Believing in a "mistake": how do modern officials behave when they go to jail

Famous Russian lawyer Aleksey Fedyarov touched upon an important criminal-psychological topic. From the history of Stalin's times, we all know perfectly well how, having fallen into the clutches of the NKVD, some major Soviet official, all the more directly involved in the crimes of the authorities, was dumbfounded by such an "unfair" attitude towards himself and wrote a letter to the leader with literally these words : "Comrade Stalin, a terrible mistake has occurred!" Exactly the same thing is happening in our times, which can confidently be called "Stalinist-light". Why, it happened in Russia throughout its thousand-year history, so in principle there is nothing new in what Fedyarov wrote. But still:

Return to caste

“When relatives of formerly state, but then arrested husbands apply, rarely give, I, of course, make inquiries.

Previously, there were moderate cannibals, now they are not - all were members, actively supported, spoke out passionately.

Very rarely, when a relationship of trust develops, I ask if the views have changed? Previously, a man drowned for order with an iron hand, for "punishment without guilt does not happen" and "the court will sort it out." How is it now?

The answer is always the same: "We did not think that this was possible with us".

Yes, this is not with us.

When prosecutors and investigators arrest a knowingly innocent person, and the judge churns out, this is “not with us”.

When a university rector kicks out students for participating in a rally, and then, being arrested, asks for justice, this is “not with us”.

When Echo's presenter Alexei Naryshkin says on the air that it is still necessary to figure out why those who are being tortured are in prison, this is “not with us”.

From these "not with us" a system that lives its own life has been built, which does not even need political will, it is tuned to automatic recognition of "friend or foe". And for destruction.

And it is more likely that this system controls the power, and not vice versa.

Therefore, one should not hope that the government will change the system; rather, one should fear that the system will change the government.

The system needs things, it needs people, it needs fuel, and not something that is difficult to recover, like organized crime and deep corruption, but what is on the surface: petty drug addicted thieves (you can hang 20-30 unsolved thefts on them), hooligans, bailiffs, employees PPS, traffic police, doctors, teachers.

Less often, someone of a higher rank - the head of the Internal Affairs Directorate, the prosecutor, the rector. It's like an additive to gasoline - the engine and its principle of operation do not change, but it becomes more fun to drive for a while. The car hums differently. Not for long, but in a different way.

But the main thing is different. When I ask my relatives - those big state husbands or ladies who are now arrested - and what do they want as a result of their defense, they always, apart from an excuse, name a full reinstatement in office.

Return to caste. From those with whom it is possible, to those with whom it is impossible.

A simple understanding - if it is possible with someone, it is possible with you, it can break everything, but it is buried in the very depths of the most terrible fears.

And more terrible than this fear is only a chilling horror - to wake up Navalny..."

Terrible Soviet secret

Russian writer, journalist, economist and public figure, dissident Lev Timofeyev recalled his experience in prison and published a short memoir, eloquently testifying to Fedyarov's rightness:

“In Lefortovo, I was thrown into cells a lot, and I sat with many cellmates arrested on criminal charges. Among them were the minister, and the former police colonel, and the university doctor of technical sciences, and the cheerful Azerbaijani-swindler, and the unfortunate dull swindler. All of them had one thing in common: although they decently scolded their investigators, their persecutors, they still respected them - and would have swapped places with them with great pleasure (and some had occupied similar positions before, before their arrest). They scolded both the state and public order, but in general, these problems did not interest them much. They were much more worried about their own situation.

Their conscience tormented them. But these were not lofty torments of conscience, when a person in despair compares his life with the ideal - no, these were very private bursts of moral feeling, making you sob and groan: “How wrong I was! If only we could turn back the time!".

The Uzbek Minister of the Cotton Processing Industry Vakhab Usmanov, with whom I spent two months in a cell (later, when I was already in the camp, I learned from the newspapers that he had been sentenced to death and shot), in prison he completely sank: he lay for days on end, his face wall, groaned, cried, then we, his cellmates, had to, at his request, several times a day try to guess what sentence awaited him. That is, not even what sentence, but how long - about the execution, of course, and it was impossible to remember.

We have come up with a special game: "Three!" a number was thrown out on his fingers, and Wahab, counting my straightened fingers and the fingers of our third inmate, either recharged himself with hope if it was not more than seven or eight years old, or fell into complete despondency and became seriously angry and irritable if it turned out more than ten... We tried to take care of him and for a lot not giving a lot.

His mood strongly depended on the intonation with which and on what order the investigator conducted the last interrogation. When somewhere, in the bowels of the investigation corps, where he was taken almost every day, some general from justice talked to him - say, the head of the investigative department of the prosecutor's office or his deputy - Vakhab returned to the cell cheerful and hopeful: since such a high rank, which means that they attach great importance to him, which means that he is also "above", ranked in the same category as the general himself, with whom he, it seems, was still familiar in the wild - and he hoped that the raven's eyes will not peck out...

