There are those who write long letters, A4 sheets carefully folded in an envelope. And those who favor quantity – a few words scribbled on a postcard, always the same. In one hour since her arrival, Yulia Averina has already signed ten. “Tonight, I lacked a little inspirationshe said, sighing. And then finally, I told them about the flowers I planted for fall at the bottom of my building. Peonies, lilacs… As they are cut off from the outside world, I also give them the latest information. I tell them that [Sergueï] Sobyanin was re-elected mayor of Moscow. No need to specify under what conditions: they know it, and the censorship would not let it slide…”
“They” are political prisoners that Mme Averina, 49, a nurse, has never met and will probably never meet, but to whom, every month, she devotes three hours of her time, interrupting only to chat with her table neighbors or go to replenish her tea reserves and cupcakes.
There are around sixty editors at any time, crowded around ten tables, elbows almost touching. Some leave, immediately replaced by new arrivals – and the process repeats every last Thursday of the month, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. On the tables, ballpoint pens, postcards depicting harmless Russian landscapes, and sheets detailing the affairs and conditions of incarceration of some of the prisoners.
With the war in Ukraine, their number has increased significantly – up to 1,500, assures the organizer, Lilia Manikhina, who also works in the medical sector. Such initiatives existed before, but this 55-year-old woman gave them unprecedented scale by organizing, for a little less than a year, these Thursday meetings with the logistical help of the old liberal party Yabloko. It is in its premises that volunteers meet to write 500 to 600 letters each session, sent the next day to prisons across the country.
“Your letters give me the strength to live”
This September 28, Lilia Manikhina chose a simple solution, to prevent the most famous prisoners from being privileged. On the tables, she placed the cards of prisoners whose name begins with an “S”… like “September”. Pavel Stepanov, 29, blogger whose writings, according to the courts, “have had a negative influence on society’s opinion of the armed forces” ; Alexandra Skotchilenko, 33 years old, ill, in pre-trial detention since March 2022 for having replaced price labels in a store with short notes on the “crimes” of the Russian army…
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