I had already gotten so much accustomed to closed trials in Russia that I inadvertently said: "It can't be so!"

Photo: Anna Politkovskaya's grave at Troyekurovskoye cemetery in Moscow (photo by Grigory Pasko)

Exactly in twenty-four hours, the Moscow district military court at the first session of the consideration of the case on the merits decided that the trial must take place in closed regime. The judge presiding at the trial, Yevgeny Zubov, clarified that this was done for the reason that the jurors are refusing to enter the courtroom in the presence of the press.

I have no words. It's just plain nauseating. I am nauseous because of those who adopt such decisions. And I understand: that's how it will be in my country for a very long time yet.

Recently I paid a visit ... to Anna. More precisely, to her grave, at the Troyekurovskoye cemetery.

At this cemetery I ended up for the first time. The pompous constructions in front of the entrance impressed me: beautiful, solidly made, for the ages... The flower kiosk, the little church for performing funeral services for the deceased, the hall for farewells, the gravestones for sale - everything, absolutely everything has been provided for. There's no skimping in the way this business is being run, everything has been well thought through. Even the mugs of the security guards are so broad, as if though especially so that nobody would question the seriousness and longevity of this business.

And then I saw the cemetery itself. A huge field of black and tasteless monuments, simply obtuse in their tastelessness. Like some field of dead intentions of good architects. Like a dragon's teeth that have sprouted, sprung like seeds - and all black, like they had already grown out rotten.

Nearly all the entombed - are military and cops. On the slabs are engraved their portraits in uniform, and from this the theatricality and absurdity of the spectacle only intensifies. And if you then inadvertently start to read the inscriptions as well ...

"Here rests ...great... deserving... Awarded orders and medals ..." "Advisor-legate 3 class... diplomat..." Lord, who needs their regalia THERE?

This is certainly not the poet Batyushkov with his epitaph: "No need for inscriptions on my stone, simply say here: he was and is no more!"

If we are to believe Mark Twain, the deceased adore reading gravestone inscriptions and epitaphs. Oh and how they no doubt snigger and laugh at them!

I recalled the poem of one author:

Смех берет от надписей дебильных          They make you laugh, the moronic inscriptions,
И поэтов, сочинявших их,                         And the poets who composed them
Тех, что нам на камушках могильных        Those who for us on little gravestones
Пишут глупое: "Трагически погиб".            Write stupidly: "Tragically died".

And suddenly, among the black field of tastelessness - a little island of brightness. This - the grave of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya. A white border, white pebbles, a stone slab over the grave, stylized to resemble a large sheet of paper, shot through in several places. Anna had been shot by a killer, whose hand had been directed by those who were intensely irritated by the journalist's articles. She wrote about the Russian power, about Putin and his accomplices, about the war in Chechnya and the fates of the Chechens... About closed trials.

A bright gravestone - as a symbol of Anna's bright soul. That's how it should be: white - for the white, black - for the black.

If we are returning to cold war, the Berlin Crisis is the most useful precedent. Stalin tested the West in Berlin 1948 much as Mr. Putin is doing in Georgia today. Once again, in Georgia the daunting challenge for America is to maintain and restore a fragile entity, to defend a line, without going to war. Beleaguered Georgia will need American resolve, ingenuity and daring equal to that of the Berlin Airlift if it is to be restored.

From Tolstoy to the poet Anna Akhmatova and the dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov, the most respected Russian intellectuals have traditionally functioned not just as cultural figures but as national symbols, moral beacons and speakers of truth. Mr. Solzhenitsyn was one of several titanic figures who staked their lives on that mission — to “defeat the lie,” as he put it — undeterred by exile and imprisonment. But today, in an atmosphere of far greater freedom in private life than existed in the Soviet period, there are no towering cultural figures who command the respect that Mr. Solzhenitsyn did in his prime. Instead of moral clarion calls, literary novelists write profanity-laced satires of consumerism. Most opposition politicians have faded from the scene rather than push to the limits against growing authoritarianism. There is no cultural counterweight to the larger-than-life figure who dominates political life, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin. That is partly because a new generation of Russians is now awash in the global tide of infinite consumer choice. It is also because Mr. Solzhenitsyn himself helped discredit the image of the public intellectual by hectoring the nation after his return from exile in 1994. But it is above all because the political landscape is more complex: today’s authoritarianism is less monumental than Soviet repression, and so are its opponents.