When the usual, working interrogations were going on, which were conducted by different captains and majors, when he had to hand over the jewels hidden somewhere there, at home, to take on all the new episodes with bribes and embezzlements, he became discouraged, often began to call the prison paramedic, ask heart drops.

If it seemed to him that things were going very badly for him, he recalled that his father was a Muslim, and his grandfather was even a clergyman, and began to pray loudly and gutturally. The mood of prayer continued until the general's next visit. The general, apparently, was encouraging, and Vakhab returned cheerful, recalled his prayer state with a smile and spoke of Allah almost patronizingly, as of a familiar minister of a neighboring republic. […]

Vakhab had only two classes in the cell: he either played chess - up to ten games a day, or wrote denunciations - they say he tied four hundred people after him. He denounced everyone who ever gave him or to whom he gave. According to his denunciations, everyone turned out to be bribe-takers and thieves - starting with the chairmen of the collective farms with whom he dealt, and ending with the first secretaries of the Central Committee of the Party of Uzbekistan - both Rashidov, who had died by that time, and Usmanhodjaev alive. (Was it not this, the last circumstance, that decided the fate of Vakhab. The general always appeared after especially important denunciations).

Usmanov wrote and spoke poorly in Russian, and our third cellmate, a certain “technical intellectual with a degree”, who was allegedly imprisoned for fictitious contracts and bribes somehow tied to foreigners, helped him with suspicious readiness to write denunciations. On walks, this "well-wisher" and Usmanov quietly talked, moving away from me to the far corner of the courtyard, - although we lived in the cell quite amicably, and shared the programs equally, and ordered the stall in one common cauldron, but for all that, it was believed that I - stranger. They are - though thieves, albeit guilty, although criminals (so they themselves, regretting - "with whom it does not happen!" - but still realized) - Soviet people, I am a renegade.

I was somehow offended by their secrets, tried to protest, and then our third, "voluntary" Usmanov's assistant, calmly explained to me that, having learned the content of the denunciations, I could harm the Soviet regime. I confess I was dumbfounded. How exactly I would inflict damage, he did not quite imagine, because I had to go to a strict regime camp, then to exile, but ... suddenly I somehow could.

Even here, in the prison cell, they were Soviet. Having caught stealing, awaiting verdicts, swearing with investigators - they were Soviet. And I am not Soviet. How am I going to harm? By the fact that I will g about in o r and t, that I will reveal a certain Soviet secret. Their secret. After all, they were the leaders of the country - they were not so long ago.

- Why do you need it? - asked Vakhab somehow, or the "techie".

- What exactly?

In their imagination, they had a picture with a focus: if you turn, there is a person, if you turn, there is an empty space, a person disappears. So in this turn of the picture, where the world was full of benefits for them, in the picture world where they lived before being arrested by the managers of benefits, in this world there was a place for a minister, an investigator, a criminal offender, a thief, and there was no place for me - and only because I could reveal them to a certain general.

- Why do you need it?

And I really didn’t know how to answer this question in a way that would make them understand me.

Late remark.

After leaving the camp, I had the opportunity to speak with one of the investigators in the Usmanov case. He said that our third inmate, this "thieving techie" was actually their employee, a "decoy duck" ...

Pleasure is above all

The singer Olga Arefieva summed up the observations poetically:

“Is it something like an animal in a person. Inability and unwillingness to think, greed, selfishness, shortsightedness. Blindness, disbelief in the balance of the world, in retribution, justice, the meaning of life, if you will, in the highest court. If there is no God, then everything is allowed? Why then unfavorable honesty and nobility. Conversations about justice appear only when the irrational “belief in a just world” justifies all kinds of injustice - if someone suffers, then the "you're a fool yourself" is to blame. Well, these are small people, their destiny is to suffer, "but we are not of that kind".

Interestingly, this delusion is the unshakable basis of humanity, it will never grow wiser, or is it a stage in development? Just as monkeys, in principle, cannot postpone momentary pleasure for the sake of a deferred reward, their frontal region is not so developed. And people with injuries to the frontal region - too, even if they understand everything and can explain. But if the monkey replaces bananas in the game, for example, with chips, then she demonstrates that she perfectly understands the principles of the game, and can choose a delayed reward. Just if it's not food. She grabs food here and now. In the case of humanity, practically few people can abandon the abuse of power here and now, focusing on the ephemeral invisible retribution for good and evil. And even if this retribution is visible - in the form of the destruction of society and the suffering of other people, and then those close to them, and then our own. Poetically speaking, the majority cannot refuse the visible gifts of Satan (even knowing that they are poisoned) for the sake of the invisible gifts of God..."