"DON'T BECOME CANNON-FODDER..."

Yury Vasilyev

(photo by Albert Musin)

Dmitry Neverovsky is gone - a person who only insisted on observance of the Constitution

A young man Dmitry Neverovsky lived in Obninsk, he lived in a good freethinking family. His father is a proud Russian Pole whose name Anton Kazimirovich suits him very well; his mother, Tatyana Kotlyar, nowadays is the leader of Obninsk human rights group, she has always been a very inconvenient for any authority person. The atmosphere itself of the city of nuclear science presupposed some academic liberties as a compensation provided by the regime to the inhabitants of Obninsk who worked in nuclear centers. So Dima grew up free; we have a lot of people like him, thank God.

Dmitry Neverovsky grew up and like Soviet dissidents of old times decided that everything written in the Constitution of the Russian Federation must be observed. Including the article 59.3 which allows people to conscientiously object and perform the alternative service. In the beginning, in 1995, he left his training at the military faculty of the institute of atomic energetics, protesting against the first Chechen war. Then, in 1997, he notified the military commissar that he intended to perform the alternative service: "I don't want to serve in the army which commits crimes".

Then there was a trial for evading the military service, a verdict to the full extent (two years), 146 days of prison for literally following the Constitution of the Russian Federation. Then there was the amnesty which he refused to accept: "I am not a criminal, observe the laws". Having working his way of a human rights activist up to this point, Dmitry Antonovich Neverovsky (born in 1973) became a unique person for Russia of new millenium.

And now - he is gone. At night of April 4, at three o'clock, a fire began in Tatyana Kotlyar's house. His parents were rescued from fire, Dima wasn't.

Short circuit

"I do not believe that it was an accident", the human rights activist Valery Borshchev said near Dima's tomb. "Of course, I haven't any proofs..."

The same rumours are afloat in the city: Tatyana Kotlyar who recently became the deputy of Obninsk City Council had many enemies, and they say that Dmitry was persecuted by a loony who threatened to kill him.

However, the investigation came to a banal conclusion: a short circuit in wiring, a fire in the wooden house, carbonic oxide. An accident; the case is closed. There aren't any evidences.

"He taught me to live "

A cemetery in surburbs of Obninsk: new tombs are very close to the garages located nearby, electro-transmission wire iz buzzing above the heads. There are many young people near the fresh tomb: Dmitry helped them to organize dramatic studio, to settle problems with examination, advised on legal matters... But more often people came to his house simply to talk about life, sometimes - all together; then it was the "Neverovsky's seminar" known to the youth of Obninsk and its vicinities.

"He taught me to live", Alexey from Kaluga sais. He attended Dmitry's seminars for a year and a half. "What we were doing?

"We talked, played role games. For example, there was a game recently: three persons play security guards, the others - bootless - are "behind bars" and wait for the death in the gas chamber. Everyone is rummaging in his soul, living new experiences: the first ones think "if only they would be brought away at last, so that they suffer less", the others - "What have we done?".

Dmitry Neverovsky didn't participate in this game - he was preparing another one - for hundred persons.

"After a global war", Alexey tells, "three races survived. One of them is able to dig the ground, another one - to make instruments of work, the third one - to think and restore the science. All three races hate each other, but if one of them is destroyed - nobody will survive. Something like computer game "Warcraft", only that is almost the life".

Alexey doesn't know whether there will be more seminars. He put his favourite sword in the tomb ("No, I'm not a tolkienist, I'm just a knight, like Dima was"):

"There is evil there too. Let him beat it off."

"I could not..."

Ivan Klevakichev, four years younger than Dmitry, tried to follow his path too:

"I was a witness for the defence at Dima's trial. The same military commissar who had detained him, saw me there: "You, come here...". The day after the verdict was pronounced, I was handed the call-up papers. I submitted the application for "alternative service", then I stayed for four days in the cell of pretrial detention. Then there was a trial on the same accusation of "evading the military service", the sentence was a year on condition. Exactly in a year and one day I got new call-up papers. I gave up, I couldn't support it anymore - I went to the army. I squabbled with Dima for this reason: he was released from custody by that time and he begged me not to make mistakes which one can't wash off..."

Ivan spent a half-year in the training camp, then he was sent to the construction battalion in Khankala: not the hottest place in Chechnya and without the submachine gun in hands. He spent there ten days, but that was enough.

"This war is waged not for petroleum: it is burnt out by special teams there, when you fly an helicopter - the ground is covered with torches.

"They beat Chechnya for money, for fraud with construction: at night they fire large-caliber machine guns at windows of apartment houses, and in the afternoon they begin to restore them. It is okay now: experienced soldiers say that formerly they fired mortars at liberated Grozny... And nobody will find the truth. I saw TV news in Khankala: the seventy fourth division was removed from Chehnya with an orchestra, do you remember? And no TV-channel says what happened after that: the echelon was shot, many people were killed, tens were wounded. I was with them in the hospital in Krasnodar, they told me all that..."

Ivan was in the hospital because of a "nervous disease" - and it is clear that he isn't a malingerer: his eyes are fixed on one point, the speech is monotonous. He came back home the day after the death of Neverovsky:

"I called, wanted to make him glad - and... If I couldn't say the last good-byes to him, I don't know how I would live".

Without pathos and press

In January, at the All-Russia human rights congress we talked with Dmitry Neverovsky about Chechnya. The question was a rather slippery decision of the congress: recognition of the genocide in Chechnya - in the appeal of human rights activists to Russia, and more mild definition "on the verge of genocide" - in the letter to the PACE in Strasbourg. "It's probably more correct, it is better this way", Dmitry said.

He obviously wasn't sure but it wasn't his way - to yell "for human rights", to convince someone from tribunes. Neverovsky preferred to do everything by himself and for himself. And he is gone silently too - despite the accompaniment of unnecessary and ridiculous words. A well-known priest above the open tomb tried to argue against his enemies from the Russian Orthodox Church, another man said that "Dima has completely executed his mission" (what the hell last mission is at the age of twenty seven?), somebody else right near the coffin wished to Tatyana Kotlyar "happiness and health"...

There were few journalists, and no cameras at all. The leaders of the Radical Party of which Neverovsky was a member, invited the people from the NTV to come to the funeral, but they refused - "Don't you see what is happening in our company?". Though they showed the trial of Neverovsky earlier and demanded freedom to him.

Alternative life

The day of death of Dmitry Neverovsky, the State Duma adopted the law on deferments for schoolboys. The day of the funeral in Obninsk, as well as everywhere in Russia, military commissariats and militiamen were catching the "evadors" from the army - like in other days of the spring draft. Therefore some of guys of military age came to say last goodbye to Dmitry not from their homes and they aren't going to return to their parents in the near future. They prefer to hide, to escape, to get references from their nuclear institutes - but nobody from my interlocutors wanted to follow the path of the law and the lawlessness which is connected with the law:

"It's dangerous to ask for the alernative service today".

However, they say that at least two persons from Obninsk will try this year to prove their convictions to the military commissariat; that's not bad. Owing to Neverovsky, for them and for the others - who are still frightened of prospect of trials and prisons or who simply don't think about "boots" and the choice connected with them - it will be...

No, of course, it won't be any easier for them: the judges like military commissars much more. But in any case, the guys won't be alone: Dima sure won't leave them.

"Guys, together we may try to stop this madness - if only there is a lot of us. Refuse to become "cannon-fodder", do not go humbly to the barracks to be killed or - what is even worse - to become killers".

(From the letter of Dmitry Neverovsky, prisoner of the investigatory isolation ward I3-37/1, Kaluga, December 30, 1999)