This trial is illus­trat­ory and illu­min­at­ing. Not once will the author­it­ies blush over it and be ashamed of it. Every stage of it is quintesen­tial of iniquity.

How has this happened that our per­form­ance being ini­tially a small and some­what awk­ward act has grown into a big dis­aster? Obvi­ously in a healthy soci­ety that is impossible. As a state, Rus­sia has long been akin to an organ­ism ill to its core. And this mor­bid­ity explodes with res­on­ance when you scrape a point­ing abs­cess. This mor­bid­ity would get first pub­licly and linger­ingly con­cealed but later would always get resolved through con­ver­sa­tion. Behold, this is the form of con­ver­sa­tion our author­it­ies are cap­able of. This trial isn’t just a mean grot­esque mask, this is a face of con­ver­sa­tion with a per­son in our country.

Often for a con­ver­sa­tion about a prob­lem on the pub­lic level an impetus incid­ent is required. And it’s inter­est­ing that our incid­ent is deper­son­al­ized to begin with. Because speak­ing about Putin, we first of all mean not Vladi­mir Putin, but Putin as a sys­tem cre­ated by him. The ver­tical power struc­ture, where all gov­ern­ing is being car­ried out almost manu­ally. And in this ver­tical power struc­ture pub­lic opin­ion is com­pletely dis­reg­arded. And what both­ers me the most, is dis­reg­ard for the opin­ion of the younger gen­er­a­tions. In our opin­ion the inef­fect­ive­ness of this type of gov­ern­ment gets revealed in almost everything.

And here, in my clos­ing state­ment, I’d like to shortly describe my firsthand exper­i­ence of clash with this system.

The edu­ca­tion, from which the estab­lish­ment of a per­son in a soci­ety begins, actu­ally ignores the person’s indi­vidu­al­ity. A per­son­al­ized approach isn’t applied, stud­ies of cul­ture, philo­sophy and basic prin­ciples of civil soci­ety are lack­ing. Offi­cially these sub­jects are present in the cur­riculum but the form of their study fol­lows the Soviet pat­tern. As a res­ult we wit­ness mar­gin­al­iz­a­tion of mod­ern art in a person’s per­cep­tion, lack of motiv­a­tion for philo­soph­ical think­ing, gender ste­reo­typ­ing and mak­ing a person’s civic aware­ness take the backseat.

Mod­ern edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions teach people from their child­hood to live auto­mat­ic­ally, do not intro­duce key issues appro­pri­ate to the age, foster cruelty and intol­er­ance to dis­sent. From the child­hood a per­son for­sakes his liberties.

I have exper­i­ence of vis­it­ing psy­chi­at­ric clinic for minors. And I say with cer­tainty, that any teen­ager exhib­it­ing a degree of dis­sent can find him­self in such insti­tu­tion. Part of the patients come from orphan­ages. And in our coun­try psy­chi­at­ric hos­pit­al­iz­a­tion of a kid who tried to run away from orphan­age, treat­ment with power­ful tran­quil­izers, such as Aminas­ine, used on Soviet dis­sent­ers in the 70’s, is regarded as a norm. This is espe­cially dra­matic due to gen­eral pun­it­ive slant and lack of psy­cho­lo­gical aid as such. Entire com­mu­nic­a­tion with chil­dren there is based on exploit­a­tion of the sense of fear and their enforced sub­mis­sion. As a res­ult, the level of their cruelty grows many­fold. Many kids there are illit­er­ate, but nobody attempts to fight this. To the con­trary, the rins­ings of motiv­a­tion for devel­op­ment get put off. A per­son clams up and stops trust­ing the world.

I’d like to note, that such way of grow­ing up appar­ently impedes the real­iz­a­tion of inner free­dom, and reli­gious free­dom as well, and unfor­tu­nately it’s a mass phe­nomenon. The con­sequence of this pro­cess is the onto­lo­gical, exist­en­tial sub­missive­ness within social­iz­a­tion. This trans­ition or break­ing point if judged from the Chris­tian cul­ture stand­point is not­able by the fact that mean­ings and sym­bols, as we see, are being turned around. To wit humil­ity, one of Chris­tian prin­cipal notions, is exist­en­tially under­stood not as a way of puri­fic­a­tion, empower­ment and even­tual deliv­er­ance of the human, but in con­trast as a way of his enslave­ment. Quot­ing Nikolai Berdy­aev we may say that “onto­logy of humil­ity is the onto­logy of God’s slaves and not God’s children.”

