Anna Karetnikova

1 – 7 February 2026

by Anna Karetnikova

Source: Facebook

1 February 2026

I watched Mr. Nobody Against Putin. Seryozha liked it more; I liked it less. I have questions more of an artistic nature for the film. For instance, why the need to say in words what in a movie can probably be expressed in a graphic sequence, or in music… The same mounting tension, the same walls closing in, that they talk and talk and talk about. I would rather see and feel it—that’s film, right?—than hear it. Especially since the theme was stated right off. So I’d want the mounting of some kind of drama and emotions. But it all stays at the same temperature, it doesn’t heat up, I didn’t notice any climax at all, and where is that catharsis?..

The topic is undoubtedly very important, and respect to the film’s hero and partly its author, but I suspect I’m just not the film’s target audience. For virtually my entire school life I was saluting and lining up for some squadron or militia’s flag when it got raised and then lowered. I didn’t attach much significance to that trumpery until the war began—a different war, it’s true—which was when our underground political activism arose. (Though that was Moscow, of course, not some remote small factory town, and basically a completely different story). I’ll allow that the European viewer will be horrified to see children learning how to toss grenades, but we did that all the time. We marched, disassembled machine-guns, and pulled on gas masks. We hid from nuclear explosions in a bomb shelter and also took part in homerooms remembering heroes of the Great Patriotic War, in reviews of line-ups, and songs of an exceptionally aggressive nature. But we never did have a war.

I understand—I even know—that everything right now is much more terrible, it’s not even up for discussion. But what I didn’t get enough of in the film for me was specifically that I feel, that I weep or gasp in horror. There was enough for me to just nod and say: quite so. Or even this: thank you. I’ve been told.

But, I repeat, the film clearly was not addressed to me.

Source: Facebook

2 February 2026

Since the passion for unmasking is soon going to reach an intensity such that yesterday’s admirers accuse Vladimir Kara-Murza of most likely not even having been in prison, let me raise this topic in advance and unmask it myself: he was. We met there several times. And he was ill. And he conducted himself with great dignity, did not proclaim himself a martyr and prophet, did not climb onto a pedestal. If anyone put him on a pedestal and is now shedding tears of disappointment and oozing bile, it’s not Kara-Murza’s fault, it’s the usual thing. This ever-present human desire to create idols for oneself and then knock them down. We thought he was a politician, but he failed to vindicate our expectations, he scorned freedom of the press with a four-letter word. And he doesn’t want to say exactly where he put his own money. (I, by the way, never sent anything to that fund, so I have no questions for it. But judging from the number of people now angrily asking questions about the funds’ use, you’d think thousands of people had transferred billions of dollars there.)

Nothing human is alien to me. I, too, like to get angry at people, and in that kind of fit it’s nice, naturally, to have someone to join in with. But I have a good way to sober up, as I’ve already written. I ask my inner Alisa, Listen, doesn’t it bother you that you and the Kremlin are chorusing the same questions? Experiencing the identical indignation? Is this in the sense that even a stopped clock is right twice a day or in that they seem to be manipulating you?

I don’t always know the right answer, but the very fact that the question has been asked leads me to think that instead of participating in this kind of polemic I’ll be posting new photos of orchids.

Source: Facebook

4 February 2026

I’ve just remembered something that happened four years ago. Like most of these stories, it never got into the book [I am a Prison Officer– trans.]. It happened on Palych’s birthday. 

‘… but my birthday was yesterday,’ Palych, the prison librarian, very sadly said to me in the prison that morning. ‘I have the day off.’   

‘Why are you here then?’

‘I still have stuff to take care of here… anyway, what of it…’ 

‘Oh! I don’t have a gift for you, but I’ll get you something.’

‘The shop congratulated me yesterday. They gave me some sweets…’

‘We’ll see, the day is young!’

Palych is a former prison officer, retired long ago but re-qualified as a librarian and works on a contract basis. But the prison service still sits inside him somewhere. We crossed swords immediately: Alisa did not at all approve of his view that there are only two kinds of books – dark blue and green. And even if they were, then green ones were not at all worse than dark blue ones. They are completely interchangeable. 

‘You need to understand, Vasily Palych,’ Alisa said indignantly. ‘This is a treasure of world literature. Give the prisoners the books they want!’ 

‘They were moaning at me again,’ Palych took her demands in his own way. ‘I go around giving books out all the time and they’re never satisfied, I’ve always done something wrong… And they’re not in here for no reason! What can you say, prisoners… I know what they’re like.’

His tightness and stinginess had remained with him. 

‘Palych, give the Cuban a Spanish dictionary!’

‘There isn’t one.’

‘What do you mean, it’s right here!’

‘You think it’s been put on display just because? It’s there because dictionaries are in short supply. If we give all of them out, you know what would happen. They’d just tear them up and rip all the pages out.’ 

‘For God’s sake, give it to him. People need to communicate!’ 

Seeing my furious expression, he gave in and give him the dictionary as though parting with a beloved possession. He went outside to smoke without looking at me. 

I can’t argue with him, and it makes me feel terrible. I could never talk sharply to someone older than me when every time I very rightly raise an issue with him, his expression goes blank, and he starts looking at the ground in silence… he sometimes manages to anger even officers who are with me, who scold me for being too soft. But I tried to change. I failed. I can quarrel with colonels and generals if it is for the right reason. But I could never do that to Palych. 

