Anna Uvarova, Nikita's mother, Krasnoyarsk, at Themis (regional court). Photo: Alexey Tarasov/Novaya Gazeta
“- Sentences! — said Sizov listening attentively. It became quiet. They all stood up, looking at the old man. Small, dry, straight, it had something in common with a stick held by an invisible hand. The judges were also standing: the volost — with his head bent on his shoulder and looking at the ceiling, his head — with his arms crossed on his chest, the leader of the nobility — stroking his beard. The sick-faced judge, his plump comrade and the prosecutor looked towards the defendants. And behind the judges, from the portrait, over their heads, the tsar looked, in a red uniform, with an indifferent white face, and some kind of insect was crawling over his face. ”
(M. Gorky. “ Mother «)
Kansk, June 2020. Leaflets appear on the walls demanding freedom for a graduate student of Moscow State University, Azat Miftakhov, who is imprisoned for the «attack» on the office of United Russia. One of the leaflets is spanked into the office of the FSB branch. The next day, the FSB takes seven teenagers. Searches, interrogations, but after them they are allowed to go home for the time being.
“We had a fight there, they let us out in the morning,” says Anna Uvarova, the mother of Nikita, one of those taken. — It's hot outside, it's hot in the car. We drove around the corner, he: mom, wait. Lord, what else? There are no cars, the city is asleep, I got up in the middle of the road. What do you want? We have pasted a leaflet here. He ran and tore off a leaflet from the Pension Fund: «You are fattening — we are poor.» I'm crazy: I grabbed this leaflet, crumpled it, and threw it into the trash bin near my house.
Three of them are eventually charged. Anna's son, who pleaded not guilty, is thrown into a pre-trial detention center.
Choosing a measure of restraint, the court will inform: 14-year-old boys were preparing a terrorist attack (explosion in the FSB/MVD building), their goal was «to change the state and political structure of Russia.»
Anna Uvarova in court. Photo of attorney Vasin — for Novaya Gazeta
For 11 months Anna will be standing either in front of the prison with parcels, or in front of the Investigative Committee with requests for a meeting. Nikita will be released in May. In the summer, the judges of the military tribunal will arrive from Khabarovsk. The trial is underway with long breaks and will continue in February.
Now Anna, the mother of a 16-year-old teenager, drives a small Japanese right-hand drive Passo, frivolous in these snows and swamps, along the tracks of Kansk, icy and silent as a hake. The city is surrounded by Chinese sawmills, smoke and mountains of slabs, wood chips, sawdust that have smoldered for decades. 4 years ago, fire from landfills spread and destroyed 78 houses. The city, gasping for breath, suddenly revived for a minute — beat it with its tail, swept away the ashes. He threw stones at the Chinese, and they left. The sawmills remained, screeching again. And Kansk is silent again. Xi Jinping did not respond to the townspeople's letter. And they did not expect anything from Moscow; criminal cases were brought against the mayor of Kansk, Nadezhda Kachan, and as a result they were awarded the Ministry of Emergency Situations medal. The grandson of the mayor (already the former, she left herself), together with Uvarov, participated in the same «anarcho-communist free association», but he is not in the dock.
On May 4 Nikita Uvarov was released from jail. And now Anna and Nikita come home. Photo by Vladimir Vasin —- for Novaya Gazeta
Nikita's father disappeared when he was born. Typical story for the guys from the «association». Those few who know their fathers catch a glimpse of them — apart from sawmills, there is not much work in Kansk, men are on watch.
Having programmed fatherlessness, the authorities should be aware that these guys will look for an example — make life with someone — outside, on the Web, and experience the Oedipus complex for lack of a father-in-law — to his deputy, the father-state .
Historic building after a fire in the city center. Photo: Alexey Tarasov/»Novaya Gazeta»
At the teachers' council (six months before Nikita's arrest) Anna was asked: «What is your hobby?» She replied: “Some kind of anarchism. We watched «Old Man Makhno» with him, episode 5 «. And I heard: “So, maybe they are preparing terror? We must take control! «
The Uvarovs are from the village. Anna worked from the age of 14 as a nanny in a kindergarten, replaced those leaving on vacation, helped her mother (teacher). Father is a welder. 10 years after we moved to Kansk — everything fell apart in the village. They come there only to the cemetery.
