Петр Померанцев - Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible - The Surreal Heart of the New Russia

When she went into the yard for exercise she became aware, in a way she never had been when she was free, of smells: “ In summer the two little trees in the yard smelled of heat and bread. Before I would go to a forest and not notice anything. Here there are just two thin trees yet how many impressions! ”

One time she was exercising in the yard with Sasha. Sasha owned a travel agency. She was a little younger than Yana, and they started talking about how they wanted children. They weren’t supposed to talk about things like that, and Yana wasn’t even sure how the conversation started. Sasha wanted two. Yana told her about Alexey and how she thought it was time to start a family, take a break from work. Sasha looked at her and said: “You’re thirty-five; it’s too late for children. There’s no way they’ll give you less than five years, that’s the very minimum. Once you’re in here that’s it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re guilty. Forget about kids…. ” Yana switched off and stopped listening to her and started doing star jumps so fast Sasha couldn’t keep up.

Of those charged in Russia, 99 percent receive guilty verdicts. The women in Yana’s cell would return after their trials broken, all found guilty. Their sentences were worse than anyone could have imagined: five years for possession of one gram of cocaine; four years for faking a prescription; eleven years for working as a cashier at one of the country’s top construction companies whose owner had fallen out with someone in the Kremlin. They were often set up by their own lawyers: the lawyers would take the bribes, then use that as “evidence” that the prisoners were guilty (the bribes would then disappear). Yana’s prosecutor, the one who had told the court she was dangerous and had been in hiding, had a reputation for being the fiercest.

“ I’m stronger than him ,” she wrote to herself.

She would scour the news for reports about herself. Chernousov had told her they were writing letters to Duma deputies; there had been meetings and small pickets where human rights activists had defended her. But in Russia you can protest all you like; it won’t change anything. You can scream and scream, but no one will hear you. There was one tiny paragraph about her in a liberal newspaper, and that was it.

Every day new white collar prisoners were brought to the cell. The last was a woman who had just won an award in Cannes for having Russia’s best travel agency. “ Soon ,” wrote Yana, “ prison will become like a University get together. Now I’m afraid again. What should I be preparing myself for? For the worst? Should I be saying good-bye to everyone? Time is passing and nothing is changing. I’m the same as the others. It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor. This system grabs people off the street, from work, from home, and eats them up. And no one knows when it will happen to them. ”

Then one day, as they were watching the news, she suddenly saw a report about herself. Not on one of the Ostankino channels, but on a slightly smaller one with an “opposition” reputation though actually owned by one of the President’s oldest friends. There were five hundred people on Pushkin Square protesting against her imprisonment. There were posters with her face on them that said “freedom to Yana Yakovleva.” A relatively famous musician played a resistance song on a stage. Chernousov was making a speech. The reporter said: “The FDCS appears to be arresting people who have nothing to do with drug dealing at all.”

The next day her story was a double spread in one of the newspapers. When she came in after the shower everyone in the cell was gathered around reading it.

“Hey,” they called out, “so you really are innocent.”

Cherkesov had enemies.

He was trying to prove to the President that Patrushev, his rival and the head of the FSB, was a weak link. The President encouraged Cherkesov, handing the FDCS responsibility for investigating an illegal customs business on the China-Russia border allegedly managed by the FSB. This sort of investigation was way out of the FDCS’s remit: Could the fact the President had entrusted it to Cherkesov mean he preferred him to Patrushev?

But Patrushev and the FSB were not going to go down easily.

Just as Cherkesov was investigating Patrushev, so Patrushev supported those who were fighting Cherkesov. So when the FSB heard about Yana’s story, they made sure the police didn’t close down the demonstrations, that the right TV channels and newspapers covered the protests. This was one of the reasons “liberal” papers and channels existed, to give one power broker a weapon to hit another power broker with. Every day Yana’s story became better known. It was nicknamed the “case of the Chemists,” to echo a Stalinist era purge known as the “case of the Doctors.”

None of this ever would have happened if Yana, her parents, and Chernousov had not decided to fight back in the first place. Without the first dissident impulse, nothing would have appeared. But neither would that alone have been enough. To make something happen in Russia, you have to be both valiant protester and Machiavellian, playing one clan off against the other.

Shortly before she was released Yana had a dream. She and Alexey were lying on chaise longues in a strange country. Alexey was reading a newspaper. She got up and climbed a tall tree next to the chaise longue. The tree was very tall, and from the top she could see fields and forests. Suddenly she saw a grizzly bear was in the tree, too. He was coming toward her, growling. She froze in terror. He put his wet teeth right up to her face. And then he stopped. She thought he would eat her. Then suddenly he started to retreat. There was a great noise: below the tree a whole tribe of rabid bulls was running by, making the earth shake. Alexey kept on reading the newspaper as if nothing had happened.

She was awakened by the snores of the woman on the bunk above. She snored so hard her dentures popped out of her mouth and flew clattering onto the floor.

When Yana told the others about the dream, they all said, “It’s a sign, the evil is retreating, but the danger is not over by a long shot.”

The day of her release she was doing exercises with Luba, the Ukrainian girl who would stand next to her at night. Boxing, then some abs. “If you leave,” Luba suddenly said, “I’m not sure how I’ll cope without you.”

“Where would I possibly go?” laughed Yana.

They went back in for lunch. They were all eating when the warden came in. “Yakovleva, get your clothes and your documents and follow me,” she shouted. All the prisoners looked at each other.

“Probably another date with the inspector,” joked Yana.

“They’re probably going to let you go,” said Tanya. “You’ll be free.”

“Shh,” said Yana, “you know we never say that word.”

They drove her back to the FDCS HQ in northern Moscow. Her lawyer was there, and her parents. Her lawyer said: “Look, we’ve done a deal. They will let you out on bail, but they are keeping your business partner in until the trial.”

She didn’t feel anything at first. She only turned and asked her mother: “Is Alexey here?”

“He knows you’re being released but he’s not here,” her mother answered.

They went back to the prison to sign her out. She was still numb. Only when the TV cameras turned up at the prison did she begin crying. It was cold and the tears felt hot in her mouth; there were the people from human rights groups there and journalists; she was hugging all of them and she was crying out of gratitude to them. She had been inside for seven months, and now that she was outside it was suddenly like she had never been there. But it wasn’t over yet: she had been granted bail, but the biggest battle was the trial that lay ahead.