The Land of Loners

A personal preface

I often think about this. It is impossible not to notice it. Even in private conversations about what is happening, you hear: “People get used to everything. ” A well-worn piece of “folk wisdom. ” Sometimes it is presented as advice: don’t take it to heart, don’t be upset, and don’t upset others; don’t protest. Those who say this forget the full wording: “Man is such a beast that he gets used to everything.

” It seems this fragment was not omitted in earlier times. Moscow lives on February 23, 2022. Streets pounding with activity, boulevards bustling with pedestrians, shop windows aglow, carefree gatherings in cafes. Of course, all of this is now framed by billboards featuring men in military uniforms, yet everyone seems to have gone blind—it’s just social advertising. And anyway, it’s a personal matter: “It doesn’t concern us.

” Fertile ground for new tragedies: a mobilized man recounted that he ended up in the trenches simply because he had no interest in politics. There are plenty of ways to avoid politics, and people readily take them. After all, how often do we visit cemeteries? And one can choose not to read the news: just unsubscribe from the news channels in a couple of clicks. Besides, it’s trendy now: a news detox, mental health.

And indeed, that is important—you can’t argue with that. Plus, everything happens to others, not to you. You have your own life: mortgage, children, project deadlines. A long and happy life. Well, not everyone has that anymore, but what can one do? We don’t even talk about “them” anymore. Yes, they are just like us—but somehow things turned out that way. “It doesn’t matter; let’s change the record.

” The list of “them” keeps expanding. Returning from Belgorod in 2023, I told my loved ones with horror about what was happening there and about the feelings of loneliness and abandonment experienced by the people of Belgorod. They waved me off: “I don’t think things are that bad there,” they said to me. These dismissals are everywhere. And it seems that precisely these dismissals are the cause of what is happening.

We tightened our belts, closed our eyes, and endured. It started with “trivialities”: we made material comfort our highest value and ingrained the idea that something threatens it. The 1990s came to help—they threaten even a quarter-century later. Then we stopped greeting our neighbors—perhaps they pose a threat, perhaps they envy your car, your earrings, or anything else—and we cocooned ourselves in our apartments.

Gradually, we surrendered all intangible values—even our own will: we stopped voting because “they’ll decide anyway without us. ” And here we are. Again, trying not to notice. We cling to the old social contract: you don’t interfere in politics, and we won’t touch you. But they are already touching us… Each person simply hopes that the trouble won’t come to them. This text is four stories about people who found themselves in the minority or entirely alone.

Some of them tried to improve the world around them; others refused to accept things getting worse. And some simply encountered cruelty and found no support. It might seem that not all of these touch upon the main tragedy of recent years. But I believe they do. This is an attempt to understand how we were made indifferent.

Story I. Cogs in the machine

“Others began to distance themselves”

When Georgy was being buried, blood seeped through the shroud. Apparently, the body was poorly sewn in the morgue. It was October 2022; they lowered him into the earth at an old cemetery in Syrostan—a small village near Miass in Chelyabinsk Oblast. Georgy was 31 years old, and he had spent very little time in the SVO—apparently no more than a month. He died in the DPR.

“In reality, it wasn’t a shell that killed him, but indifference,” says a gray-haired man with a thick beard as he washes the tombstone granite of the layer of dust that has settled over the months. “He found no support at work and went to ***. ” Anatoly Bannykh is the chairman of an independent trade union at the Ural plant in Miass. Georgy Balyazin also worked there—as a welder.

“In 2021, he came to us in the trade union. Full of energy and initiative: he attended all meetings. I told him: ‘Let’s make you deputy; you’ll solve problems in your own welding shop,’ recalls Bannykh. “He agreed. I helped him, gave him advice, and we filed complaints with the prosecutor’s office together. What could a worker complain about? Of course, working conditions: shops were sometimes cold, sometimes dusty, equipment was worn out, workload was immense, and salaries were low.

“Over time, they began to pressure him. Safety inspectors started watching him closely and punished him for any infraction. Spotted without safety glasses in the shop? You could lose your bonus—which could be as much as a third of your salary,” Anatoly continues. “Other workers noticed that special attention was being paid to him; they began to distance themselves, or even snitch on him.

The shop didn’t support him. They dragged him through disciplinary actions until he came to me and said: ‘That’s it, I’m leaving. ’ He couldn’t take it anymore. No one knows how Georgy ended up in ***. He told neither his former colleagues nor his family. In October 2022, Bannykh simply received a call: ‘We need to bury Zhora. ’ A common occurrence in a small town with a large factory.