— There our elder brother and Tanyukha (Anna's younger sister, Nikita's godmother) lie, he is 38 years old, and his daughter is three years old. There was no longer work at the state farm, he went to the Ilanskiy (regional center), got a job as a guard. And the wife that evening locked the child at home, left. The iron was left on a foam-rubber chair, so it started to smoke. It was already night, cut out all the wiring — the daughter's tracks, as she tried to escape in the dark, remained everywhere, vomited her, swallowed smoke. My brother then spread rot on himself, they found him in the garage, in the car. Suffocated too.
Anna Uvarova. Photo: Alexey Tarasov/Novaya Gazeta
Anna delivers Novosibirsk dumplings and ice cream to Ilan villages on her Passo. Rides past the ruins of factories, pipes with chilled fumes in them, past embers and burnt walls; past the quietly decaying house of Zazubrin with baroque platbands — the author of Sliver, a story about the methods of the Cheka, written in 1923. The film «Chekist» on it in the early 90s was not missed by anyone who lived then, Zazubrin himself was shot in 1937 … You might think that everything of today is a function of those shootings territory of a significant European country), that the parameters of modernity are set by those polygon ditches, from where the real evil swirls. But this is not the case. The shackle tract has always passed here. At the beginning of the twentieth century, under the tsar, 7,500 local and 55,000 exiles lived in Kansk. There was always this black hole in the middle of Russia, pulling in everything human. Twin Peaks and Derry — and about our plains. The people have adapted. But the children — no, they pierce the taut backdrop of the stage with a curious nose, behind which the chton gurgles and flickers, they discover a swamp under the ice and snow. They enter into a relationship with the hole. And then they come for them.
.
In Nikita's room Mother collected toys to give to church. The organs removed his organs from the computer. Photo: Alexey Tarasov/Novaya Gazeta
Evil is systemic. There are areas where this is clearly shown.
Children find a sucking underground in their proposed life. They take the big-eyed children — they tell the country that they are underground — and these children are. And this is not politics — already metaphysics.
But what about the mother? After all, this is a reflex: native blood and dear, that we protect our children under any circumstances?
For the first six months, Anna was silent. All the parents were silent (Anna even found a lawyer, others agreed to the appointed ones), they did not make contact. The mothers gathered and discussed not how to get their sons out of the millstones, but regretted that they would then be scattered in different colonies. And what about the transfers, how to replenish the account? Such sober reasoning. Very.
— In Moscow, St. Petersburg, people understand what kind of arrests they really are, they have solidarity, they help each other. In our small town it is different: they took it — that means there was a reason. For the first six months no one knew about us — you are afraid of everything. Yes, we would not be silent right away. But I was not advised from the outside to communicate with journalists. Mom Yana Sidorova (from the Rostov case) Nadezhda says: do not be silent, let us help you. Me: no, no. Scary.
Children were rescued by children. Nikita is a cousin (son of Tatiana) Max. Tatiana: “He took the journalists to the family, while we were absurdly, stupidly sitting”. The story that was developing at that time in Krasnoyarsk with 11 children placed by the FSB on the eve of September 1 in a psychiatric hospital was made public by the sister of 14-year-old Alena Prokudina Dariya. And the parents, raised at five in the morning by the FSB special forces, signed a voluntary consent to the placement of the child in a psychiatric hospital. Like all the parents of the other 11 children. Then Prokudin and another mother withdrew their consent, they began to fight for the children, but pulling them out of the already turned millstones is not at all that they should not be allowed to reach them.
Nikita and Maxim. Such gifts were given to them at the Sunday school at the church. Photo: Alexey Tarasov/»Novaya Gazeta»
How much biology, given in our relationship with our children — the question. The other day, the largest Indian media Jagran told how Kiran Baiga ran a whole mile after a leopard — he stole her eight-year-old son from the fire in front of the house. I caught up, rushed into the fight, took my son away (they had already been discharged from the hospital). And here's another story, from the same Kansk: in 1938, Daria Rubtsova reported on her daughter, 15-year-old Lyuba. Also three (only the organization was imputed to be fascist), also leaflets — everything is similar. Lyuba was released 18 years later as a complete invalid. Anna drives past Sovetskaya, 6, — here is now the Heart of the City (cafe), here Lyuba returned to her mother to die.