From Sinistrra, Marina Davydova, Elena Filina and Giulia De Florio.
«Maybe now it seems to you that I am crazy, and that you all instead are normal -because you cannot go against the current -, instead I think you get crazy. How did you decide to spend your only life, donated by God? Put these togas and heads on your shoulders these black masks, protecting those who also rob you? ». With these strong words, very hardthe Russian activist and opponent Aleksei Navalny turned to the judges during a hearing in his trial in July 2023. A few days later Navalny was sentenced to 19 years of criminal colony. The activist died on February 16, 2024 in the Siberian colony where he had been locked up. Navalny is the Russian dissident finished in the most famous prison at an international level. It has become a symbol of courage, of struggle for freedom. But certainly not the only one.
According to the data of the NGO Memorial (founded in Moscow in 1989 to denounce the crimes of the Soviet regime and today the violations of human rights, Nobel Peace Nobel Prize 2022), in Russian prisons there are currently almost 683 political prisoners (but they could be even more). Since the war in Ukraine broke out, there are numerous Russian citizens who ended up in prison because they have dared to criticize the invasion and what Putin has always called “special military operation”. People like Maria Ponomarenko Activist and journalist, arrested in April 2022 in St. Petersburg for publishing on Telegram that the Russian military had bombed Mariupol’s theater of dramatic art, and was sentenced to 6 years of imprisonment. As Vsevolod Koloryov, Documentation and poet, arrested in July 2022 on charges of spreading fake news for some of his social posts that denounced the crimes of the Russian army in Ukraine, including the massacre in Bucha, sentenced to 7 years in prison. Like the journalist Antonina Favorskaya, That on February 15, 2024 he filmed the hearing in court where Navalny was present, exactly one day before the activist died, and on March 29 she was imprisoned herself on charges of collaboration with the anti-corruption foundation (FBK) created by Navalny. Now Favorskaya risks up to 6 years of imprisonment.
To all these citizens wants to pay homage to an itinerant international exhibition, “faces of the Russian resistance”. After stopping in numerous cities of Europe and the world and having been translated into twenty languages, now The exhibition is present in Milan, in Piazza dei Mercanti, until March 30, thanks to the commitment of the Annaviva association (entitled to the memory of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaja, assassinated in 2006), of the Russian group against the war and the Municipality of Milan who supported the initiative. Through sixteen faces (one, Navalny, he died and in the meantime five have been freed in the field of prisoners), the exhibition tells The stories of courage and sacrifice of many Russians – writers, journalists, students, scientists, ordinary citizens – who are paying in prison the choice to have opposed themselves in their country to self -acting and war.
As he pointed out at the inauguration of the exhibition Marina Davydovapresident of the Annaviva association, Russia is not a monolith crushed by propaganda. Inside there are many souls, many different voices that try to find spaces of expression and criticism. “In Russia there are many people who, despite the fear and the risk of being imprisoned, have made their voices heard. This exhibition collects the stories of women and men of different social classes, different professions, with different lives. But each of them in their own heart said: “In my country there is something very serious, I cannot remain silent” ».
Elena Filina in front of the gigantography of the journalist Antonina Favorskaya, who risks up to 6 years of imprisonment.
“What is happening in the Russian Federation did not start in 2022, nor in 2014 with the first phase of the Ukrainian war of independence. It was born with the idea of the Russian president that Russia should be an empire, that must militarily build a strong state that imposes their vision of the world to other countries, “he said Giulia De Florioprofessor of Russian language and culture at the University of Parma, writer, translator, president of Memorial Italia (who is part of the international Nework of the NGO Memorial). “To this idea have opposed and people oppose people with incredible courage. Sognuno of us can do something: memory is a commitment and we all have a responsibility in the face of what happens in the world”.
To conceive and promote “Voices of the Russian Resistance” was a collective of activists against the war and municipal deputies who had to leave Russia. Among them, leader of the project, there is Elena Filinaformer municipal deputy of the Vernadsky district of Moscow, who in 2022 denounced the massacres perpetrated by the Russian forces in Irpin and Bucha in a post on social media and for this reason he had to leave the country. Last March 6 Filina was sentenced to 8 years in prison. From Germany, where he currently lives, the former deputy and dissident arrived in Milan for the inauguration of the exhibition (which in the meantime has become a book).
«I want to give some information on the political prisoners of this exhibition. Maria Ponomarenko is subjected to psychological pressure, bullying and is in a pre-surferent condition. The artist Lyudmila Razumova did not receive essential drugs, had to start a hunger and thirst strike and only then was it taken to the hospital to have medical treatment, “said Filina. And looking at the current situation, at the attempts of international diplomacy, headed by Donald Trump, to arrive at a peace agreement, he commented: «The situation at the moment is catastrophic. But often in such difficult situations individual personalities emerge with authoritativeness. Three years ago the Ukrainian President Zelensky managed to block Putin’s plans showing that he could compact his country, which in recent years has resisted Russian advance. Even in the ongoing negotiations, the will and .i Zelensky could allow you to get to a different compromise from what we expect ».
The former deputy added: «In the meantime, let’s see how strength Russian propaganda continues to terrorize the population and falsify the information on the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian soldiers in the trenches continue to reiterate that the values for which they fight are right. But the losses of human lives are enormous. Now, the real question is: will all these victims have fought to affirm the independence of their nation? Will Ukraine be a free country or will Russia’s vassal return to being back? ». As for the future of Russia: «Putin built an entire system, the problem of my country is not only him. Once he is no longer there, he will not happen that suddenly the citizens will be free, independent and that the democratic and civil values will understand. The path will be neither simple nor obvious and at the moment we have no certainty. But the only way remains to say, always, the truth. The people of this exhibition were unable to do without telling the truth. As they have succeeded, we can do it everything, taking each one their responsibility. This is perhaps the only hope for our future ».