The country knows many examples of dissatisfied workers being fired—as if to set an example for others. Such signals are easily decoded: you’re either loyal or you lose your job. Bannykh went through this too—just without the SVO… ‘Until They Peck You to Death’ In 2007, when Anatoly arrived at the “Ural” plant, workers received their thirteenth salary for the last time.

Then an economic crisis began, and management started saying there was no money. From the cemetery we drive to a small office located across the road from the factory gate. Two desks, a cabinet with volumes of Lenin and Soviet writers, a Soviet tea set. On the wall hangs a large flag with a gear, hammers, and faceless workers. The inscription on the flag reads: “Independent Trade Union.

” — In 2010 I accidentally learned that management was receiving their thirteenth salary as usual. And the amounts there were so high—500 thousand, one million rubles—Bannykh recalls. I felt hurt; I found a law firm in the city, and we drafted complaints to the prosecutor’s office, the labor inspectorate, the human rights commissioner, and the “GAZ” group (until 2019 the “Ural” plant belonged to Oleg Deripaska.—Ed.).

The complaints were anonymous—the lawyers even sent them from their organization’s address. But the reaction turned out not quite as Anatoly had expected: — By then the factory already knew my unyielding nature. Management started summoning me, dragging me around offices: they summoned me to security and wanted me to admit that those complaints were mine. The female lawyers were visited by police demanding to know who had filed the complaints; they initially refused but then pressure was applied to their management, and the head told everything.

I was identified, but no one knew what to do next—after all, filing complaints is not forbidden. They started saying: “Quit. ” Why should I? Then they began tormenting me: five disciplinary sanctions were issued in two months—they said I had stood in the wrong place during work hours, hadn’t put on safety glasses, hadn’t worn a mask. They took revenge over trifles. But here is the paradox—the annual bonus, known as the thirteenth-month salary was eventually given to the entire plant, and payments resumed in subsequent years.

The collective, however, was not inspired by this: according to Anatoly, most workers decided that what happened was either management’s will or God’s mercy. And they mostly ignored his calls to continue acting together. Especially since he behaved “not quite comradely. ” — Sometimes we don’t manage to assemble the required number of vehicles in a day. For example, we need 30 and assemble 26.

Management says: “Well, stay for an hour or two or three more, finish up and then go home. ” I never stayed because my shift had ended, and they don’t pay for this overtime. I put down my gloves and leave—the foreman catches me: you’re distancing yourself from the collective, get back and work. I say: “You know, I have my own collective at home. ” This isn’t even a protest; it’s simply working according to the job description.

But others look askance—at times with envy, at times with hatred. And no one leaves, although if they did, everyone would be better off: perhaps more employees would then be hired so that everything could be done on time, or parts delivery to the workshop wouldn’t be delayed until evening. Or at least they would start paying extra for overtime hours. Nevertheless, by 2020 Anatoly had managed to gather some supporters and decided to create an independent trade union at “Ural.

” Out of 10,000 factory workers, only fifteen joined initially. — Even one foreman joined, deciding to take up labor safety. In that respect, as at many factories, things are not good: work-related injuries occur, and they try to avoid recognizing them whenever possible. We had a case where a person with a head injury was denied compensation—they refused to acknowledge that it happened at the factory.

We challenged this in court and forced them to pay. Workers also challenged schedule changes and unpaid overtime. Over time, the union grew to 493 members. But Anatoly himself notes sadly: “It turned out that this was only on paper. When a serious test came—there were no brave people. ” In autumn 2024, salary increases were implemented at the plant. However, not everyone received the same treatment: some had their base salary increased (which cannot be taken away), while others received a bonus that could easily be revoked.

— We decided to call a strike. Workers from two brigades—40 people in total—were ready to participate. It was scheduled for November 18, Bannykh recounts. Everything was done according to the law: we notified the employer a month in advance and specified our demand—that base salaries must be increased. We waited for the deadline to expire. Management made no concessions; they only summoned workers individually, offering to resolve the issue on a case-by-case basis.

They refused to agree. And on November 15, three days before the strike was set to begin, law enforcement officers came directly into the main assembly line workshop where Anatoly’s brigade worked. — There were about ten of them, mostly in civilian clothes, but some in uniform as well. One showed me his ID—a lieutenant colonel from the Center for Counteracting Extremism.

He said: “Come with us,” Bannykh recalls. I was stunned: “What’s going on? At least let me call a lawyer. ” But they immediately pinned my arms, laid me face-down on the floor, and dragged me out of the workshop right there in front of all the workers. Anatoly was charged with reposting a video about the head of the Rosgvardia, Zolotov, as well as disobeying police officers.