Carrying bags of stolen groceries, Oleg Vorotnikov takes out the batteries of his mobile phone before entering the secret headquarters of his underground art collective on the outskirts of Moscow.

"This is to prevent the cops from listening in," said Vorotnikov, a 29-year-old art graduate, who with other politically conscious artists co-founded the Voina, or War, collective in 2007. "Once a drunk artist introduced us to bystanders as 'Russia's main radical group' -- that's when I understood that we have to do something together," Vorotnikov said.

In a country where traditional opposition to the government has been dulled by public apathy and a diet of pro-Kremlin television news, these artists take a different approach: they poke fun at the establishment, and the more absurd the better. They hunch over laptops in their headquarters -- a garage -- editing video of their latest piece of guerrilla street theater: an impromptu tea party in a police station. For the lack of chairs they sit on chests of drawers and a TV set. Cameras, camcorders and books of poetry are scattered over the floor.

"We always do things that violate rules. We combine art and politics to achieve something new," said Kotyonok, a slightly built young woman who teaches physics at a Moscow university and who only gave her nickname, which means kitten. "People watch us and are simply shocked."

Voina became a household name in the Russian blogger scene with a stunt intended as a wry commentary on the handover of power -- decried by opponents as undemocratic -- from former President Vladimir Putin to his successor, Dmitry Medvedev. A day before the presidential election that Medvedev won by a landslide, five couples, including one heavily pregnant woman who gave birth four days later, secretly undressed in Moscow's Biological Museum. With video cameras rolling, they had sex in front of a banner calling for copulation in support of "the bear cub-successor" - a pun on Medvedev's family name, which is derived from the Russian word for bear.

EVICTED

Blogs carrying photos and videos of the event shot to number one in Russian Internet rankings within 24 hours. Some users called the participants "freaks," "sh--eaters" or "animals." One blogger suggested they should be shot. When the mother of the pregnant woman saw her having sex on television, she threw her out of home. Voina said they had to leave their old headquarters under pressure from the authorities but few members have yet to face the full weight of the law for their activities.

The group is most vulnerable to the catch-all "hooliganism" charge that could lead to a short prison term, but only one member is currently facing prosecution for throwing cats during one performance. Voina's actionist art draws on Moscow Conceptualism, a movement that started in the 1970 with performances subverting socialist ideology. Given the repressive nature of the Soviet state, these happenings had to take place secretly.

Only when state control over the arts receded during Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika reforms in the 1980s could artists take their events into the public sphere. In April 1991 members of a group around Anatoly Osmolovsky, a Russian artist, art theorist and curator, lay down on Red Square forming the word "khui," Russian for cock, with their naked bodies. Voina members describe the happening as inspiring but add that it would be impossible today in an "authoritarian Russia" where, nevertheless, they have earned the respect of some in the mainstream art scene.

"In the '90s art fell under the influence of a society that was becoming more and more bourgeois: artists happily turned into conformists," said Andrei Yerofeyev, who until last month was head of modern art procurement at the state-run Tretyakov Gallery. "Only in the last year a strain of protest art reappeared, one that takes a critical line, reflects, takes a step back and sometimes cynically, sometimes comically, describes what is going on in our society."

Back in the Voina headquarters the activists scramble around a laptop computer trying to improve the sound of their latest video to make it fit for Internet publication. Shaky images, filmed with a hidden camera the day before Medvedev's inauguration, show the artists dishing out cream cakes and tea in a police station. Watched by a stunned officer, they pin Medvedev's portrait to a wall. "We invite you to celebrate with us the inauguration of the new president," one activist can be heard saying. Attempting to remove the intruders, the officer resorts to verbal abuse. "We have to fix the sound, you can't hear anything," said Kotyonok, twitching the dials on the video- editing software.

