The Case of Oleg Sentsov

Last week, PEN International published three short stories by the Ukrainian director, writer and civic activist Oleg Sentsov, who is currently on hunger strike in a Russian prison where he is serving a twenty year sentence on highly spurious charges of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism. Uilleam Blacker, lecturer at UCL SSEES and the translator of the stories, considers Sentsov’s case.

With the 2018 World Cup, Russia has put on a slick show. The shining new stadiums, often built in cities with otherwise poor public infrastructure, and the relaxation of the country’s normally tightly-controlled public spaces, all give the impression of a dynamic, modern, open country. 

In Russia, the World Cup is not just about showing the host country’s best side. It is also about covering up its worst sides. With sport promoted to the front pages around the world, violence and abuses fade from view. The World Cup is a huge commercial venture, and neither the Russia state, FIFA, the advertisers, nor ordinary fans want their party ruined by stories of torture, murder and corruption.

As the countdown to the final gathers speed, another count is also underway: the days since the Ukrainian filmmaker and activist Oleg Sentsov, who has been incarcerated in Russia since 2014, declared an unlimited hunger strike, demanding the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia. 2 July was his 50th day.

Sentsov’s case condenses all that is wrong with contemporary Russia: its contempt for the rule of law, its predilection for violence and torture, its propensity to openly lie, and its lack of respect for the sovereignty of neighbouring states. When the Euromaidan protests broke out in 2013-14, Sentsov, a native Crimean, paused work on his latest film and threw himself into volunteering for the cause. When Russia invaded Crimea, he was a vocal opponent. He and three other activists were arrested by the FSB in May 2014 and tortured in attempt to extract confessions to planning acts of terrorism, including setting fire to the offices of Russia’s ruling United Russia party and an attack on Soviet monuments. Sentsov was also accused of being a member of a Ukrainian nationalist organisation that is banned in Russia. 

This story is uncomfortably familiar for Ukrainians. In the 1930s, leading figures of the Ukrainian literary and artistic avant-garde were arrested, tortured and forced to confess to membership of anti-Soviet, nationalist terrorist groups, before being executed. Another striking parallel is with the poet and civic activist Vasyl Stus: arrested just before the Moscow Olympics in 1980, he was sentenced to ten years for anti-Soviet activity (already his second stint in prison). He declared an unlimited hunger strike in 1985, and, tragically, died that same year.

It is no revelation to point out that Sentsov’s trial is a grotesque parody of the judicial process. The state doesn’t hide this fact. On the contrary, the spectacle is designed to demonstrate the regime’s unlimited ability to inflict violence and incarceration on those under its control, crime or no crime, evidence or no evidence. To paraphrase an old Soviet saying, “If we can find a suspect, we can find a crime”. 

The sinister absurdity of the trial is made abundantly clear in a recent film by the Russian director Askold Kurov, The Trial: The Russian State vs Oleg Sentsov. The film relies mainly on showing the trial, relaying the actual words spoken by prosecutors and defendants with little commentary: the flimsiness of the accusations is clear not only to the viewer, but also to those on the screen, including the prosecutors.

What is most striking in Kurov’s film is the behaviour of Sentsov himself. He is disconcertingly calm. He never raises his voice. He smiles bemusedly at his supporters, gives the peace sign to the cameras. At one point he grins widely as his lawyer shows him, through the bars that cage the accused in Russian courtrooms, a recently published collection of his short stories. 

Sentsov’s statements to the court are restrained, eloquent, often betraying a dry sense of humour. He patiently reminds the court of the blatant inconsistencies in the evidence against him, as though speaking to an inattentive child. 

In a statement made in July 2014, he undermined not only the case against him, but also exposed the full illegality of Russia’s annexation of Crimea:

"I do not recognize the annexation of Crimea or the military takeover of Crimea by The Russian Federation, and I consider an agreement made by the illegitimate Crimean authorities with the Russian federation to be null and void. I am not a serf. I cannot be transferred with the land. I did not submit any request for Russian citizenship, nor have I renounced my Ukrainian citizenship."

This statement is also about 2 million Crimeans who had no genuine say in the incorporation of their home to the Russian Federation, nor in the effective reassigning of their citizenship, other than in a sham referendum, the legislation for which was passed in a Crimean parliament occupied by Russian soldiers. 

In his final statement after his sentence was delivered, Sentsov switches from historical references to literary ones:

"I would like to speak about something else. There was once a man named Pontius Pilate. After he had sat on the moon for many years, he thought about what he had done. Then, when he was forgiven, he walked along a moonbeam and said to Ha-Notsri: “You know, you were right. The greatest sin on Earth is cowardice.”

The reference is to Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita (Ha-Notsri is the name given to the character of Jesus in the novel). Here, Sentsov uses the Russian writer to speak not about his own case, but about Russian society, which, it seems, is facing similar challenges to freedom of speech and conscience as it did in Bulgakov’s day. 

While many in Russia are taken in by the state’s propaganda, Sentsov goes on to argue in his statement, there are others who know things are bad, but are afraid to speak out:

"They think that nothing can be changed. That everything will continue as it is. That the system cannot be broken. That they are alone. That there are few of us. That we will all be thrown into prison. That they will kill us, destroy us. And they sit quietly, as mice in their holes."

Sentsov ends his statement saying that ‘I simply wish for you to no longer be governed by criminals’, and confidently predicting that this will, someday, come about.

As Sentsov points out, it is not easy for Russian citizens – while some may genuinely support Putin, others are clearly the victims of propaganda, while others still are too afraid to speak out. But by his own example he shows that the state-instilled fear is not always enough to guarantee silence.

Observers in the West, in contrast to Russian citizens, have no excuses for not knowing, or not speaking about what is happening to Sentsov and others in Russia. We have access to all the information and can choose how to react – nobody will punish us for it. Judging by the Western media, however, our societies have chosen to react by enjoying the football, and not thinking too much about everything else that is happening behind the scenes. 

Many argue that sport should be removed from politics, and that it’s possible to enjoy it while still opposing Putin; but it’s a hard position to maintain when sport is so clearly being used as a smokescreen to hide violence and abuse, and when the budget that funded the stadiums is also funding wars in Ukraine and Syria. 

Alongside the admirable efforts of human rights organisations and a string of famous directors, some Western governments, the US and the EU have also called for Sentsov’s release. But these appeals, and the tame diplomatic boycott of the World Cup, have, sadly, been lost in the football fever. The overwhelming response in the West to the plight of Sentsov and dozens more political prisoners in Russia has been one of indifference, of reluctance to engage with an inconvenient reality that threatens to ruin our entertainment. This not the same as the silent cowardice resulting from fear that Sentsov, citing Bulgakov, spoke about in his courtroom cage. It is a problem that neither he nor Bulgakov had the luxury of having to confront.

• Dr Uilleam Blacker - Lecturer in the Comparative Culture of Russia and Eastern Europe
• Image credit: Wikipedia