The court sentenced him to 14 days of administrative arrest. — I thought that this injustice should have spurred people into action, since it was clearly relevant to them as well. But the opposite happened: no one dared to strike at all. On November 18, everyone simply went back to work—as if no one had been wronged regarding their salaries—Anatoly complains. During those same days, a field reception organized by the Prosecutor General’s Office was taking place in the Chelyabinsk region, which the workers wanted to attend.

But after Bannykh was detained, no one went there. That is why Anatoly decided to resign. “I simply realized that all my actions led nowhere. Everything was in vain,” he sighs. “The majority are not ready to fight for anything—not even for themselves. ” Recently, a woman from the crane operators’ crew came to me with a complaint: she said everyone in her team is paid at the fifth grade, while she is paid at the fourth, even though everyone has the same qualification.

I told her, “Let’s write a complaint to the directorate. ” We wrote it. Then her own coworkers caught her with that complaint and said, “Don’t even think about going—they won’t raise your pay; they’ll cut ours instead. ” He takes a sip of coffee from an old Soviet mug. “As for me, you know, I’ve now taken up running a smallholding. I keep chickens. Chickens are such creatures: if one gets slightly injured, the others will peck at it until it dies.”

Story II. “We are to blame”

In September 2022, partial mobilization woke the country up. In some regions, even protests occurred: when you don’t know whether you’ll be home tomorrow or in a trench, life becomes uncomfortable. Some accepted the new conditions and went “beyond the ribbon” into the war zone, while others rejected them and left the country. Mobilized men worried society for a long time.

Even after recruitment stopped, many felt something was wrong, since the social contract—“You stay out of politics, and we won’t touch you”—had been violated. Therefore, when a movement of mobilized men’s wives emerged a year later, people empathized with it. They responded to simple and obvious messages: “Our loved ones had not intended to become soldiers,” “Husbands were promised they would be far from the front line, not like this.

” Such things are easy to relate to oneself, but hard to harden one’s heart toward. Yet even this empathy proved surmountable. If the women themselves spoke about demobilizing their loved ones, the state flipped the question: ubiquitous deputy Andrey Kartapolov, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, and President Vladimir Putin all began discussing rotation. The conversation shifted from the plane of “letting mobilized men go home” to that of “finding replacements for them. ” In a country traumatized by September’s partial mobilization, this provoked an unequivocal reaction: no, let those who were taken stay “beyond the ribbon.

” Support for and interest in mobilized men’s wives began to fade. A split emerged within the movement itself. N. requests anonymity. Her husband was taken in October 2022 and is still “beyond the ribbon. ” The woman herself no longer believes he can be brought home. We meet on one of the bustling streets. Looking at people passing by, she says: “This cannot really be hidden.

I felt it, and so did many other girls. When you see young families simply strolling carefree, you feel bitter envy. Because they have everything, while you have nothing. And you don’t understand why it’s you and not them. People feel this too. ” When N.’s husband was taken, only her mother was willing to share her pain. “At first, there were others who came with sympathy.

But when people realize that to the question ‘How are you?’ you can tell far more than they want to know, they become awkward and gradually distance themselves,” she tells me melancholically. “And I didn’t stand in their way—I even accelerated it with some: better I cut ties with someone than have them suffer and feel burdened. As for colleagues at work, they couldn’t have cared less.

Only when I set my profile picture online, which bore an unflattering inscription about our authorities, my boss said, ‘Remove that; there are already enough problems without you. ’ And why should I care about their problems? To hell with them. My husband is in ***—that’s the problem. So I just quit. There’s no need to talk about strangers. ” N. unexpectedly recalls Russian byliny in connection with this: “Remember, when Zmey Gorynych flew into villages, several people had to be handed over for him to eat?

Everyone mourned, yet they handed over the people and then tried to forget what they’d done. ” However, N. emphasizes that understanding never developed among mobilized men’s wives either. Because of this, she believes their prospects of bringing their husbands back were higher back then than they are now. “When we held actions, set up pickets in various cities, or gathered at the Eternal Flame, many women were doing fine and didn’t seek to join us.

Some had their husbands lying in hospitals; others were in the rear, shuffling papers. And they thought that would continue. But somehow, they couldn’t understand that when the boys on the front line run out, they will come for their husbands too,” she becomes heated. “Perhaps they thought that ten women who came to the Kremlin would bring all the men home? But no, they won’t.

” She notes: whenever someone manages to have a relative discharged due to injury or moved further from the front, those people quickly fall out of sight and stop helping others. “And so I think that we ourselves are to blame for what is happening to us: both families and those mobilized. In my view, the authorities were not at all certain that [the partial] mobilization would be indefinite.

