by Alla Gutnikova
in Russian – in German
I will not talk about the trial and the house search, about the interrogations, the files and the court hearings. This is boring and pointless. Lately I’ve been attending the school of tiredness and frustration, but even before my arrest I managed to join the school of talking about truly important things1.
I would like to talk about philosophy and literature. About Benjamin, Derrida, Kafka, Arendt, Sontag, Barthes, Foucault, Agamben, about Audrey Lorde and bell hooks. About Oksana Timofeeva, Madina Tlostanova and Maria Rachmaninova.
I would like to talk about poetry. About how to read contemporary poetry2. About Mikhail Gronas, Grigory Dashevsky and Vasya Borodin.
But now is neither the time nor the place for that. I will hide my delicate little words on the tip of my tongue, in the depths of my throat, between the stomach and the heart3. And I will only say a little.
I often feel like a little fish, a bird, a school child, a baby. But recently I was astonished to learn that Joseph Brodsky was also put on trial at the age of 23. And since I too have been numbered among the human race4, I will say this:
In Kabbalah there is the concept of Tikkun Olam – the repairing of the world. I see that the world is not ideal. I believe that, as Yehuda Amichai wrote, the world was created beautiful, for the good and for peace, like a bench in a garden (a garden, not a court!). I believe that the world is made for tenderness, hope, love, solidarity, passion and joy.
But there is a terrible, unbearable level of violence in the world. And I don’t want violence. Not in any form. Not the teacher’s hands in schoolgirls’ knickers, not the fists of a drunken father on the bodies of his wife and children. If I decided to list all the acts of violence around me, neither a day nor a week nor a year would be enough. In order to see the violence around, you just need to open your eyes. My eyes are open. I see violence and I don’t want violence. The more violence there is, the more I don’t want it. And what I want least is the greatest, most terrible violence.
Not in any form. Not teacher’s hands in schoolgirls’ knickers, not the fists of a drunken father on the bodies of his wife and children. If I decided to list all the violence around, not a day, not a week, not a year would be enough time. In order to see the violence around, you just need to open your eyes. My eyes are open. I see violence and I don’t want violence. The more violence there is, the more I don’t want it. And the greatest and most terrible violence is the one I don’t want most of all.
I really enjoy learning. And so now I will speak with the voices of others.
At school, in history lessons, I learned the phrases: “You crucify freedom, but the human soul knows no chains”5 and “For freedom, yours and ours.”6
In high school I read “Requiem” by Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova, “Journey into the Whirlwind” by Yevgenia Solomonovna Ginzburg,7 “The Abolished Theater” by Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava and “The Children of the Arbat” by Anatoly Naumovich Rybakov.
From Okudzhava I liked this poem best:
| Conscience, nobility and dignity May these be our sacred army. Let’s reach out, commit to them fearless even in the midst of fire To such face, noble and beautiful let us connect our life in its brevity: Maybe we won’t be victorious, But at least we’ll die as humans!7 | Совесть, благородство и достоинство – Вот оно, святое наше воинство. Протяни ему свою ладонь. За него не страшно и в огонь. Лик его высок и удивителен. Посвяти ему свой кроткий век: Может, и не станешь победителем, Но зато умрешь, как человек! |
At the Institute of International Relations in Moscow, I learned French and became acquainted with a line by Édith Piaf: “Ça ne pouvait pas durer toujours”.
And another, by Marc Robine: “Ça ne peut pas durer comme ça”.
When I was nineteen, I traveled to Majdanek and Treblinka, where I learned how to say “never again” in seven languages:
никогда больше,
never again,
jamais plus,
לא עוד,
nigdy więcej,
קיינמאל מער.
I studied the Jewish sages, and I liked two sayings the most.
Rabbi Hillel said: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And being for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
And Rabbi Nachman said: “The whole world is a narrow bridge and the main thing is not to be afraid at all.”
Then I started studying at the School of Cultural Studies in Moscow and learned a few more important lessons. First: words have meaning. Second: You have to call things by their name. Finally: sapere aude, that means: have the courage to use your own mind.
It’s strange, it’s absurd that our trial has to do with school children. I gave humanities lessons to children in English, worked as a nanny, dreamed of moving to a small town for two years as part of the “Teachers for Russia” program to sow good, sensible, eternal seeds. But Russia – in the words of prosecutor Triakin – believes that I involved minors in life-threatening activities.
If I ever have children (and I will have them, for I remember the first commandment), I will hang on their wall the portrait of the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, so that they may grow up in cleanliness. Procurator Pontius Pilate stands and washes his hands – this will be the portrait. Yes, if it is now life-threatening to think and not be indifferent, then I don’t know what to say about the content of the charges. I wash my hands in innocence.8
But now is the moment of truth. The now of readability.
