trying to make and keep either with an alcoholic is a lost cause, so when Philip was born in May 2007, it was on the gray sheets and within the yellow walls of a regular neighborhood “birthing home,” where giving birth is rough and free. The only item on Nikita and Maria’s to-do list that they could actually check off was putting up new wallpaper in one of the rooms in Natalya’s apartment in Kuntsevo, where all four of them were now resident. Maria and Nikita, though, maintained a regular schedule of breakups, so most of the time the Kuntsevo apartment housed only the child, his mother, and grandmother—just as it had two decades earlier.
Philip was not yet three months old when Maria and Nikita took him to Utrish, a national park in southern Russia. Nikita had been hitchhiking to camp there for many summers; Maria fell in love with the place her first time there.
I had asked Maria to tell me what had led her to become an activist, and the path stopped here. “Looking at this list of facts, neither you nor I can tell how I became an activist or why I continuously changed the focus of my activism,” she wrote. “I acted intuitively—I generally tend to trust myself when I take steps that I later realize were important. In 2008, when I was in my first or second year of college, I read the news that Utrish, one of the places I hold dearest in Russia, would be cut down. I found two telephone numbers and addresses on the Internet, packed a knapsack, and, straight from college, went to the offices of the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace. I met some of their staff members. The people at Greenpeace counseled me to start collecting signatures and printed out sign-up sheets for me.”
I could visualize this scene. Moscow nonprofits do not get a lot of foot traffic—they are usually staffed by seasoned activists, many of whom have spent time living, working, or studying abroad, in countries where one might get the idea to become an activist. The appearance of a starry-eyed young woman looking like a throwback to some imaginary 1970s—wearing a hand-sewn skirt, a wide-brimmed hat over frizzy long hair, and a backpack, as though she were planning to hike to battle without delay—and speaking (in the high-pitched voice that tends to crack when she is excited) of how much she loved Utrish was definitely odd and quite possibly comical. Handing her a stack of sign-up sheets may have been an attempt to test her or just to get rid of her.
“So this was all I had—a bunch of blank sign-up sheets and not a single activist among my friends. I collected forty-three hundred signatures in one week and met wonderful people: artists, students who belonged to the environmental group at Moscow State University—I can’t even list them all. Many people wanted to help.” Pretty soon Maria was in charge of the grassroots organizing effort for the defense of Utrish, though she modestly omitted that fact from her letter to me. She helped organize rallies and pickets and, when the illegal clear-cutting of the national forest began in November 2008, she joined dozens of activists who traveled to Utrish to shield the trees with their own bodies. “I did everything with my son in a sling. When it got cold, family members would take him while I was at rallies or pickets.” Five years later, at the hearing in Berezniki, having involved her toddler son in political activities would be cited as one of the reasons to deny her early release.
----
E VENTUALLY M ARIA DID DECIDE to go to college, and the college she chose, the Institute of Journalism and Literature, was a tiny, almost quaint private undertaking, unknown to virtually anyone who did not study or teach there. I had been an editor actively recruiting young journalists in Moscow for years, and I had never heard of it, nor had anyone I asked. Its workshop-based system drew the kind of kids Maria had been: the ones who had spent their high school years sitting in a corner with a
Philip was not yet three months old when Maria and Nikita took him to Utrish, a national park in southern Russia. Nikita had been hitchhiking to camp there for many summers; Maria fell in love with the place her first time there.
I had asked Maria to tell me what had led her to become an activist, and the path stopped here. “Looking at this list of facts, neither you nor I can tell how I became an activist or why I continuously changed the focus of my activism,” she wrote. “I acted intuitively—I generally tend to trust myself when I take steps that I later realize were important. In 2008, when I was in my first or second year of college, I read the news that Utrish, one of the places I hold dearest in Russia, would be cut down. I found two telephone numbers and addresses on the Internet, packed a knapsack, and, straight from college, went to the offices of the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace. I met some of their staff members. The people at Greenpeace counseled me to start collecting signatures and printed out sign-up sheets for me.”
I could visualize this scene. Moscow nonprofits do not get a lot of foot traffic—they are usually staffed by seasoned activists, many of whom have spent time living, working, or studying abroad, in countries where one might get the idea to become an activist. The appearance of a starry-eyed young woman looking like a throwback to some imaginary 1970s—wearing a hand-sewn skirt, a wide-brimmed hat over frizzy long hair, and a backpack, as though she were planning to hike to battle without delay—and speaking (in the high-pitched voice that tends to crack when she is excited) of how much she loved Utrish was definitely odd and quite possibly comical. Handing her a stack of sign-up sheets may have been an attempt to test her or just to get rid of her.
“So this was all I had—a bunch of blank sign-up sheets and not a single activist among my friends. I collected forty-three hundred signatures in one week and met wonderful people: artists, students who belonged to the environmental group at Moscow State University—I can’t even list them all. Many people wanted to help.” Pretty soon Maria was in charge of the grassroots organizing effort for the defense of Utrish, though she modestly omitted that fact from her letter to me. She helped organize rallies and pickets and, when the illegal clear-cutting of the national forest began in November 2008, she joined dozens of activists who traveled to Utrish to shield the trees with their own bodies. “I did everything with my son in a sling. When it got cold, family members would take him while I was at rallies or pickets.” Five years later, at the hearing in Berezniki, having involved her toddler son in political activities would be cited as one of the reasons to deny her early release.
----
E VENTUALLY M ARIA DID DECIDE to go to college, and the college she chose, the Institute of Journalism and Literature, was a tiny, almost quaint private undertaking, unknown to virtually anyone who did not study or teach there. I had been an editor actively recruiting young journalists in Moscow for years, and I had never heard of it, nor had anyone I asked. Its workshop-based system drew the kind of kids Maria had been: the ones who had spent their high school years sitting in a corner with a
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