Boris Belenkin

"All I have to say is the strangeness of why my life and the lives of my colleagues, like-minded people in the country, have gone this way. The thing is that the peculiarity of the new power - it is obvious that some good political technologists have programmed it - is the principle of the 'grapes and the rabbit'. There is no doubt that the authorities, starting in 2000-2001, hypnotised society with their actions. In what sense? All these evil deeds that Putin's government has committed and is committing - mind you, for 23 years - did not happen in one day, but very gradually. So-and-so was arrested and given 15 days in jail. That is not good. Someone else was arrested and given a month. Bad. They gave a year, they gave three years. Now they're giving 25 years. Just draw a graph. Or you have a fight with someone in the West and it's over. Declared a "foreign agent". That was introduced in 2012 and three or five organisations got it, I can't remember which ones, but they weren't the most important ones. Memorial didn't get it until 2016 - both Memorial Human Rights Centre and International Memorial got "foreign agent" status. Translated by automatic translator (DeepL)

"Anyway, we went to Petra to lay flowers to the Decembrists, whom we - anti-Soviet and revolutionaries - considered our predecessors. We were twenty years old, yes, I was already twenty. Anyway, we went to the place where we were detained in the apartment. In the morning. There we drank, talked, sang White Guard songs. In the morning they came for us. It was unexpected, and to this day I have not realized who called us and summoned us. Some random apartment of random people, I don't know. The three of us were detained. My friend, a classmate, had left the day before. We were detained for six hours until two in the afternoon - we were interrogated for a long time at the police station, which I understand was the KGB district department. Then they sent us, accompanied by a policeman, to the train. I committed the deed after deceiving the policeman - I wouldn't have the courage to do it now. We went for a snack - there was half an hour before the train left - to a café near the station. And the policeman was with us, we went to the toilet, but he was with us - he had to put us on the train. I have to warn him, I realize that in Moscow we are going to the Lubyanka dungeon and torture chamber. What am I doing? I went to the toilet, but instead of going to the toilet I went to the canteen, saw the office of the director of the canteen, knocked, went in, closed the door behind me. I took out a ruble and said: "Please, I have to call Moscow, I have to... ( something occurred to me there), one word, literally one minute." And then I went back to the office. And I called Moscow, and in familiar words I explained - I had realized beforehand who needed to be informed - that if Belenkin, Gurevich and Fradis had died a brave death... And I called, I warned them, that's all. (DeepL)