UNDERGROUND WAKE

In another piece of performance art, the group rigged up a table in a metro carriage, brought out food and vodka and held a wake for absurdist poet Dmitry Prigov. They also marked international workers' day by going in to a McDonald's restaurant and throwing live cats at the counter staff. The idea, they said, was to help snap the workers out of the dull routine of menial labor. Behind the bizarre stunts, the artists who make up Voina have a serious political agenda. "If the authorities say 'we are building a strong state,' an artist should show that this is not the case. If they say 'we are improving the lives of the people,' an artist should show that this is a lie," said Vorotnikov over dinner, tearing off a hunk of the chicken he earlier stole from a supermarket. But they say their work is also a journey of self-discovery, to see how far they can push their own boundaries as artists and radicals. "We hate cops but if we just attacked them like that, they would jail us immediately. So we hide our hatred behind art so they can't get us and we achieve our aim quicker," said Kotyonok.

The authorities have dealt harshly with overtly political opposition but to date there has been no sign of a crackdown on Voina. Acting under the aegis of art protects them to a large extent, she said. "We've had sex in public and are no longer scared of it. We've invaded a police station and are no longer scared of it. What else is there to scare us?," asked Kotyonok. "Death we will deal with in the future. Soon we will be completely fearless."

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On December 12, the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko was honored with "White Snows Are Falling," a state-funded rock opera tribute staged at Moscow's Olympic Stadium. At 74, Mr. Yevtushenko is well acquainted with the concert arena venue, having become famous in the late '50 for declaiming his verses before youthful crowds hungry for genuine art in the post-Stalin — and anti-Stalinist — period. Back then, he published collections that sold in the 100,000-range. His good looks, charisma, and cultivated "public" persona only legitimize the inevitable comparisons with Western pop stars: Mr. Yevtushenko was always something of a Mick Jagger of the taiga.

It was with this slightly kitsch portrait in mind that I phoned him up a few weeks ago at his dacha at Peredelkino, just outside the Russian capital. Mr. Yevtushenko divides his time between Russia and the University of Tulsa, where he has taught poetry and film for nearly 20 years. The rock opera, coincident with his 75th birthday, was based on a 1980 record, "Confession," composed by Gleb Mai, who set Mr. Yevtushenko's decades-old poems to music, accompanied by the Bolshoi Theater orchestra. The poet himself was onstage to deliver more traditional live readings.

"The first part was written 25 years ago exactly," Mr. Yevtushenko, whose English is admirable, tells me of "White Snows Are Falling." "It's about an intimate relationship between a young man and a young woman, about the fear of separation of the body and soul. When the soul lives separately from the body or vice versa, there is no harmony … there is no plot. This is an inner fight for the soul of man."

The metaphysical was always a part of Mr. Yevtushenko's "individualist" style; he still professes to think of himself as foremost a love poet. I couldn't help but think, however, that his talk of the mind-body distinction — and he could go on like this for quite a while — was only a prologue to the rock opera's historical significance. "The twentieth century has left so many ruins of marketism, Stalinism … not ruins of democracy. Young people are incredibly scared about themselves because they feel some apathy. They long for ideals, not ideology." He seemed to believe his performance answered this longing. "They were singing, applauding — they didn't want to leave! This rock opera united so many people of different ages, from 60-year-olds to 17- year-olds."

The satirist Mikhail Zadornov, Mr. Yevtushenko told me, recently nicknamed him "The Lighter" for his ability to set a stadium full of Russian spirits aflame, though he did not emphasize the necessity of such an enterprise in the consensus-choked, opposition-starved Age of Putin. Mr. Yevtushenko has spoken only euphemistically about the KGB tsar's abrogation of democracy, claiming, "Putin, like Russia, is struggling to find his way in a time when ideals have been shattered and expedience reigns." This rather paltry analysis of current affairs may seem a great distance from the man who warned, in "The Dead Hand of the Past" (1962), that "Someone still glares in the Stalin manner, / looking at young men askance." In truth, Mr. Yevtushenko's politics have always been a complicated mixture of bravery, populism, and vulgar accommodation with dictatorship. "The writers who had briefly flourished [under Khrushchev's thaw] … went two different ways," the great Sovietologist and literary critic Robert Conquest put it in a 1974 profile. "Solzhenitsyn and his like into silenced opposition; Yevtushenko and his like, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes in the hope of still influencing matters a little, into well-rewarded collaboration."

