Ilya Shakursky was condemned to 16 years on trumped-up terrorism charges; in the midst of hell, he found compassion from a lowly rodent

Franz Kafka’s The Trial opens with the line, “Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested”. Josef K. is subsequently thrown into a labyrinthine nightmare as he attempts to exonerate himself from an unnamed charge brought against him by a nonsensical shadowy court system. The lurid unreality of The Trial finds an all too real analogue in the ongoing systematic persecution and torture of anarchists and anti-fascists in today’s Russia.

Ilya Shakursky — a 21-year-old local anarchist activist — was arrested in Penza (a regional capital 625 km southeast of Moscow) on October 18, 2017, and eventually charged with “creating a terrorist organisation” called the “Network.” The Federal Security Service (FSB) accused the alleged group of plotting terrorist attacks timed to coincide with the 2018 Russian presidential elections and the World Cup.

Ilya knew he did not belong to a terrorist organization, but, nonetheless, he and ten others were arrested and put on trial. On February 10, 2020, seven defendants were condemned to sentences ranging from 6 to 18 years for a collective total of 86 years in prison. Ilya was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.

Sadly, the Network case recently reared its ugly head once again. In 2023, Azat Miftakhov, an anarchist and mathematician, was accused of belonging to the non-existent “Moscow cell” of the Network. On March 28, 2024, Azat was sentenced to four years for “justifying terrorism”.

From the beginning, the Network case was mired in controversy provoking domestic and international outcry. A letter signed by over 3600 Russian academics, journalists, and professionals condemned the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) accusations as “entirely fabricated.” Amnesty International declared the Network “a non-existent terrorist organisation” and the trial a sham intended to “silence all dissent”. Russian journalist Andrei Kolesnikov declared the case “a scene from 1937” and “a return of Stalinist show trials”.

Most disturbing of all was the FSB’s extensive use of torture to extract false confessions. Defendant testimonies and physical evidence reviewed by Human Rights Watch revealed how the accused were beaten and electrocuted on numerous occasions. Ilya himself was tortured into a confession which he later retracted. His refusal to admit guilt during his trial resulted in him receiving one of the harshest sentences of the Network defendants.

Ilya is currently serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution No. 17 in the Republic of Mordovia. From prison, he writes extensively about his experience, revealing a talented, introspective writer. In an excerpt from his future book, Ilya writes:

The FSB special forces knocked me off my feet, slamming me onto the asphalt. They didn’t just stop me; they rather disrupted the direction of my path. Like a barbaric-Bolshevik tribe invading my life, they brazenly trampled everything dear to me, calling some of it evidence of crime, mocking some, intimidating others, systematically destroying and discrediting my life. They tried to convince everyone around, even those who knew and loved me, that I was scum, a degenerate, and a fanatic. They even tried to convince me of this. In their eyes, I continued to remain as such because they had nothing else to justify their hatred and actions.

Yet, for all the Kafka-esque darkness that has enveloped Ilya’s life, he refuses to concede defeat or consign himself to the fatalistic malaise Putin’s authoritarianism seeks to impose on dissidents. He reflects,

This path is filled with martyr’s blood and firm handshakes, years of deprivation and the euphoria of unity, escapes and dances, the dust of roads and the ashes of bonfires, adrenaline and cruelty, love and freedom. But in order to understand how this path is born and where it leads, one must see it all.    

The following story, entitled “The Rat”, was published by Ilya on June 26 for the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. He describes in harrowing detail the torture he experienced in November 2017 and how, in the midst of hell, he found compassion from a lowly rodent.  

And, indeed, is it not absurd even to think of justice when every kind of violence is accepted by society as a rational and consistent necessity, and every act of mercy–for instance, a verdict of acquittal—calls forth a perfect outburst of dissatisfied and revengeful feeling?

~ A.P. Chekhov, Ward No. 6

November 2017. Cold. Uncomfortable. Feduk’s “Rose Wine” is playing on the TV. I’ve just been led out of solitary confinement. My first and most horrible experience of isolation. Tomorrow will bring repeated investigative actions. Fear has paralyzed all feelings. I find myself petrified, afraid to speak, afraid to think … I’ve lost myself, disowned my real living self, my thoughts, my people.  

I trust no one, I don’t believe in God or man … I don’t exist. A distressed wall, a dusty state mattress on a rusty iron bunk, standard-issue greying bed linen. Around me nothing exists, only fear and pain. I do not belong to myself. I am a prisoner of the system, a toy in the hands of sadists.

They control me. But somewhere inside me, a spirit still free and unmurdered tearfully cries: “Write! Write! Capture your condition. Preserve the truth”. I take a notebook and, with trembling hands, write about what is happening inside me, replacing “I” with “he”, as if all of this did not happen to me. I cover the pages from the prying eyes of the camera and the surrounding prisoners. I shudder at every sound and write as if not about myself, afraid to believe in the reality that surrounds me.

