Posted: 27 Apr 2013 08:18 AM PDT
[Originally
published by The Russian Reader]
Yesterday,
April 26, 2013, a district court in Zubova Polyana, Mordovia, denied imprisoned
Pussy Riot activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s request for parole. According
to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Judge Lidiya Yakovleva
agreed with arguments made by prison authorities that it would be “premature”
to release Tolokonnikova given that she “had been cited for prison rules
violations and expressed no remorse,” and had not participated in such prison
activities as the “Miss Charm Prison Camp 14 beauty contest.” Judge Yakovleva
made her ruling without allowing the defense to make a closing argument, thus
allegedly violating the Criminal Procedure Code. Tolokonnikova had written her
statement out in advance. The translation below is of the
Russian original as published in full on the web site of RFE/RL’s
Russian Service (Radio Svoboda). Photos courtesy of the Free Pussy Riot Facebook page.
_____
“Has the
convict started down the road to rehabilitation?” This is the question asked
when a request for parole is reviewed. I would also like us to ask the
following question today: What is this “road to rehabilitation”?
I am
absolutely convinced that the only correct road is one on which a person is
honest with others and with herself. I have stayed on this road and will not
stray from it wherever life takes me. I insisted on this road while I was still
on the outside, and I didn’t retreat from it in the Moscow pretrial detention
facility. Nothing, not even the camps of Mordovia, where the Soviet-era
authorities liked to send political prisoners, can teach me to betray the
principle of honesty.
So I have not
admitted and will not admit the guilt imputed to me by the Khamovniki district
court’s verdict, which was illegal and rendered with an indecent number of
procedural violations. At the moment, I am in the process of appealing this
verdict in the higher courts. By coercing me into admitting guilt for the sake
of parole, the correctional system is pushing me to incriminate myself, and,
therefore, to lie. Is the ability to lie a sign that a person has started down
the road to rehabilitation?
It states in
my sentence that I am a feminist and, therefore, must feel hatred towards
religion.
Yes, after a year and two months in prison, I am still a feminist,
and I am still opposed to the people in charge of the state, but then as now
there is no hatred in me. The dozens of women prisoners with whom I attend the
Orthodox church at Penal Colony No. 14 cannot see this hatred, either.
What else do
I do in the colony? I work: soon after I arrived at Penal Colony No. 14, they
put me behind a sewing machine, and now I am a sewing machine operator. Some
believe that making political-art actions is easy, that it requires no
deliberation or preparation. Based on my years of experience in actionism, I
can say that carrying out an action and thinking through the artistic
end-product is laborious and often exhausting work. So I know how to work and I
love to work. I’m no stranger to the Protestant work ethic. Physically, I don’t
find it hard to be a seamstress. And that is what I am. I do everything
required of me. But, of course, I cannot help thinking about things while I’m
at the sewing machine (including the road to rehabilitation) and, therefore,
asking myself questions. For example: why can convicts not be given a choice as
to the socially useful work they perform while serving their sentences? [Why
can they not chose work] in keeping with their education and interests? Since I
have experience teaching in the philosophy department at Moscow State
University, I would gladly and enthusiastically put together educational
programs and lectures using the books in the library and books sent to me. And
by the way, I would unquestioningly do such work for more than the eight hours
[a day] stipulated by the Russian Federation Labor Code; I would do this work
during all the time left over from scheduled prison activities. Instead, I sew
police pants, which of course is also useful, but in this work I’m obviously
not as productive as I could be were I conducting educational programs.
In Cancer
Ward, Solzhenitsyn describes how a prison camp detective stops one convict from
teaching another convict Latin. Unfortunately, the overall attitude to
education hasn’t changed much since then.
I often
fantasize: what if the correctional system made its priority not the production
of police pants or production quotas, but the education, training, and
rehabilitation of convicts, as required by the Correctional Code? Then, in
order to get parole, you would not have to sew 16 hours a day in the industrial
section of the colony, trying to achieve 150% output, but successfully pass
several exams after broadening your horizons and knowledge of the world, and
getting a general humanities education, which nurtures the ability to
adequately assess contemporary reality. I would very much like to see this
state of affairs in the colony.
Why not
establish courses on contemporary art in the colony?
Would that
work were not a debt, but activity that was spiritual and useful in a poetic
sense.
Would that the organizational constraints and inertia of the old system
were overcome, and values like individuality could be instilled in the
workplace. The prison camp is the face of the country, and if we managed to get
beyond the old conservative and totally unifying categories even in the
prison camp, then throughout Russia we would see the growth of intellectual,
high-tech manufacturing, something we would all like to see in order to break
out of the natural resources trap. Then something like Silicon Valley could be
born in Russia, a haven for risky and talented people. All this would be
possible if the panic experienced in Russia at the state level towards human
experimentation and creativity would give way to an attentive and respectful
attitude towards the individual’s creative and critical potential. Tolerance
towards others and respect for diversity provide an environment conducive to
the development and productive use of the talent inherent in citizens (even if
these citizens are convicts). Repressive conservation and rigidity in the
legal, correctional, and other state systems of the Russian Federation, laws on
registration [of one's residence] and promotion of homosexuality lead to
stagnation and a “brain drain.”
However, I am
convinced that this senseless reaction in which we now forced to live is
temporary. It is mortal, and this mortality is immediate. I am also certain
that all of us—including the prisoners of Bolotnaya Square, my brave comrade in
arms Maria Alyokhina, and Alexei Navalny—have the strength, commitment, and
tenacity to survive this reaction and emerge victorious.
I am truly
grateful to the people I have encountered in my life behind barbed wire. Thanks
to some of them, I will never call my time in prison time lost. During the year
and two months of my imprisonment, I have not had a single conflict, either in
the pretrial detention facility or in prison. Not a single one. In my opinion, this
shows that I am perfectly safe for any society. And also the fact that people
do not buy into state media propaganda and are not willing to hate me just
because a federal channel said that I’m a bad person. Lying does not always
lead to victory.
Recently, I
got a letter containing a parable that has become important to me. What happens
to things different in nature when they are placed in boiling water? Brittle
things, like eggs, become hard. Hard things, like carrots, become soft. Coffee
dissolves and permeates everything. The point of the parable was this: be like
coffee. In prison, I am like that coffee.
I want the
people who have put me and dozens of other political activists behind bars to
understand one simple thing: there are no insurmountable obstacles for a person
whose values consist, first, of her principles and, second, of work and
creativity based on these principles. If you strongly believe in something,
this faith will help you survive and remain a human being anywhere.
I will surely
use my experience in Mordovia in my future work and, although this will not
happen until completion of my sentence, I will implement it in projects that
will be stronger and politically larger in scale than everything that has
happened to me before.
Despite the
fact that imprisonment is a quite daunting experience, as a result of having it
we political prisoners only become stronger, braver, and more tenacious. And so
I ask the last question for today: what, then, is the point of keeping us here?
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