And yet, a hagiography of Mr. Yevtushenko as the Byronic rebel has flourished in the West — he is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters — and this surely owes to "Babi Yar," his most famous poem, written in 1961 as a moving threnody to the Ukrainian Jews massacred by the Nazis: "In my blood there is no Jewish blood. / In their callous rage, all anti-Semites / must hate me now as a Jew. / For that reason / I am a true Russian!" It made its 28-year-old author an international icon of Russian liberalism a year before Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" came out; it also made him a martyr to his own attempts to address the taboo subject of Judeocide. (Shostakovich later rendered the poem, along with three others by the same author, as an orchestral piece for his 13th Symphony.)

Mr. Yevtushenko once defiantly recited the closing staves of "Babi Yar" to Khrushchev, who replied that the poem had no place in the Soviet Union because "official" anti-Semitism didn't exist there. But because the poem was an indictment of an unofficial Russian pathology, as opposed to an ideologically sanctioned bigotry, it was not suppressed, only watered down. After the leftist French weekly L'Express put out his "A Precocious Autobiography" (1963) — a volume that also addressed anti-Semitism and carried the observation that in "Russia all tyrants believe poets to be their worst enemies" — Mr. Yevtushenko was formally brought to heel. He was one of the few writers to confess to having committed "an irreparable mistake," which he vowed to rectify.

Not that his reputation abroad suffered: As Mr. Conquest put it, he "was not just the shining liberal knight who sold out and became a mere cynical agent of the oppressor. His original liberalism was of a limited nature, and it was not he, but his Western fans, who made higher claims." Such fans included Arthur Miller and William Styron, who called Mr. Yevtushenko a "voice of conscience among his colleagues," a judgment that could not have been more wrong — it was precisely his colleagues who hated him most.

The poet himself once wrote that the "Russian Parnassus is rife with squabbles," but the antagonism which met Mr. Yevtushenko at home was not merely the result of Leavisite feuds. Critics such as Vasily Aksyonov and Grigory Pozhenyan accused him of using his perch as secretary of the Soviet Union of Writers to "settle personal scores" and engage in "hypocritical demagogy." Also troubling was that this avowed admirer of Pasternak — whom he called "Pushkin's double"— would say that "Dr. Zhivago" was "not worth publishing" in the Soviet Union. Overseas, Mr. Yevtushenko took to defaming the deceased novelist's lover and heir, Olga Ivinskaya, who had been jailed for eight years on false charges of unlawfully administering Pasternak's Western royalties. When asked about her plight, Mr. Yevtushenko replied that he wouldn't have anything to do with currency criminals.

Indeed, the greatest feat of Kremlin public relations may have been to convince the world of the existence of an uncompromised dissident with a passport. Mr. Yevtushenko was at his most amenable to Moscow when far away from it. He took no position, despite numerous entreaties, on the notorious Ginzburg-Galanskov trial, because he was preparing for a trip to Chile at the time. He got to travel regularly to Italy, Portugal, Spain, Australia, Senegal, and Cuba, where he directed an idolizing film about that country's revolution (Fidel Castro is still a personal friend).

During his 1972 trip to America, he produced such vulgar propaganda verses that even Eugene McCarthy — no fan of American foreign policy then — had heard enough. Allen Tate called him a "ham actor, not a poet," and others not unsympathetic to criticisms of Washington found his frequent condemnations of American "imperialism," and comparatively footling criticisms of the Russian police state, thoroughly repulsive.

Much has been made of Mr. Yevtushenko's protest of the trial of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, an event now credited with inaugurating the modern dissident movement and readying the national pulse for perestroika. Both writers had toiled under pseudonyms and stood accused, in 1966, of "anti-Soviet activity" for the views espoused by their fictional characters. But Mr. Yevtushenko's actual position was that the writers were guilty, only punished too severely.

There is something uneasy and defensive about his response some 40 years on to any questions concerning his dubious role as a cultural statesman. "When I wrote 'Babi Yar,'" he told me, "one high official said to me, 'Why [did] you write this? We could make you our first national poet if you wrote something about Vietnam.' I said to him, 'If I couldn't write poems like "Babi Yar" against something I didn't like, like anti-Semitism, I will never have the moral right to write poetry about Vietnam.' I dislike both, this is my position. You know the proverb 'You couldn't sit between two chairs'? I once wrote a poem that used this proverb. I said if both chairs are dirty, to sit between them is the best place for a poet."

