“This needs to be seen”. December 2023

This is an excerpt from the future book of Ilya Shakursky.

Ilya Shakursky

“The FSB special forces knocked me off my feet, slamming me onto the asphalt. They didn’t just stop me; they rather disrupted the direction of my path. Like a barbaric-Bolshevik tribe invading my life, they brazenly trampled everything dear to me, calling some of it evidence of crime, mocking some, intimidating others, systematically destroying and discrediting my life. They tried to convince everyone around, even those who knew and loved me, that I was scum, a degenerate, and a fanatic. They even tried to convince me of this. In their eyes, I continued to remain as such because they had nothing else to justify their hatred and actions.”

I’ve always felt the need to document the milestones of my journey, living as if we are writing our unique story, a work of art elevated to an epic genre. From a very young age, with varying degrees of regularity, I kept records and journals. My parents bought me a “soap dish” camera, and I began to take pictures, accumulating photos and videos of our youth, our discussions, laughter, and tears from that period. I thought that time would give all this special value, years would pass, and together with friends, blushing, laughing, and charming, we would edit the picture of our childhood, thus creating an artifact of the atmosphere of the early 2000s.

Time passed, and my life was filled with colors of various shades. The tenth decade began, and it seems that each year brought something new. The plot of my path was unpredictable, and I eagerly embraced the range of various events and impressions. I continued to document and preserve these pictures, confident that someday they would find their interested viewer. Each day was a new page, filled with something exciting and atmospheric. I was terrified of the monotony and boredom of everyday life; it drove me crazy, so I always felt like I couldn’t keep up with living, boldly crossed boundaries, tried to experience as much as possible, eagerly consuming their taste. Over time, the “soap dish” was replaced by a Canon digital camera; I filmed street life, preserved the opinions and views of guys who dreamed of changing the world; some of this material began to be sent to internet resources, but most of it was waiting for the right time.

We continued to act, continued to live, never ceasing to write new chapters of our story. I always thought that there would come a time when I would take up all these archives and put them in chronological order, leaving some moral in my work, in other words, some conclusion, a result, as any form of art requires. My notes and folders with files were getting thicker, but I still couldn’t choose the right moment for creative work. The whirlwind of life drew me into new experiences, emotions, feelings, and events. The past still seemed not so distant and interesting, and the experience of creative structuring and intuitive taste had not yet formed. Sometimes the thought arose to go somewhere far away, into seclusion, and in a hut deep in the forest, in solitude with nature, to put everything in order. But social obligations and the bustle of everyday life, like shackles, kept me in place. I continued my path, sometimes feeling some inner anxiety, foreshadowing the impending abyss, but in the end, I didn’t even notice how close the defeat approached.

“Freedom to the political prisoner, anarchist-communist Dmitry Buchenkov!”

The life of a person carries great value and mystery within it. By the will of unknown processes, at any moment, our entire existence can be shattered, everything can change in an instant, and we have no control over it. Bam — and everything changes. The life that seemed unshakeable and ordinary yesterday disappears, the past dissolves, and all hopes fade away. Accident! Lightning strike! Coincidence or impending disaster. The choice to accept or fight back. Every destiny is individual; each of us has our own fateful moments or balances. But at some point, I reached that line that divided everything into before and after. It was not just another stage but a kind of annihilation, erasing the results of what had been achieved.

The FSB special forces knocked me off my feet, throwing me to the asphalt. They didn’t stop me; rather, they disrupted the direction of my path. Like a barbaric-Bolshevik tribe invading my life, they brazenly trampled everything dear to me, labeling some as evidence of crime, ridiculing some, intimidating others, systematically destroying and discrediting my life. They tried to convince everyone around, even those who knew and loved me, that I was a scoundrel, a villain, and a fanatic; they even tried to convince me of that. In their eyes, I remained such, for they had nothing else to justify their hatred and actions.

I was suffocating in a whirlpool of despair and fear. The new twist of fate is harsh, abrupt. It’s not easy to rise after falling, not easy to move forward. In my hands are the fragments of hopes and plans, before me are the tears of my loved ones and the fear of my friends, darkness, walls, gloom. Barbarians dig, assemble, manipulate, smirk, use, crush. Instead of me, they begin to create the picture they need from the pieces of my life. Extreme situations, impulses of electricity, betrayal, deceit, NTV reports, disappointment, and the same all-consuming fear.