Like me, my friends can no longer find peace from the horror and pain, but when I go down into the subway I don’t see any faces covered in tears. I don’t see any teary faces.
None of my favorite books – be they for children or adults – have taught me indifference, disinterest and cowardice. Nowhere have I been taught such words:
We are little people after all
I am a simple person
It is not that easy
you can’t trust anyone
I’m actually not interested in that
I have nothing to do with politics
that does not concern me
It doesn’t matter to me
the relevant authorities will take care of it
What can I do on my own?
John Donne speaks through Hemingway:
“No man is an island, whole in himself; every person is a piece of the continent, a part of the mainland. If a floe is washed into the sea, Europe becomes less, just as if it were a headland, or your friend’s estate, or your own. Every human death is my loss, because I am part of humanity; and therefore never ask to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Mahmoud Darwish speaks:
Think about the other person
When you prepare your breakfast, think of the other person
and don’t forget the pigeons’ food.
When you go to your wars, think of the other
and don’t forget those who demand peace.
When you pay your water bill, think of the others,
who have to suck their water from the clouds.
When you return to your home, your home, remember him
Change and do not forget the people in the tents.
When you want to sleep and count the stars, think of the other,
he has no room to sleep.
When you free yourself with puns, think of the other person
and think of those who lost freedom of speech.
When you think of the others in the distance, think of yourself,
and say: if only I were a candle in the dark.9
Gennady Golovati speaks:
The blind cannot look angry,
The mute cannot scream furiously,
The armless cannot hold weapons,
The legless cannot move forward.
But – the mute can look angry,
But – the blind can scream furiously,
But – the legless can hold weapons,
But – the armless can move forward.10
Some, I know, are afraid. You choose silence.
But Audre Lorde says: Your silence will not protect you.
In the Moscow metro they say: Passengers are forbidden to travel on trains going to dead ends. And the Petersburg band “Aquarium” adds: This train is on fire.
Lao Tzu speaks through Tarkovsky:
Above all: May they believe in themselves and become helpless like children. For weakness is great, but strength is vain. When a man is born he is weak and flexible, and when he dies he is hard and rigid. When a tree grows it is tender and pliable, and when it is dry and hard it dies. Hardness and strength are the companions of death. Weakness and flexibility reveal the freshness of an existence. Therefore: What has become hard will not win.11
Remember that fear devours the soul.
Remember the character in Kafka, who saw how they set up a gallows in the prison yard, mistakenly thought it was for him, escaped from his cell in the night and hanged himself.
Be like children.
Don’t be afraid to ask (yourself and others): What is good and what is bad?
Don’t be afraid to say that the emperor is naked.
Do not be afraid to cry out, to burst into tears.
Repeat (to yourself and others): 2+2=4.
Black is black. White is white.
I am a man, I am strong and brave.
I am a strong and brave woman.
We are strong and brave people.
Freedom is the process by which you develop a practice for being unavailable for servitude.12
Alla Gutnikova gave this speech at her court hearing in Moscow on April 8th 2021.
Footnotes
- Alla refers here to a poem by Ekaterina Sokolova. ↩︎
- “How to read contemporary poetry” was the title of the well-known essay by Grigori Dashewski (2012). ↩︎
- A quote from a poem by the contemporary Russian poet Mikhail Gronas. ↩︎
- Alla here refers to a response from Joseph Brodsky during the trial in 1964, transmitted in Frida Wigdorova‘s transcript:
The Judge: Who recognized that you are a poet? Who counted you as poets?
Brodsky: Nobody. And who counted me among the human race? ↩︎ - A motto written on the wall of the Peter and Paul Fortress in Leningrad on August 3, 1976 by the Soviet artists Juli Ribakov and Oleg Volkov. They served 6 and 7 years in prison for making this political statement. Freedom and shackles. Historian discovers records from 1976 documenting a 23-year-old Vladimir Putin’s role in suppressing Soviet protest art. ↩︎
- A traditional Polish resistance motto, also a well-known banner from the anti-war demonstration that took place on Red Square in 1968. ↩︎
- Making of Tightrope ↩︎
- This passage is a slightly modified quotation from Venedikt Erofeev’s Moscow-Petushki, here in H. William Tjalsma’s translation (published as Moscow to the End of the Line). ↩︎
- Translation by Hakan Abd al-Had. ↩︎
- Translated by Mikhail Konovalenko. ↩︎
- This quote is found in Tarkovsky’s film STALKER – see the YouTube excerpt of this here. ↩︎
- Quote from: Nelson, Maggie (2022). On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint. ↩︎