That Mr. Yevtushenko managed to both captivate and unsettle is best evidenced in his twin run-ins with Kingsley Amis, a man not known for his generosity toward foreigners, much less foreign literary types. The cold warrior Falstaff first met the blue-eyed Siberian at Cambridge in 1962 during one of the latter's media-frenzied tours of Europe. They bonded in discussion of ugly bourgeois architecture, the existence of God, and the rewards of literature ("Kipling good"), so much so that Amis wrote that Mr. Yevtushenko was not a "charlatan" — high praise coming from the author of "Lucky Jim" — and that he had just found "the first completely good reason … for liking the U.S.S.R."

Yet just six years later, the scales fell from the eyes. When Mr. Yevtushenko was nominated for the poetry chair at Oxford in 1968, Amis, Bernard Levin, and the Russian-Hungarian historian Tibor Szamuely led the campaign against him, arguing correctly that he had made life difficult for his fellow Soviet writers. In the event, he did not get the post, and when asked about it today, Mr. Yevtushenko responds that Amis was "misinformed." In his defense, he cites an unfair rumor going around at the time that he had not signed a telegram protesting the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia when he had in fact done so; he'd also written a poem, "Russian Tanks in Prague."

Nevertheless, it is absurd to credit his insistence that he was ultimately denied the cap and gown due to KGB disinformation feeding the small but potent band of naysayers. For one thing, the Soviet Embassy in London supported his candidacy, as did even the conservative element on Fleet Street. The whole affair was recently recounted in the British magazine Prospect by Bernard Wasserstein, the student who first proposed Mr. Yevtushenko for the position, as he admits, purely for "political" reasons. As with most of the New Left, the poetry was a secondary consideration.

And yet if evaluated "primarily as a politician," Mr. Conquest wrote, "we might yet accept that in Soviet circumstances his record, with all its shifts and compromises, may merit, on balance, a positive assessment." Auden's clement judgment that time "Worships language and forgives / Everyone by whom it lives" might also apply here. Though for the orphans and prodigal children of 20th-century totalitarianism, Mr. Yevtushenko's one-line autobiography says it best: "I am a citizen of human grief."

Vladimir Sinelnikov*

Yezhednevniy Zhurnal

February 7, 2008

Dear Mr. President,

I would imagine that most of the letters sent to you contain one or another request. But I have a different purpose: I would like to direct your attention to a recent event which reflects as in a drop of water a phenomenon that is without a doubt causing much concern in Russian society. I hope that what I set forth in the letter below will cause your assistants to bring it to your attention.

About two years ago, during the day, I was returning from a film shoot in my minivan, and as we crossed the square where not long ago there stood a monument to Dzerzhinskiy [TN: Feliks Dzerzhinskiy, the founder of the KGB; his statue stood in front of the headquarters of the KGB, now the FSB, on Lubyanka Square] my vehicle was hit broadside by a car speeding through a red light, impacting right in the spot were I was sitting in the passenger seat. I could not get out of my vehicle, because I was covered in cuts from broken glass and was in a state of shock. But my driver, who was not as badly injured, was able to get out and headed for a traffic island in the middle of the square. The driver responsible for the collision approached the traffic police posted there and told them: “Listen up: I’m an FSB officer on assignment to the Russian Presidential Administration. When you write up your report, start with that.” Then right there, at the scene of the accident, he got on his mobile phone and called two people, who arrived in 4-5 minutes and claimed they were “bystanders” to the accident. After giving their eyewitness accounts they identified themselves for the report as FSB officers (thereby explaining how they were able to get to the traffic island so quickly from their place of work).

Beginning the next day the leadership of the traffic police special cases unit became the target of unprecedented pressure from federal and Moscow city law enforcement agencies, which demanded that the FSB officer Subbotkin, who was driving the car that rammed into mine - and who loudly proclaimed at the scene of the accident that he worked for you, Mr. President - be exonerated from all responsibility for the accident. But that’s not all. Without any request whatsoever from the police, Subbotkin brought to the traffic police investigations office a videotape which, it turns out, the FSB makes 24 hours a day of the square where the accident took place. Unfortunately for him, he did not anticipate that analysis of the tape by independent experts would only further prove his responsibility for the accident. But a fact remains a fact, and the tape was entered into the case file.