A period of revived hope, an attempt to preserve oneself, confrontation of contradictions and extremes, forced silence, heartfelt confessions, naive self-deception, and shivers from the effect of struggle. A verdict, like a gunshot, wounds but does not kill. Like an amputation of part of the soul. Destruction of archives by court order, cries of “shame,” echoes of indignation, doubts and conflicts, unsaid words, the complexity of the situation, the severity of time, silence, shadows, bars. A period of waiting, fleeing from thoughts of losses, returning to the past in search of light, farewells and ruptures; hopes for the strength of those fighting for the future and a sharp sense of the need to put everything in its place; a desire to let go of the past, to understand it, otherwise, it might be too late. Because I increasingly realize how unpredictable and cruel fate can be, capable of depriving me of this opportunity at any moment. Right now, I am simply obliged to pour out onto paper the fragments of my life while they still shine within me, in my memory, and with each passing day, I increasingly understand their value, their lessons, and the necessity of preserving them. Inside me, feelings are alive, and the events tied to them are linked by a chain of sequential steps. Their chronology will likely provide answers to many questions, explaining how it all began and why it happened the way it did.

After the verdict, the public began to ask questions: “Who are these guys in the aquarium? What were they really up to? What did they want? Why did they end up there?” “The Network case” and the fates of each of us, in particular, became enveloped in myths and conspiracy theories. It seems that the further this story dragged on, the more questions arose. The answers to them were contradictory, ambiguous, or simply not voiced. And everyone wanted to see something of their own in us: some called us terrorists, while others saw us as victims of repression; some considered us revolutionaries, while others saw us as airsoft enthusiasts. We were weighed down by labels of superficial characteristics, and we ourselves seemed to begin to lose sight of who we really were. After all, despite being in the same cell and the prosecutor fervently repeating “they,” “they,” “structure, cohesion, role distribution, organization, etc.,” we were not a unified whole. Each of us had different lists of actions, words spoken, and goals. And even today, we have different perceptions and interpretations of the events that occurred with us before and after our arrest. My narrative will primarily be based on my perception of the world and the pages of the past, and the reader is entitled to decide for themselves how much trust to place in my words. In any case, as I embark on writing this text, I promise to be honest first and foremost with myself, with my conscience.

My doubts and difficulties in creating this cycle of memories are caused not only by the conditions surrounding me and the loss of most of the archives but also by the realization that I am obliged to create not a self-aggrandizing ode to my own exploits or a manifesto of self-pity but a confession full of sincerity and self-analysis, encompassing a series of my mistakes, choices, actions, and discoveries. Reflecting on paper the struggle with my own demons is a rather difficult and risky task, but honesty has always been the foundation of good art. The last obstacle for me at this moment remains the responsibility to the people who, in one way or another, were involved in my fate, for the severity of time can interpret my words as criminal and use them according to the current circumstances. For this reason, my memories for now will be presented in fragmentary form, departing from chronological order, but only in this way can the true completeness of describing my journey be preserved at this moment.

My life is divided into certain stages, consisting of bundles of various events, moving in the alternation of circumstances and the atmosphere of time. In this series, I delved into the multifaceted spheres of the urban underground, the subcultural way of life, existing in the currents of radical politicized youth. In this world, I experienced my own dramas, formed an individual philosophical view, found and lost love, listened to the kitchen talk of the people, acquired enemies in the darkness of alleys, created dreams amidst the expanses of wheat fields, found beauty in the cramped communal apartments, moved along the paths that remain unknown and incomprehensible to many. But it is these paths that have led many young people to various outcomes in modern times, and the route of each of us now deserves a separate work.

There is no single representation and clear definition of the proper image and life of modern idealists — dreamers, representatives of various subcultural movements, fighters for their beliefs, street partisans, and artists. For some, youthful idealism becomes an insignificant page long past in their biography, called “young years,” while for others, the freedom-loving aspiration and fidelity to principles remain for a lifetime and become the unshakable foundation of existence. This path is filled with martyr’s blood and firm handshakes, years of deprivation and the euphoria of unity, escapes and dances, the dust of roads and the ashes of bonfires, adrenaline and cruelty, love and freedom. But in order to understand how this path is born and where it leads, one must see it all.

Federal Correctional Institution No. 17 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in the Republic of Mordovia. December 2023