the Criminal Code - is not a sign of agreement. On the contrary: the more you say - the more they'll give you.
Of course, a peculiar democracy has turned out in the country under
Putin. Here and there, it is permitted for journalists, human rights
advocates, writers to write all that they think. (True, even here the
power often can't restrain itself, seats journalists and bloggers in
jails and camps). And the power makes use of this "democracy"
peculiarly too: it either does not read what they're writing, or
pretends that it doesn't read. At any rate, it prefers not to react to
such writings. It brushes them off, like a pesky fly, and that's it.
And that is why scholars numbering more than ten are already sitting in
camps. Just Danilov from Kransoyarsk alone they socked with 13 years of
deprivation of liberty for nothing at all.
It is as if though the power is saying with these trials: we can always
seat every one of you. So think before you criticize us. Many have
already stopped criticizing.
...At the launch of Igor Sutyagin's book there was practically no youth. And one of those appearing said: «The book has to be translated into English, because abroad they know Igor better than in Russia». She is right. there their attitude towards violations of human rights is more attentive. But in our country , perhaps even most likely, Sutyagin will sit through his term to the end: all 15 years. Without guilt and, in essence, without a trial, because the court was dependent and rigged, with an embedded chekist into the composition of the jurors.
One thing gladdens: Sutyagin's book bears witness - it was written by a free person. Because freedom - is inside each of us. You can not deprive a person for whom this liberty is inside of liberty.