Despite all the pressure that was placed on him, the traffic police investigator refused to declare that my own driver, and not Subbotkin, was responsible for the accident. The most the investigator would agree to do was write was that he could not determine who was at fault. And for that he was immediately sent into retirement. I appealed in a letter to the chief of the FSB Personal Security Directorate, General Kupryashkin, setting before him a single question: whether it was true what Subbotkin said at the scene of the accident, that he was an FSB officer. And also whether the two “bystanders” who supposedly saw the accident were FSB officers as well. (Again, they themselves gave their names and places of employment in the course of the investigation at the scene of the accident.) In a letter signed by one of Kupryashkin’s assistants, it was confirmed that they were all FSB employees. I am attaching this letter because one point is worthy of your attention: in this letter, the agency does not give an assessment of the conduct of any of its officers - neither Subbotkin, nor the false witnesses. Furthermore, while confirming their affiliation with the FSB, the respondent nonetheless did not give the officers’ last names, and confirmed their involvement in the affair only as anonymous figures. But instead he assured me that they (“they” who? the witnesses?) had “not threatened” me, although I never said a single word about this, and never even saw the witnesses.

After this I wrote a letter to the chief of your administration, Mr. Sobyanin, in which I asked him to confirm or disconfirm that Subbotkin is an FSB officer on assignment to the Presidential Administration. I received an official reply, delivered to me by state courier, signed receipt required, which said that Subbotkin is in fact an employee of your administration.

Then I turned to the courts, and here, Mr President, several additional circumstances came to light that are worthy of your attention. The judge demanded that I state Subbotkin’s place of residence - i.e., provide his certificate of domicile - even though in the accident report he wrote his address in his own hand, and it was accurate enough that a telegram sent there to determine the damage he inflicted on my car reached him. It turns out, Mr. President, that Mr. Subbotkin’s place of residence is not at the address given by him, but another: Bolshaya Lubyanka, Bldg 1/3. I know that you once worked at this address, as does Mr. Patrushev [the current head of the FSB], and that this is the location of the KGB’s prison, but I cannot imagine where in this vicinity Subbotkin might be residing. I can’t help but ask: for what purpose would we have a regulation, written or unwritten, that gives intelligence officers the right to register as their domicile their place of work? Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to change such a law, if it exists, or extend it to all organizations, including my television company?

I do not know why - I do not want to imagine why - but the court lost my case file on two separate occasions, and was not even able to tell me the date on which the court supposedly returned my documents to me. So twice I had to start all over again, pull together all the necessary documents, and again pay the court fees. And then, just after my story appeared on the website of the Russian organization “For Human Rights” (Za Prava Cheloveka), the judge who twice lost my case file suddenly disappeared, and the whole process had to begin again from a blank piece of paper. In this way, Mr. President, my story proceeded for two years. And then, just when the my case was finally going to court, who should appear but Mr Subbotkin (I should note that he never once appeared in court these two years, but suddenly he turned up, as soon the court found him responsible in absentia and ordered him to pay for damages to my vehicle). And here occurs the main turn of events that is worthy of your attention. Subbotkin filed a retaliatory suit, alleging that my driver was responsible for the accident.

But that’s not the main thing. Subbotkin also demanded that I be held responsible for tarnishing his image and honor as an FSB officer, referring to the fact that the above story, word for word, appeared on the website of the “For Human Rights” organization. He does not deny that he presented himself at the accident site as an FSB officer; does not deny that he personally delivered to the traffic police a videotape produced by the intelligence services; and he does not deny that he called his FSB colleagues to serve as false witnesses. But he accuses me of taking the liberty of drawing to public attention the fact that he is a member of the intelligence services. [TN: Emphasis in the original.]

