Among the 23 largely Russian ebooks we bought this week is Neposlednie slova – “Not the final words”, referring to the “final word” that a defendant in Russia has after judgement has been passed down in their trial.  While they have no impact on the defendant’s sentence, the fact and content of these final words, or final statements, are significant, as the following text explains:

“In recent years and, particularly, in recent months in Russia, a distinct oral/literary genre has re-emerged — the “final statement” of a defendant.   Paradoxically, the “cage” in a court room (in today’s Russia, the accused are put in a bullet-proof glass booth) appears as the only remaining place where a person can still speak freely. Thus, it can be said, without exaggeration, that the courtroom, where people are tried for dissent, is a last bastion of freedom of speech in today’s Russia.” [from the blurb for a lecture by Anna Narinskaya at the Harriman Institute in April this year]

Neposlednie slova contains the final statements of dozens of Russian defendants, some of them multiple times (there are 9 Aleksei Navalny entries) from multiple hearings.  The earliest is Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s statement from his 2010 trial, then we there are multiple statements from the 2012 Pussy Riot hearings, up to 2023.

Searching the ebook for the term “Украи” (Ukrai) to catch as many instances of Ukraine/Ukrainian as possible (“Украин” (Ukrain) produced two fewer instances, due to line breaks in the text of the book (making eg Украина into Украи-на)) gave me 66 results, stretching from final statements made in 2014 to 2023.

Aleksei Gorinov, a municipal deputy in Moscow, was the first person in Russia to be convicted under the new article against anti-war statements brought in on 4 March 2022 (within a fortnight of the 24 February full-scale invasion).  Shortly before his 61st birthday, Gorinov was sentenced to 7 years in prison.  He had spoken in a March 2022 municipal meeting against the idea of an exhibition of children’s drawings when Ukrainian children were being killed and being orphaned by Russian forces.  Two of Gorinov’s speeches appear in the book (a second hearing reduced his 7-year sentence by a month), with Ukraine featuring in both.  In his second speech, Gorinov said “I want to confess my guilt.  Guilt before the much-suffering people of Ukraine.  Before the whole world.  Guilt for the fact that I, a citizen of my country, was not able to do anything, was not able to prevent this ongoing madness.”

Another entry in the ‘Anti-war’ section of the book comes from best-selling author Dmitry Glukhovsky, writer of Metro 2033 and its connected novels (we have six books by him, all in Russian), and sentenced in August this year in absentia to 8 years in jail.  While currently based outside Russia, Glukhovsky still took the opportunity to present his final word, but in the form of a letter sent to the court.  “Nothing more destructive or dehumanising has happened to Russia for a long time than the war against Ukraine.  Not able to dehumanise the Ukrainians, the Russian authorities are dehumanising their own citizens,” he writes.

Mariia Ponomarenko, a journalist from Barnaul, received a 6-year sentence earlier this year, to be followed by a 5-year ban on working in journalism –  for a message in a Telegram chat saying that hundreds of Ukrainians had died in the Russian bombing of the Mariupol Drama Theatre.  “There’s no question that I lived until a certain time, until 2020, very well.  Until I started to come under intense pressure.  No doubt I also had to close my eyes and swim, like others, with the flow and enjoy life.  But I cannot do that [now], I am a mother <…> I don’t want to be ashamed, and I don’t want my children to be ashamed.”

Unlike Gorinov and Ponomarenko, Glukhovsky is, of course, one of the few people featured in the book able to escape the experience of a Russian prison.  Each and every defendant giving their final word in a Russian court room will be defenceless once they start their sentences, so taking a stand against the “not a war” war (remember it’s still a “special military operation” in Russia) takes bravery.  The publisher deliberately looks forward, though, with the Ne (Not) of the title, Not-final words, to their release and to greater freedom of speech.

The book is the latest purchase we have made published by Freedom Letters, a Latvian-based company producing Russian and Ukrainian books, with the Russian books largely content that could not be published in Russia today.  We currently have 16 results for “Freedom Letters” in the catalogue.

Unfortunately, not all the Russian books we buy are against the terrible Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Next week, I will talk a bit about some of the books we have bought as examples of the awful things currently being published in Russia.

Mel Bach