Sometimes he dreams out loud: ‘Could they organise a gathering of all the librarians in the Federal Prison Service… I need to become more cultured and experienced… Could they? I’d go…’

Palych selected one of the convicts to work as his assistant – an adult equally as unsociable, reserved and miserly with books, better to keep them than to give them out. And he always ignore my requests. I gave him several firm tellings off for this. He was younger, maybe the same age as me. I told him to stop arguing and being lazy: you need to help but you’re just putting him and me and yourself in the wrong. He looks at me, submissively but unkindly. With a look of silent protest. He does everything to support his boss, Palych, who can’t stand me, for vexing him.  

To hell with it all. Muttering curses and running short of breath, I carry copies of legal codes upstairs to quarantine (two shelves are stuffed with them, and he doesn’t want to lose any of them!), adventure novels for the dying Roma woman in hospital, dictionaries for the foreign inmates… The librarians look on at their vanishing wealth of books with a gloomy obstinacy… at my back ramrod straight under the unbearable weight. 

Palych suddenly reacts to my helplessness, as though after many years he has finally just seen something kind in me. 

He turns over a new leaf. He stops binning book requests and the two of them start whispering around the library, the complaints around the prison complex suddenly cease. The new assistant suddenly begins to talk to me, about his work, about life, about books… It was as though something human had crawled between us and nestled instead of the former hostility. 

Suddenly I see and get the unexpected feeling that they are happy to have me as a guest in the small space between the prison shop and the kitchen, not as someone checking up on them, but to wander around amongst the shelves, translate texts from English, sit at the table, put my feet up and chat. 

Back to the present. Palych’s birthday was yesterday. I run to the library. ‘Happy Birthday! Long live the prison service! Long live the library! We’ve got a present for you, a lovely persimmon, and a huge one too!’ 

‘Wow! And how is it that you don’t have lunch?’ 

‘This isn’t my lunch, Palych! This is for you, I picked it myself! Let’s have many more years working together. The prisoners are grateful to us! It’s so super for all of us to work with you!’

‘Oh, thank you… I’m going to cry. I’m going for a smoke. My heart is gone funny.’ 

‘Really, why don’t you go home for the day then?’ 

‘You don’t know? He’s leaving today, he was given parole and I don’t know how I’ll manage without him… Alisa, It’s going to be hard without him…’ 

Another officer asks: ‘Did he not come to say goodbye?’ 

‘Of course he did… But that’s not it, it’s time for me to leave.’ 

Alisa says, ‘We’ll find you a new helper! The best there is, just say who you want!’ 

‘You won’t find better than him, how long have we been together… leaving is his joy and my sadness. Everything in life is strangely mixed up, joy, woe, celebration… Sure he was a prisoner, but he was also my friend. Anyway, I’ll go for a smoke, and then I’ll come back and get the books out to the prisoners.’ 

‘Without a helper? Want me to help you?’ 

‘What, think I can’t do it myself. It’s not about that…’ 

‘Alisa, what do you think? He’s out there, free in the world… do you think he’ll, well… remember us? Will he remember our time with him here, with these books…?’ 

Do you think he’ll remember? 

Source: Facebook

5 February 2026

But for how many years (how many, by the way?) has it been a given in Russia to think that ‘they locked him up over a joke’ was just a joke?

‘Comedian Artemy Ostanin was given almost six years for two jokes. The prosecution alleged he created an organised criminal group with unidentified individuals to organise stand-up performances. People engaged in stand-up comedy were questioned in court. Many of them said in Russia there is an unspoken taboo on jokes about certain topics.’ – source: Political Prisoners. Memorial]

Source: Facebook

7 February 2026

I once earned some admiration for debating Yevgenia Albats live on air. That is, I preferred to forget about it, and the sooner the better, that particular experience, but a few times subsequently I’ve run into people whose eyes would widen and whose voice would drop and then they’d say, ‘So was that you debating Yevgenia Albats live?..’ And somehow I wouldn’t even know what to say. I’d somehow managed to say, ‘Well yes, it didn’t work out very well…’ And in reply, ‘Stop it! it was fine!..’ And they would look at me strangely, frightened or something…

Basically, there wasn’t any debate. Three members of the ONK [Public Oversight Commission] were invited to talk about what was going in Moscow remand centres. Right off, Evgenia Markovna [Albats] took a definite dislike to what we were starting to say, and she herself started talking about what was going on there, in those remand centres, and why we knew nothing about it, nor could we, but it wouldn’t hurt if we did.

We had no idea what else we could do at that point, but when what Albats knew totally diverged from what we knew, and from reality and common sense at the same time, I exchanged distraught looks with my colleagues and really did try to argue or object. I did at least speak up, made a few pitiful squeaks, feeling like a mosquito about to be swatted by a slipper. Evgenia Markovna drowned me in a wave of contempt that, thank the lord, carried us out of the studio at the end of the broadcast.

Once, even longer ago, Evgenia Markovna tried to school us on how to organize a rally.

Source: Facebook

Translated by Marian Schwartz and Oscar Seecharan