Yes, I knowingly passed this information to the respected organization’s website. And I will say further: this story became the subject of an hour-long program on the radio station “Svoboda” (Freedom), in which I was joined by the recently-elected Russian Duma deputy and retired FSB General Kandaurov. On the program, Kandaurov gave his unambiguous assessment of Subbotkin’s conduct. At the end of the program I asked him to answer a question for me. “I thought,” I told him and the program’s listeners, “that this story would end approximately as follows: I would be invited to FSB headquarters, where they would admit their involvement in what happened, and tell me that Subbotkin would not be able to discuss the matter with me because he was fulfilling his duties in a garrison somewhere near Chita [TN: city in eastern Siberia]. Or will they instead just send the tax inspector to visit my television company?” I asked. Kandaurov smiled and answered, “After the website affair, and now this hour-long program on ‘Svoboda’, they will first apologize... And then they will send the tax inspector.”

Kandaurov was halfway wrong, but also turned out to be halfway right. No one has apologized, and Subbotkin is not in Chita, but continues to work in Moscow, in your administration, Mr. President. Moreover, regarding the tax inspector, I was apparently provident in my thinking. In his retaliatory suit Subbotkin demands of the court that I present a legal document specifying the date my driver began working for me as driver at the television company, what kind of personal relationship he has with me, in what capacity he had the right to drive, etc., etc.

In court Subbotkin begged for the mercy of the court, requesting he be allowed to pay the court fees in installments (the same court fees that I had to pay twice), because he was living in poverty. Nonetheless, he had two lawyers accompanying him to court. It would be interesting to know who paid the not insignificant sum for their fees - Subbotkin, or the agency that shares in his injury at having their honor and dignity tarnished?

Dear Mr. President, I will get to the point. The story of my automobile accident is an everyday occurrence in our lives; it is a matter for the courts, experts, etc. But what worries me, and not only me, is something different: this story has been dragging on for two years; official letters from the FSB and the Presidential Administration convince me that these authoritative organizations know very well who works for them and why I asked for their answers. Now, as Subbotkin is filing his retaliatory suit regarding the offending of his dignity as an FSB officer, it has become clear that there is no talk of his being sent to Chita. Subbotkin understood what his senior managers indicated to him by their two years of utter silence: you’ve done everything just right, Subbotkin. With regard to this I have some thoughts and questions: who is Subbotkin related to, or whose daughter did he marry? Not one of your daughters, of course - yours are too young. I don’t know if Patrushev has any daughters, but the circle of influential people is not so narrow and tight. But perhaps it is even worse than that? Perhaps all members of the intelligence services now allow themselves to think that the day has arrived when they can behave like this. The untouchability of the head of the government, guaranteed by the Constitution, the untouchability of his narrow circle, and now the bureaucratic riff-raff with their government-issued personal weapons – they are all a threat to society as a whole. Not yet 20 years have passed since we became convinced of this. And look where that led the previous regime as well.

My friends and colleagues urged me not to send this letter to you. Yes, yes, Mr. President, alas, everyone is thinking about this nowadays, fear is in the air. But I have behind me films about Chernobyl, Sakharov, and the interrelationships between the people and the authorities, and I have those ten days in the life of Yuri Lyubimov, which the Politburo of the USSR allowed him to spend in his Motherland to reproduce his performance of “Boris Godunov” at the Taganka Theater.

On your decree, Mr. President, I was awarded the Order of Valor for the film “The Bell of Chernobyl” [1987], which was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for being shown in every country of the world having television. This was the last “unreleasable film” (полочная картина) of the Soviet era, having been released to viewers in the new era. Military men, with whom I am nowadays working on upcoming films, tell me that this is the only medal that cannot be earned while serving “on the parquet” [in the rear]. I am proud of this medal and remember it now, as I grow depressed while shooting a series on international terrorism in places that would make one envy Chernobyl. That’s why I’m writing you this letter regardless.

I have nothing to share with Subbotkin. But the manner in which they relate to him in his place of work is a very important sign, of the most profound sort. Especially now, on the eve of the presidential elections. This is my first letter to you and, probably, it will be my last. Letters to presidents - they’re not my genre. But I want to tell you one thing, having now taken up my pen: it seems like there is a plan being worked out today to cause society to completely condemn the 1990’s. But from those years we got not only the oligarchs who robbed Russia blind, but also those who created the democratic basis for our life today, and, to get right to the point, those who make up the political elite in today’s society. The intelligentsia that was formed in the 1990’s is a part of our society not compensated by anything or anyone. “Without me the people are incomplete”, said the great Russian poet. Without the intelligentsia t