When Putin announced leave, it was a trial balloon: how many would return? And when it became clear that almost everyone had returned, then they decided that the right people had been recruited. Such personnel cannot be lost. And now the president says they have become professionals, implying, what do you want? It’s like at work. When a newcomer joins, they try to prove themselves, doing everything faster and better.

Then management raises the bar, raises it, raises it again. And when they can no longer meet it, there is only one path left — to burn out at work. ”

Story III. “The national idea: basic needs”

On October 3, FSB officers came to Dmitry Kisiev, former head of Boris Nadezhdin’s election campaign headquarters. Law enforcement officials informed him that he must leave Russia within three days. “They staged an entire special operation. Late in the evening, the owner of the house where I rent accommodation in Khimki knocked on my door; he lives next door. He asked me for a cigarette.

I opened the door and saw six people,” Dmitry recounts. Kisiev was issued a notice and an acknowledgment form describing him as a “person without documents”. ” This did not surprise him much: the FSB had first ordered him to leave back in July, detaining him in Tomsk. At that time, Dmitry was told that his Russian passport had been invalidated and that he himself posed a threat to national security.

In the 2024 presidential election, hardly anyone expected that Boris Nadezhdin or Ekaterina Duntsova* would compete for victory. But their importance lay elsewhere — in the long queues forming to sign petitions for candidacy, in mass campaigning, in thousands eager to become observers, in meetings with voters, and finally in the word “peace,” which began to resonate amid the presidential race.

This was a large-scale action by concerned citizens. It was precisely this that became a “threat to national security. ” But what threat does depriving Kisiev of citizenship pose — a question that should seem no less serious to the authorities? Dmitry is from Crimea. Like other residents of the peninsula, he received his passport automatically in 2014. A Russian citizen “by birth” cannot be forcibly deprived of their passport.

Is it correct to assume that Crimeans—given that Russia accepted them as citizens along with the territory—are second-class citizens? We meet Dmitry in central Moscow. He has no intention of leaving the country and is seeking to preserve his Russian citizenship in court. — The FSB has been interested in us before, he says. — At the beginning of the year, they came to our office at night — probably to install a listening device.

This is an amusing story: our surveillance camera recorded someone entering in camouflage. He entered and tried either with a flashlight or some special device to disable the camera, but it seems so Chinese that he couldn’t manage it. Realizing his efforts were futile, he left, Dmitry shows me the video on his phone’s broken screen. — After this, we decided to abandon the office.

We tried to clarify the situation with the business center, but they simply denied everything. When Crimea was annexed to Russia, Kisiev was 19 years old. He did not vote in the referendum and viewed what was happening as a PR campaign: — There was a feeling that perhaps if I voted, I would regret it later. Euphoria reigned around: pensions and salaries were about to increase.

But I didn’t understand this; people saw how easily pre-election promises turned into nothingness. Yet for some reason, they believed that in Russia things were different. I grew up in a highly politicized family and became a nonconformist. And I had no illusions toward either side. In 2017, Dmitry became one of the few Crimeans to participate in anti-corruption protests.

He was detained but returned again. After graduating from university, he moved to Moscow. In 2022, he founded the “Candidates’ Headquarters” — an organization promoting democratic politicians in elections at various levels. In 2024, fifty people supported by the “Headquarters” became deputies in eleven regions — from Ryazan Oblast to Primorye. Regarding political sentiments in the country, Kisiev speaks rather pessimistically.

— People trust the authorities, and it’s not about propaganda. Simply put, a person is psychologically inclined to join the strong. If this government guarantees food in the refrigerator, why not support them? As long as “Krasnoe i Beloe” or “Pyaterochka” are operating, everything will be fine. People will only get angry if there are problems with food supplies. And this is a misfortune — Russians simply don’t know how to live differently.

Many do not leave their villages or small towns. They are convinced that even if there are no roads, pipes leak, and teachers are in short supply, it’s normal, because the main thing is that there is food. And those who have seen more and want more form a thin layer. Therefore, the majority are not interested in lists of “foreign agents,” freedom of speech, or independent theaters.

Basic needs — that is the national idea. Engaging in politics under such conditions seems pointless. But it is precisely this feeling that the authorities wish to achieve. — Unfortunately, we have reached the point where people are disappointed in the opposition. Not only those who watch television: the internet is full of petty squabbles, power struggles, scandals, and nonsense.

On top of that, many politicians and activists are ending up in prison—and, alas, some never get out at all. Because of this, voters begin to feel that perhaps now is not the time to take part in the country’s life. And so my task, the task of my team: to make people believe again that now is the time. With Boris Nadezhdin, we managed this well. We want there to be more politicians like him.

