they take away your phone and your international passport. they take away your freedom. your life no longer belongs to you. everything starts to fall apart.

how much time do you need to get dressed? captivity.
babe alone in babylon. baby bambi in the lap of babylon.
gentle tread, light step. with a gentle tread – to the enemy’s camp.

you don’t care if you go down in history as barbarians? have you heard of the butterfly effect, barbarians?

<...>

how to address you — uninvited guests? shacklers, jail wardens? pythias, graeae? doctors of my body? i am your banded bird (but the human soul knows no shackles – didn’t they teach you that in school?)

swan song of shira shirim,

alla gutnikova, trans. polly ganon

they send you subpoenas for interrogations. in the grey building of the investigative committee of the russian federation they ask you questions:

what do you know? what do you believe in? what do you hope for?

they want to make you talk, but you keep silent.
audre lorde said: your silence will not protect you.
but now your silence does protect you.
you keep silent, you don’t answer their questions.
you read books instead: first secretly, under the table, then openly.
you are silent, mute as a fish, you only say one word: 51.
this is your new favourite number.
(article 51 of the constitution gives you right not testify against yourself)

what is left? only your body. no one can take your body away from you. you
can resist with its help. you used to model before – you will continue to model
under house arrest, albeit with a monitoring bracelet on your leg. you are here.
you are present. you exist. here is the evidence.

your partners in crime and you start coming to the investigation committee in
costumes: school uniform, animal dress code. this is not justice, but a theatre,
a circus. 6 months after your arrest, another student from your university is
arrested. you come to the court hearing wearing t-shirts ‘free masha
platonova’. 10 months after your arrest, your country starts a full-scale war
against ukraine. you come to the next court hearing dressed in the colours of
the ukrainian flag to say: we stand with ukraine. in a week, the government
impose military censorship in the country. from that moment, one can get up to
15 years in prison for the truth about russia’s war crimes or being openly
anti-war. an activist natalia savoskina comes to one of your court hearings
with blue and yellow balloons and gets arrested for a month.

the day of the verdict, the final judgement comes. you have to say your last
word. to bypass censorship and not to get a new criminal case, you make it
allegorical, poetic, metaphorical. you speak about freedom and truth. you say:

To start seeing violence one simply has to open their eyes. My eyes are open.
I see the violence, and I do not want it.

Do not be afraid to ask (yourselves and others) what is good and what is bad.
Do not be afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes. Do not be afraid to
scream, to burst into tears. Repeat (to yourselves and to others): 2+2=4. Black
is black. White is white.

the last word, alla gutnikova, trans. karina papp, galina ryazanskaya (dina schachtel), and misha konovalenko, with ivan sokolov and ainsley morse

your silence is finally broken. you speak aesopian language to protect
yourself. instead, your last word becomes known and translated into 11
languages.

you are afraid of the prison. you are sure you end up in prison. instead, your
partners in crime and you are sentenced to 2 years of correctional labour. you
leave the country, knowing you cannot return until the regime falls.

you are finally free. but until we are all free, we are none of us free.
you now know what survivor’s guilt is.

anyone can become a political prisoner.
everyone can become a political prisoner.

you try to turn your popularity into solidarity.

you are the only one ex- in die zeit article on russian political prisoners.
you are the only one free.

we remember audre lorde’s essays
the uses of the erotic; the uses of anger

what could be the uses of freedom?
to find out, move to the solidarity zone: