Tales from Russia: An Interview with a member of Solidarity Zone

On the left, in the English speaking world, we so often say the phrase: “train good, car bad”, but we find that our friends in Russia courageously disagree. Since the beginning of the Russo-Ukraine war there have been many activists and fighters who sacrificed their liberty in the name of peace by attacking freight trains, military recruitment centres, and armoured vehicles among other things.

2 years in and this war is still happening and people are still giving up everything to defend autonomy. As we witness acts of genocide accelerate against Darfurians, Palestianians, Armenians, and so many more, its important to recognise that injustice anywhere threatens peace everywhere.

Below is an interview conducted by a member of NEAG and the Northumbria branch of the IWW with a member of Solidarity Zone – a grassroots advocacy group supporting prisoners and other persecuted people who have taken steps to resist Russian imperialism. 

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[INTERVIEWER] — Firstly I suppose the best question is to ask what group or groups you are representing? 

[SOLIDARITY ZONE MEMBER] — Hi! I am an anonymous participant of Solidarity Zone, the anarchist human rights defence initiative. We organise defence in court, and other types of support, for partisans and those arrested for anti-war direct action in Russia.

[INTERVIEWER] — What groups are your organisation affiliated with?

[SOLIDARITY ZONE MEMBER] — We work completely autonomously, but of course we are integrated with solidarity networks, and we participate in various off-line events in Europe. Right at the start, when we had no social media presence of our own, or even a name, we were given material support by the Anarchist Black Cross group in Moscow. Thanks to that, we could pay for lawyers in the initial cases we took on. We share our work practices, our security methods, and any successful experience in the courts, with a range of other anti-war and cyber-activist initiatives. 

[INTERVIEWER] — Are you in Russian territory at this time?

[SOLIDARITY ZONE MEMBER] — Right now, half of our collective is based in Russia, and half is in forced emigration, in countries of the European Union or former Soviet republics.

[INTERVIEWER] — What are the major barriers to organising in Russia, particularly with fundraising?

[SOLIDARITY ZONE MEMBER] — The two biggest problems are: ensuring the safety of members of the Solidarity Zone collective, and the absence of any regular financial support. Unfortunately these two problems are closely linked to each other, and I’ll allow myself to answer your question in a very emotional way. We undertake activism that puts us at considerable risk of imprisonment and persecution by the state. Apart from the day-to-day work with lawyers, anti-war prisoners and their families, we all need constantly to think of our own security: to ensure that our phones, notebooks and the information on them is protected, and not to forget about more direct forms of surveillance. This is full-time work, done on a voluntary basis, done in the time that we could spend on our own comforts, living our young lives and earning money. But the list of cases involving direct action – firebombings [of military recruitment centres and similar state premises], diversionary actions on the railways and sabotage – has grown so long that, while we cope with it, we are not so much living as surviving.

I do not personally know all the participants in our collective, because some of them work on an anonymous basis. But for most of us, this anti-war activism takes up all our free time and deprives us of opportunities to work for money as normal. This is a serious moral dilemma. I can speak for myself: my belief in anarchist ideals, in peace and mutual aid, prevents me from returning to ordinary paid work. I decided to quit work in a commercial company and to live in poverty, in order to make a contribution to the struggle against Putin’s regime. That might sound romantic, like something out of a book from the last century about revolutionary movements – but actually it’s a horrifying nightmare. I don’t think a single one of us would fight under the present conditions by choice. Resistance is a reaction to the violence that surrounds us. Emotional exhaustion, physical tiredness and helplessness – it’s difficult to romanticise these things. And it is pretty hard to romanticise the canned beans that one of my woman comrades – now in enforced political exile in another country, without the right legal documents – survives on for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

This is for us the most painful question: the lack of regular finance. All the money collected for prisoners is used for their defence in court, and to pay for items of clothing and food supplies for them in Russian prisons. The Solidarity Zone collective has its Patreon for donations to its participants’ needs, but right now that amounts to a minimal sum – less than 100 euros per month – for each of us.   

[INTERVIEWER] — What are the end goals of your organisation? Both long term and short term, wide and limited scope, what do you wish to achieve?