When I was organ­iz­ing eco­lo­gical move­ment, I finally developed a pri­or­ity of inner free­dom as a basis for action. And also the import­ance of action in itself. It still bewilders me that in our coun­try a mass of a few thou­sands people is required for put­ting a stop to iniquity of one or a hand­ful of offi­cials. I’d like to note that our trial is an illu­min­at­ing con­firm­a­tion of that. A mass of thou­sands of people all around the world is required for prov­ing the obvi­ous, that all three of us are inno­cent. We’re inno­cent, the entire world says that! It’s being said in con­certs, in the Inter­net, the whole world says that in the press! It’s being said in the par­lia­ment. Brit­ish prime min­is­ter greets our pres­id­ent speak­ing not about the Olympics, but ask­ing why three inno­cent girls are jailed. That’s a shame!

What’s more sur­pris­ing is that people don’t believe they can in any way affect the author­it­ies. Dur­ing pick­ets and ral­lies, when I was col­lect­ing sig­na­tures and organ­iz­ing their col­lec­tion, I was asked by many people, and they asked that with genu­ine sur­prise, what they have to do with the only Rus­sian nat­ural reserve or rel­ict juni­per in the Krasnodar region, with that small patch. Why they should be con­cerned that wife of our prime-​minister Dmitri Med­ve­dev plans to build there a res­id­ency and des­troy it. These people… This is another con­firm­a­tion, that people in our coun­try stopped sens­ing own­er­ship over their land. They stopped see­ing them­selves as cit­izens. They see them­selves simply as robotic masses. They don’t even feel they own a forest next to their house. I doubt they real­ize that their very house belongs to them. Because if an excav­ator comes to their drive­way and they’re told they need to evac­u­ate, that their house should unfor­tu­nately be demol­ished to make space for a res­id­ency of an offi­cial, they will obed­i­ently pack up and go out to the street. And in the street they will sit until the author­it­ies tell them what to do next. They’re totally ever­teb­rate. That’s very sad.

I’ve been locked up for almost half a year and I real­ized that prison is Rus­sia in mini­ature. For example the man­age­ment is the same ver­tical power struc­ture, where all decision mak­ing occurs through a dir­ect involve­ment of the chief. Hori­zontal dis­tri­bu­tion of duties, which would make everybody’s life con­sid­er­ably easier, is non-​existent. Per­sonal ini­ti­at­ive is non-​existent either. Snitching and mutual sus­pi­cious­ness flour­ish. In the deten­tion facil­ity, as in our coun­try, everything is aimed at deper­son­al­iz­a­tion of a human being, redu­cing it to a func­tion, whether it’s a func­tion of a worker or a pris­oner. Strict lim­its of the daily sched­ule, which gets used to quickly, are akin to the life pro­gram imposed on a per­son from the birth­day. Within these lim­its people start to appre­ci­ate trivial things. In prison that would be for example a table sheet or plastic dish­ware, which can only be got­ten through a per­sonal approval of the chief. In the out­side life it’s the status in soci­ety, which people hold dearly, some­thing I have been fas­cin­ated with all my life.

Another point is the per­cep­tion of this order as a show, which in real­ity turns out to be chaos. An orderly insti­tu­tion on the out­side, inside it reveals total dis­or­gan­iz­a­tion and lack of optim­iz­a­tion of most pro­cesses. Obvi­ously it doesn’t help man­age­ment. To the con­trary, people start to feel increas­ingly lost in time and space. A per­son, as every­where in the coun­try, doesn’t know whom to address his ques­tion. There­fore he addresses it to the chief of deten­tion facil­ity. On the out­side this chief is Putin. It can be said that we’re against Putin’s chaos which is only called ‘régime’ formally.

