Keith Gessen - A Terrible Country

I looked around the room. The FSB officer was still taking notes. I took this as a cue to continue.

“The government’s answer to this seems to be twofold. On the one hand, more liberalization of the economy, and at the same time more repression of political dissent. No offense.”

They all nodded: no offense taken.

“So what October says is, Look, the answer to the crisis is not to defund schools, hospitals, and infrastructure projects and put them in the private sector, where the money can be stolen by capitalists, but to make it the government’s responsibility to protect the people. All the people. And until the government is willing to do that, Russia will continue to suffer, and its people will suffer, and there will be unhappiness and unrest.”

I looked around the room.

“Maybe you’re right,” the FSB officer with the iPhone said.

I smiled. I was very pleased. “Maybe,” I said humbly.

“There’s one thing, though,” the other FSB officer said thoughtfully, looking up from his notes. “We used to have a communist government here. But we don’t anymore. And calls for the country to have a communist government again could be interpreted by some passionate people as calls for the overthrow of the current regime.”

“I’ve never heard anyone at October call for the overthrow of the current regime,” I said quickly. This was not, it occurred to me, technically true. October defined itself as a “revolutionary party.” So in that sense they did advocate the overthrow of the current regime. And it turned out my new friends already knew that.

“It says here,” said the FSB guy with the iPhone, showing me the October website, “that they’re a revolutionary party. So they do want a revolution?”

“That’s just a figure of speech!” I said. “Everything’s revolutionary now. People say the iPhone is a revolutionary technology. Does that make you a revolutionary?”

“OK,” the note-taking FSB guy now said, “let’s not get worked up. I think we can wrap this up now, right?” He was addressing Mr. iPhone.

That guy nodded.

“Great,” said the other.

They both thanked me and gave me their hands to shake. Not knowing what else to do, I shook them. “Oh, one more question,” the FSB guy with the iPhone said, as if suddenly remembering it. “Which of your friends was there when you destroyed the bulldozer out in the forest?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I wasn’t there.”

“They never talked about it?”

“Not in front of me,” I said. This was a lie, as they could probably tell, but they let it go. They had enough, apparently. They thanked me again and left the room.

Then it was over. The police detectives handed me my passport and my phone; they even said I should come by and see them if I was ever in the neighborhood; and I walked out, back onto Sretenka, a free man. It wasn’t even seven o’clock; I had spent less than three hours in custody.

A bunch of people were standing across the street from the police station: Yulia and Sergei and everyone from October, Elena and some other well-dressed youngish people, a guy from the Moscow Times whom Howard had once introduced me to, and another guy from one of the wire services. The October people were talking to one another while all the journalists were having intense conversations on their cell phones. They didn’t see me at first when I came out, and as I stood at the top of the stairs I had a strong impulse to walk quietly around the corner before they saw me and try never to talk to any of them again.

I had thought, back in that room, that once I got out I would have such a newfound appreciation for everything, for the shitty bookstore with the strip club on the second floor and the Hugo Boss and the cars parked on the sidewalk, and of course my grandmother and everything else. Now here I was, and that’s not how I felt. Instead I felt like something had happened back in that room that I didn’t yet understand. But I had a bad feeling about it.

Someone from the group saw me and called my name, and they came over to me in a bunch all talking at once and looking like they were happy and indeed lucky to see me. Yulia gave me a hug whose intensity I found embarrassing, given the mildness of what I’d just been through, and all the Octobrists gave me correspondingly solemn handshakes.

Sergei was the first one to speak. “Everything OK?” he asked.

“I think so,” I said.

Something about the way I said this must have given Sergei pause, because he now said, “Yeah?” As in, was I sure everything was OK? Obviously I was not sure.

“They asked me what October was,” I said. “And I told them it was a discussion group.”

“OK,” said Sergei.

“They were saying it was extremist but I told them that was ridiculous, that the group had no plans to overthrow the government.”

“O-K,” said Sergei, more slowly than the first time.

“I told them that I met you through hockey and that we met to discuss Marx at Misha’s place. That was about it.”

“OK,” Sergei said again. He looked thoughtful. “I thought we’d all agreed that we don’t talk to the police.”

“Yeah,” I said. “They just seemed pretty normal to me. I felt like I was recruiting them, to be honest.”

Sergei took this in.

“We can recruit the army, not the police,” he said quietly, like you’d say a quick catechism. Then he spoke normally again. “I’m sure it’s fine,” he said. “Should we all go out and get a drink?”

I really did not feel like a drink. I felt like going home and taking a shower. I still had ketchup in my hair. I told Sergei as much, and he nodded.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he said. I agreed.

Yulia had been listening to all this. “I’ll come with you,” she said to me. I agreed to that as well.

Now Elena and the guy from the Moscow Times politely approached and asked if they could talk to me. I said yes but kept walking in the direction of my grandmother’s, to indicate that I didn’t want to talk long. Elena put a microphone in my face and Howard’s friend took out his notebook and I told them that the whole thing was pretty innocuous and that I did not feel like I’d been ground under the heel of the regime and in fact I’d been happy to tell them about the activities of October—I thought it’d be nice to make a plug for October on Echo—and that was about it.

Yulia and I walked the rest of the way alone. “Katya called me,” she said. “She says there are a bunch of articles already online about the American academic arrested in front of RussOil.”

There was something bitter about the way she said it. I didn’t answer.

“Did they beat you?” she asked.

“No. Not at all.”

“Then why’d you tell them about October?”

“They knew all about it already!” I said. I said it in a pleading sort of way. The October website literally said that it was a “revolutionary” organization. What had I told those guys that they didn’t already know?

“Oy, Andryush,” said Yulia. “Let’s go check on Seva Efraimovna.”

“OK,” I said.

We walked the rest of the way in silence.

My grandmother was sitting at the table eating alone when we came in. “Andryush!” she said. “Yulia! Where have you been?”

“Sorry, Grandma,” I said. “We got delayed. Everything’s fine.”

“You must be hungry,” she said. “Let me cook you something.”

She still referred to cooking things even though mostly what this meant now was reheating the food that Seraphima Mikhailovna had left in the fridge.

Yulia and I agreed to eat but insisted that my grandmother sit while we heated up the portions.