[SOLIDARITY ZONE MEMBER] — The main goal is to provide help and support to prisoners, who have by means of direct action taken a stand against Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine. These are people who firebomb military recruitment centres as a way to protest, who undertake diversionary tactics and sabotage on the railways – and also those falsely accused of such actions. These are people who obstruct the work of the military, the police and the FSB [Federal Security Service]. These are people who simply could not sit and calmly watch the way the world is changing around them; people whose friends and relatives are dying in the war; people who are driven to take radical action by feelings of hopelessness and mental torment.

In Russia, the life of political prisoners is shaped by horrific conditions of detention, constant breaches of prisoners’ human rights, and torture and other pressure from the prison service. We try every day to do all that we can to ensure that the time political prisoners spend behind bars is as comfortable as it can be in Russian conditons. Ideally, of course, we want every one of those that we support not to be punished, but unfortunately that is practically impossible. So our aim now is to reduce the harm that the state does, and to support those who have paid with their freedom for their part in the struggle against the Russian military machine. It is difficult to answer this question further, since we don’t have the privilege, the resources or the time to think about aims and work towards achieving them. We don’t even have time for many of the things we need to do within the collective, or for raising sufficient funds. If we could prevent torture and other forms of harassment being used against those we defend, we would consider that an achievement in itself. Consequently, it seems to me, we have worked out a very good basic framework for our activity in these extreme circumstances: “Work. Security. Media.” This is a straightforward formula that helps our initiative to exist. We support anti-war prisoners; we take care of our security; and we talk about this in the media. All this has been forced upon us. Of course we would like to have the possibility to do more for the prisoners and their families; to do more for our own mental health; and for the wider circulation of our ideas in the mass media. But so far we have not been able to.

[INTERVIEWER] — I know from my own experience with anarchist and leftist groups throughout the world, we are primarily populated by queer or transgender people, can you speak on this in a Russian context and what the experience is like on the ground for such individuals?

[SOLIDARITY ZONE MEMBER] — It is difficult for me to assess this, as I am not myself an LGBTQ+ person. Russian activism, like any other sphere, is full of queer and trans people, and this – among us, as in society as a whole – will not be taken away by the queerphobic and homophobic laws now being adopted by the government. We do not accept any type of discrimination, or any expression of discrimination. We fight all together, as always, against the main enemy – the repressive state. But in Russia it’s much harder for queer and trans people, and this means that they have to expend more effort to take care of themselves and their communities.

[INTERVIEWER] — Are there any insurgent tactics you have learned that you believe would be useful information for those organising primarily in the UK and Ireland?

[SOLIDARITY ZONE MEMBER] — We believe that the most important thing is to rely on the security of the partisans themselves. The best thing any of us can do is not to fall into the hands of the security services. Solidarity Zone is not a partisan group; we are defenders. We often see the mistaken tactics of partisans and those who take direct action [who are then arrested]. We do not cross paths with those who undertake the most successful actions, since they are able to hide from the security services and do not become defendants in criminal cases.

[INTERVIEWER] — And one for fun requested by a friend, do you have a mascot or animal that represents your group? :))

[SOLIDARITY ZONE MEMBER] — That’s a cool question, since it’s very therapeutic :)) Yes, it seems to me, we do have a mascot: a dog who accompanies two of our participants who are not anonymous, Anya Kurbatova and Ivan Astashin. The dog is named Grusha and our difficult conversations are often lightened by her photographs; she helps to ease the tension. In between reading accounts of torture, and of sentences to monstrous terms of imprisonment, it is very useful for our psychology to look at the silly positions that Grusha takes up to sleep in.  [The dog is featured in the image for this article]

And another thing. On Signal, we often use a tiredness sticker: I would count that sticker as a mascot too.

[INTERVIEWER] — I’ll close in the way that these things always do. Is there anywhere that people/readers can go in order to support you, be that financially or otherwise?

[SOLIDARITY ZONE MEMBER] — Of course! It is very important for us to be heard, and so we try to translate our material into English: to speak out about those in Russia who are not afraid to resist! And you can subscribe to our Solidarity Zone accounts on Telegram, Instagram and Facebook. Very recently we have also started one on Twitter (https://linktr.ee/solidarity_zone). We also have a Patreon account, the money from which is divided equally among the collective’s participants. Thank you for making it possible to speak about our work to activists in the UK and Ireland.