That is why I am not going to Dresden, Hamburg, or the Netherlands—I do not see myself there, and it does not interest me. Something needs to be done right here.

Story IV. “Not a single person”

Sometimes a person simply disappears. Suddenly you catch yourself thinking that you haven’t heard anything about them for over a year. Others say the same: it’s been a long time. And you don’t even know exactly where they are—in a penal colony or in pre-trial detention. Alexander Byvshev, a former German teacher from the village of Kromy in the Oryol region, may well be the record holder for the number of criminal cases filed against him: there are nine.

The charges are varied: false information about the army, inciting hatred or enmity, justifying terrorism, and obstructing justice. Except for the last one—all the others were for poems; the last was for conversations with journalists. I last wrote to him in 2023, when he faced his seventh case. We first met in 2014, when the very first case had just begun—for a poem.

At that time, in the damp building of the Kromy District Court, everyone was against Byvshev except perhaps his lawyer. “One of the Crimean patriots sent us [the poem] with the question: ‘How can such a person work at a school?’—principal Lyudmila Agoshkova enunciated from the podium.—When I read the poems, I immediately turned to former prosecutor of the Kromy district Maxim Grishin and asked him to provide a legal assessment.

I was disturbed by the harsh assessments of events in Ukraine and especially of Russia’s actions. On May 8, at the request of the prosecution, we held a teachers’ council to discuss this poem. The deputy prosecutor Natalia Volynova was present. All the teachers expressed extremely negative opinions about the poem. It seemed to me that Byvshev was upset that not a single person—I repeat, not a single person!—said a word in his defense.

” Other teachers, then still colleagues of Alexander, spoke in a similar manner. “Byvshev openly supports the splitting of our people. He supports the right of Ukrainians to independence and a European choice. I consider this unacceptable. We are one people: Ukraine, with perhaps Galicia as an exception, is Russia,” testified English teacher Vyacheslav Kostyakov in court.

Some said outright—and this was no joke—that they had not read and did not remember Byvshev’s poems, yet still condemned him. Others quoted lines that Alexander had never written. But the unity was total. As if it were important to show: “I am not with him.” …Psychologist and sociologist Alexey Roshchin, in his book “The Land of Lost Empathy,” suggests that the lack of empathy among many Russians may be linked to the Soviet legacy.

He cites a very precise excerpt from Mikhail Sholokhov’s letter to Joseph Stalin about the fate of people subjected to dekulakization in Kuban: “It was officially and strictly forbidden for other collective farmers to let the evicted into their homes to sleep or warm themselves. They were supposed to live in sheds, cellars, on the streets, in gardens. The population was warned: whoever lets an evicted family in will be evicted with his own family. 1,090 families lived on the street day after day around the clock at a temperature of minus 20 degrees.

During the day, like shadows, they wandered near their locked houses, and at night they sought shelter from the cold in sheds. But according to the law established by the regional committee, they were not even allowed to sleep there! Chairmen of village councils sent patrols along the streets who searched through the sheds and drove the families of collective farmers evicted from their houses back onto the streets.

I saw things that cannot be forgotten until death: in the settlement Volokhovsky of the Lebyazhensky collective farm, at night, in a fierce wind, in a frost when even dogs hide from the cold, families of those evicted from their houses burned bonfires in the alleys and sat by the fire. Children were wrapped in rags and placed on the ground thawed by the fire. A continuous cry of children echoed over the alleys.

How can one torment people like this? In the Bazkovsky collective farm, a woman with an infant was evicted. All night she walked around the settlement asking to be allowed to warm herself with her child. They did not let her in, fearing that they themselves might be evicted. Before dawn, the child froze to death in the mother’s arms…”. “What were the people subjected to dekulakization ‘taught’ by communists?

They were not the ones being taught. For communists, the evicted ‘kulaks’ were expendable material. The true object of training, more precisely, of conditioning—were those stanitsa residents who remained in their homes […]. It was precisely this that they were ‘taught’: to suppress empathy,” writes the psychologist. The teachers of the Kromy school learned this lesson well: principal Lyudmila Agoshkova and some others who spoke at the first trial are no longer there, but their cause lives on: Byvshev remains in prison.

In his latest case—for poems—he was sentenced in 2024 to seven years in a penal colony.

Postscript

Summary of Alexey Roshchin’s comment: he argues that enforced collectivism coexists with distrust, while poverty and fear of losing one’s livelihood undermine solidarity. He also links weak resistance to a lack of experience of personal autonomy and urban self-government.

Read the full comment in the original article

This article first appeared in issue 13 of Novaya Gazeta. Journal.