The money are now raised for the family of the deceased Pavel Kushnir, a pianist, who died in jail after the dry hunger strike. The collection was announced by a human rights activist and politician Marina Litvinovich.
“Pasha Kushnir’s friends are trying to make it possible to transport Pasha to his homeland, to Tambov. The body is still in the morgue. You can help and put a sum on account of Pasha’s mother,” Litvinovich writes.
Svetlana Kaverzina, a deputy in Novosibirsk, laid flowers at the monument to the victims of political repression in memory of Pavel.
“Do you know what the saddest thing is? We didn’t know… Neither that Pavel was detained for a post on a channel with 25 subscribers and was almost charged with terrorism. Nor that he’s on a hunger strike. We found out that he had died a few days after his death… Birobidzhan is a city where connections between dissidents are not built. There was no one who could tell. Apparently, the relatives were afraid to make it public. And the man was left alone with the system. We couldn’t chip in and send a lawyer to him — we didn’t know. We didn’t write him letters of support — we didn’t know. We didn’t dissuade him from sacrificing himself — we didn’t know. He was alone (Let’s, at least after death, symbolically tell him: forgive and rest in peace. Take a pair of carnations to the monument to the victims of political repression in Narymsky Square. “It’s not necessary for the dead, it’s necessary for the living,” she wrote.
Pavel Kushnir, 39, worked at the Philharmonic, published his anti-war book and ran a YouTube channel with anti-fascist manifestos. It is alleged that the channel had only 5 subscribers at the time of the arrest. At the end of May 2024, Kushnir was detained by FSB officers. A criminal case was opened against him under the article on public calls to carry out terrorist activities (Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code) for a video on his YouTube channel.
Pavel Kushnir died at the end of July in the Birobidzhan detention center as a result of a dry hunger strike.
“Life is just something that will never happen under fascism. <…> The Buchan massacre is a disgrace to our motherland, fascism is the death of our motherland. Putin is a fascist. The peoples of our country gave millions of their best lives so that fascism would never exist, and we will not accept it, we will not bow to the beast, down with the war in Ukraine! Down with the fascist Putin regime! Freedom for all political prisoners, freedom for all prisoners, and in general, freedom for everyone!” one of Pavel’s videos says.
“In 2011, when the first Bolotnaya Square was built, <…> a stage and huge speakers were set up, everyone sang the song “Our hearts demand changes” together and our opposition leaders said — we sang a song, and now let’s disperse peacefully. And the moment was lost forever. And it’s our fault, and it’s my fault that I didn’t even try to jump on stage and shout that there are so many of us here, a flimsy line of cops won’t stop 25 percent of us, let’s just all go storm the Kremlin now. And we’ll just make a revolution, or at least try. And no one did it. The opposition leaders paid for this compromise with their lives. All the serious opposition leaders are no longer in the world. And we — we had a few more years, what have we been doing these years?” the pianist says on another of his YouTube videos.
