It’s impossible to believe. Physically impossible to accept.
Just a week ago, we were talking, and he invited me to his dacha (country house) to mark the fifth anniversary of our “sentence and miraculous release.” We even laughed that my probation period had been extended the day before, so we’d still have plenty of reasons for a long time to meet up and have a drink over it.
Two days ago, when he was already in the hospital, I spoke with Lida—but she’s as tough as nails. Her voice was upbeat: we don’t need anything, everything will be fine. I told her: as soon as I get back to Moscow, Yulia and I will come by right away to visit him. We’ll bring some oranges.
And now he is no longer with us. Forty-three years old. A young man in the prime of life. Six children.
There are not that many moments in life when the entire essence of another person reveals itself before you. Rarer still is when, seeing that essence, you think: he’s like someone straight out of a book.
That’s how it was for me with Petya Ofitserov. A man the system imprisoned, tormented, and whose life and business it wrecked simply because it needed a piece of paper from him. False testimony. And he didn’t even tell that system to go to hell—no. He looked at it in bewilderment and said: do you seriously think a decent person is capable of that? And he did not give an inch.
It was a calculated piece of cruelty: let’s take some ordinary businessman, someone naturally inclined to look after his own interests first, and with five children too (at the time). We’ll squeeze him. If he starts acting up, we’ll show him just how Kafkaesque the trial ahead will be, and we’ll get what we need. We always do.
They asked him, coaxed him, and of course, above all, threatened him. And he didn’t even have to directly denounce me. He didn’t have to stand with the prosecutor and so on. Basically: just stop insisting on your own innocence and Navalny’s innocence. Stop pushing against us. Say you didn’t understand what was going on, that you were misled by certain people. Just keep quiet.
Do you really want to go to prison for someone else? He’s got politics—what’s that to you?
We’ll lock up both of you. Newspapers will write about him, and no one will remember you.
People will raise money for his family, while yours will be left hungry. Where is your wife supposed to work with five children to care for?
And so on in that vein. Our investigators may be incapable of solving real crimes, but they are masters at vividly describing to an innocent person the life that awaits if he chooses to sacrifice himself.
When it was all just beginning, I understood that Petya was a good man—but people are weak. And the circumstances were what they were. Five children; I could never have brought myself to blame him.
And then the steamroller started moving—but it did not crush Pyotr Ofitserov into the asphalt. Our Petya turned out to be diamond-hard. When it all began, he told me plainly: this is all fucked up, the situation is fucked up, the prospects are fucked up, and I deeply regret ending up in this—but I will not lie or give false testimony. Let them run me over, but I won’t throw myself under the wheels. No one will ever tell my children that their father behaved like a bastard.
And that was the path he stayed on, and on July 18, 2013, it led him into the iron “pencil case” of a prison transport van. A tiny metal box where you sit with your knees practically pressed to your chest. You feel as if you’re in a coffin built with too little material, but you can still talk to the person riding in the neighboring cage, slightly roomier than yours.
He has just been given four years. Ten minutes ago, I saw his wife collapse when she heard the sentence.
- So then, I say to him through the wall, Petruccio, any regrets?
- And you?
No, of course not.
- Then what made you think you were the only one who wanted to remain an honest man? I’m riding in this box right now and thinking: at least I am an honest man.
Rest in peace, Petya Ofitserov, a truly honest man.
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