Depict­ing in our lyric a col­lect­ive image of the sys­tem, where in our opin­ion muta­tion of almost all insti­tu­tions is tak­ing place while their exter­ior is kept intact, and where civil soci­ety so dear to us is being des­troyed, we don’t make dir­ect state­ment. We only use the form of dir­ect state­ment as means of artistic expres­sion. The only thing identical is the motiv­a­tion. Our motiv­a­tion is identical to motiv­a­tion of dir­ect state­ment. It’s more elo­quently expressed in the words of the Gos­pel “For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” I, and all of us, sin­cerely believe that it will be opened for us. But alas so far the bars are closed on us. That’s very weird, that in their reac­tion to our actions, the author­it­ies totally dis­reg­ard the his­tor­ical back­ground of expres­sion of dissent.

“Poor is the coun­try, where plain hon­esty is per­ceived as hero­ism at best and as a psy­chi­at­ric dis­order at worst” — wrote in the 70’s dis­sid­ent Bukovsky. Not so much time has passed since those days, but it appears as if neither the Great Ter­ror nor the res­ist­ance did ever occur. I think that we’re accused by for­get­ful people.

“Many of them said, “He has a demon, and he is mad; why listen to him?” ” These words belong to Jews accus­ing Jesus Christ of blas­phemy. “The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we stone you but for blas­phemy” (John 10:33) It’s inter­est­ing that it’s this verse that Rus­sian Ortho­dox Church uses to express its opin­ion about blas­phemy. This opin­ion is com­mit­ted to paper and added to the mater­i­als of our crim­inal case. Express­ing this opin­ion Rus­sian Ortho­dox Church refers to it as to a static reli­gious truth. Gos­pel is no longer under­stood as rev­el­a­tion, which it was ini­tially, but as a kind of solid block which can be torn up to quo­ta­tions and tuck any­where, into any doc­u­ment, used for any pur­pose. Rus­sian Ortho­dox Church didn’t even bother to exam­ine the con­text in which the word ‘blas­phemy’ is used, that in this case it is applied to Jesus Christ himself.

I think reli­gious truth should not be static, that under­stand­ing of imman­ent ways of spir­itual devel­op­ment, human adversit­ies, his dual­ism, his sejunc­tion is required, that all these exper­i­ences are essen­tial for devel­op­ment, that only through these exper­i­ences a human can achieve some­thing and keep achiev­ing, that reli­gious truth is a pro­cess and not accom­plish­ment which can be tuck any­where. And all these things I men­tioned, all these pro­cesses are reflec­ted upon in art and philo­sophy, mod­ern art included. An artistic set­ting can and in my view must con­tain inner con­flict. And I’m very annoyed by the phrase ‘so called’ the pro­sec­u­tion uses in mod­ern art’s regard.

I’d like to point out, that dur­ing the trial over the poet Brod­sky, exactly the same fig­ure of speech was used. His poetry was labelled as ‘so called poetry’ and the wit­nesses never read it. Just as some of our wit­nesses weren’t the eye­wit­nesses of the event, but watched a video in the Internet.

Our apo­lo­gies are prob­ably also labelled as ‘so called’ in the col­lect­ive chapter of the indict­ment, although it’s insult­ing and causes me moral dam­age and emo­tional trauma. Because our apo­lo­gies were sin­cere. I’m so sorry that after so many words uttered you still don’t under­stand them. Or are you being cun­ning call­ing our apo­logy insin­cere? I don’t under­stand what else you want to hear. For me it’s this very trial which is ‘so called’. And I’m not scared of you. I’m not afraid of lies and sham, poorly dec­or­ated lies in the ver­dict of this so called court, because you only can deprive me of so called free­dom. This is the only type of free­dom exist­ing in Rus­sian Fed­er­a­tion. My inner free­dom no one can take from me. It lives and will live on through the word, thanks to open­ness, when thou­sands of people will read it and hear. This free­dom per­sists with each con­cerned per­son, who hears us in this coun­try. With every­body who found pieces of this trial in them­selves, as once did Franz Kafka and Guy Debord. I believe that it’s hon­esty and open­ness, thirst for truth which will make us a little freer.

We will see this.