3 November 2025
by Anna Karetnikova
Source: Facebook
3 November 2025
Valery Vasilyevich Borshchev, both a dissident in Soviet times and a human rights advocate, died today, but for me he remains the man who did the impossible: he opened the doors to observers in Russian prisons. Those doors that shut with two turns of the key. And all over the country people walked through those doors and saw with their own eyes what was going on behind them, and then, lo and behold, they were able to leave – not ten years later, but the very same evening – and tell the public about it.
Over the years of effective public oversight, the law about which was authored by Valery Vasilyevich, observers helped thousands of political prisoners, saving hundreds literally from death. Many they were unable to help, though for every one human rights advocate Borshchev found out about, he fought selflessly. In meetings, conferences and right in prison, in the cells of prisoners and in the offices of the prison bosses.
I am loathe to use grandiose words, but in this case it is appropriate: with the death of Valery Vasilyevich a whole era has finally gone – an era of lively, effective public oversight over places of detention, which, as it seemed at the time, could change these places, turn them toward openness and humanization.
But observers remain. They, thanks to the law on Public Oversight, have acquired knowledge and guard it. The majority of them may have now been removed from prisons, but they know how it is, and they can guess at how it should be. And they will pass this knowledge on to the next ones, if necessary, in time. That is what I try to sometimes do.
Thank you for this opportunity Valery Vasilyevich. For your wisdom, courage, perseverance, and hundreds of saved lives. May everything be good, both where you will be, and here, where your work will continue.
Source: Facebook
3 November 2025
And here is a photo from November 2016, the year when a nearly finishing blow was dealt to the Public Oversight Commissions, when the observers’ term was over, and the most active members of the commissions across the country did not make it into the new structure. We, in fact, were invited to the Civic Chamber to ceremoniously say goodbye – and “make way for the young,” pro-government appointees who will give flowers to the veterans of the Federal Penitentiary Service and help them maintain silence, from which only occasionally will arise screams, sobs or sighs. Here we stand, the deputy chair, Andrei Babushkin, still alive, also a deputy, a prison legend, Valery Vasilyevich Borshchev, still alive, the one who brought to life the Public Observer, and I…probably a bad deputy. We are all trying to smile. It turns out askew. And a little behind is the chairhimself, Anton Tsvetkov, head of “Officers of Russia”… I don’t know where he is now. In the photo he doesn’t go anywhere, he stays. Anton does not smile, because, probably, such people are not expected to smile, he is a personification. Power. The power bloc that gradually took over the Public Oversight Commissions – and finally captured them. Marina Litvinovich will be thrown out in Moscow, and in the regions, the last independent observers expelled from the next commission structure, and over prisons and colonies across the country a smokescreen will descend again.
Then the prisoners from the prisons will go to war. And in their stead, hundreds of political prisoners will be sent to the prisons.
Just a picture of a passing era.
Source: Facebook
3 November 2025
And one more photo, four years earlier, is also a blow. Then my true companion on the prison route Mikhail Kriger did not join the Moscow Public Oversight Commission, then the first “sweeps” of observers started across the country. Valery Vasilyevich and Lyudmila Alekseeva, and with them Mikhail himself with posters at a picket. As always it is dark and not very crowded – well, and the topic is somehow unimportant, incomprehensible… well, the Public Oversight Commission … who is interested in this Public Oversight Commission? But it’s already 2013, and something is brewing, something big and scary, and these sweeps are one of the quiet alarms of this something big.
Mikhail Kriger is in a penal colony, detained exactly three years ago on this day, the eve of Russia Day, the national holiday. He has been on hunger strike (for a long time, too long), demanding that he not be separated from other prisoners. You can write to him at the Orel penal colony.
(I don’t remember the Public Oversight Commission going to see him. But, maybe, that is for the best).
Source: Facebook
Translated by Alyssa Rider