But all this was real. On November 3, 2017, I was sent to a punishment cell. During the transfer, FSB officers electrocuted me. After five days, I was returned to cell 117, where I would write a text called “The Rat”.

…

Autumn. A nasty, cold, wet, and gloomy time of the year that, together with the falling of leaves, brings a melancholy to life and an accompanying hatred of everything. More than ever, he hated autumn. He tried to avoid it, staying home to continue his struggle with depression. Drugs and alcohol didn’t help anymore but only further drowned him in the depths of his terrible condition. It seemed like things couldn’t get any worse—but it only seemed that way as that fall he was awoken in the deep darkness of a concrete sack.

His dry mouth demanded a taste of the bitter, stinking tap water. Lips stuck together and cracked. The foul odour of his breath mixed with the pervasive stench of urine coming from a hole in the corner. Dry vomit clung to the sink, clogged, and refusing to drain. He covered his face with a dirty waffle-pattern towel, trying to forget, to shut down. The smell, his surroundings, and pulsing headache pounded his temples yielding waves of nausea. The towel wrapped around his neck, squeezed, and with fear, released.            

“Welcome to hell”! Devils peer through a peephole and reluctantly bring pills and bread.

The towel cuts his neck, the water is bitter, not enough air. He bites the towel knot and growls, furiously tearing the fabric with his teeth. From his eyes flow tears and all the remnants of life flow with them. He does not stop him. The devils watch, masturbate, eat fatty foods, and wipe hands on camouflage pants.

What is a panic attack? He lies trembling on dusty floorboards. He thinks all life is a panic attack, all life is a road to suicide because life is what surrounded him in that moment.

He is dead. The body lay on the floor by a concrete stump. The soul finds a way out of this space only through flowing pipes. Maybe this is madness? This is exactly how it happens. You just lose the life inside yourself.

As a child, he lived not far from a mental hospital and sometimes, when meeting eyes with the sick individuals, he wondered what had happened to them. What stripped them of their mind and self-possession? Why did they become this way, how did this process unfold in their heads? Where does madness begin and end? Maybe science and medicine can explain all this in detail, but at the moment it seemed to him he understood it all without the need for books.

He wanted to go to that hospital, to the psychos, he was afraid of as a child but now felt he would be safe with, unlike other people.

Soon he stopped thinking. Thoughts fled his mind. Everything swallowed by emptiness. All that existed was the hell encircling him and its accompanying atmosphere. No emotion, no understanding, no sense of existence. No past, no future, no present.

He seemed to have forgotten who he was, and even after some time, he remained swaying in monotonous body motions, existing in soulless flesh.

It was only a sharp rustling sound that forced him to open his eyes and look at the source of the stench. There sat a filthy, huge rat, greedily devouring dried pieces of bread it had obtained. It did not pay any attention to him whatsoever, as if he really no longer existed, incapable of causing anxiety or fear in this creature, no longer posing a threat to the rat, like a lifeless corpse.

He froze, looking into its little rat eyes. It felt his gaze and turned its attention to him. A monologue began not subject to any explanation.

As if with pity, the rat spoke to him: “You are a human, one of the strongest and smartest living creatures on earth, and now you are in a worse position than me and my relatives. Now, even I, such a vile and lowly creature in your opinion, look at you with my glass eyes in pity. I live every day in slop, eating your scraps, hiding because you humans want to exterminate us. You see, it is unpleasant for you to meet us, you pity us with your half-eaten buns, afraid that we carry disease, and so, according to you, we must die. And now you, that same human, sits in front of me so pathetic and defenceless, broken and lost, and there is no thirst for revenge in me. I see how you, too, have learned the fear of death, humiliating persecution, and pain. I don’t want to exterminate you because I am a rat, I am an animal and not a human.

“What is this?! Hypnosis or hallucinations, a burst of madness”? he thought at that moment.

Only after some time, whether mirage or true vision, did he realise that basement rat saved him from true madness and loss of reason. A stinking long-tailed rat, having made its way through the sewer pipes, penetrated his hell and brought with it a sense of compassion that we would consider human.

But it was people who were the most frightening creatures of all to him because they did to him what they could do and wanted to do — what no one else would have done to him.

~ Ilya Shakursky

Introduced and translated by Sean Patterson

You can write to Ilya at: 431161, Russia, Republic of Mordovia, Zubovo-Polyansky district, Ozerny village, Lesnaya street, 3, FKU IK-17 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in the Republic of Mordovia, Shakursky Ilya Aleksandrovich

Support funds can be sent to Ilya through Anarchist Black Cross-Moscow via PayPal: abc-msk@riseup.net (send Euros marked “To Shakursky”)