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Darya Pylnova: Hello and welcome to Glasnost Territory.
Our guest today is Grigoriy Durnovo, correspondent of the Daily Journal,
who has promised to share with us a detailed story about the exhibition devoted to the trial.
Grigoriy Durnovo: The exhibition’s name is just that: The Trial.
It was based on comic strips devoted to the trial.
Artist Aleksandr Kotlyarov used to make four illustrations per week
based on the events that were taking place in the courtroom.
And our task as Daily Journal staff was to work with the story,
I mean, study reports from the courtroom published on the Web site khodorkovsky.ru,
pick out the most interesting remarks, the most absurd or the most important monologues
of the defendants and the defense attorneys, and the most dramatic dialogues.
Darya Pylnova: What remarks of the prosecution struck you the most?
Grigoriy Durnovo: I was struck by the fact that the prosecutors had difficulties
reading a written text, when prosecutor Lakhtin read YUKOS 01 instead of YUKOS OIL, for example.
Darya Pylnova: Who is the favorite in this satirical race?
Grigoriy Durnovo: The favorite is Lakhtin, of course. Most of the phrases are his.
Darya Pylnova: If we could form a rating, first place would go to Lakhtin…
Grigoriy Durnovo: Valeriy Lakhtin, then Gulchekhra Ibragimova, then, I think, Dmitriy Shokhin, but lagging far behind.
Darya Pylnova: He is of a fairly silent type.
Grigoriy Durnovo: The theater of the absurd may be different: it may be funny, and it may be scary.
Dmitriy Shokhin is the side of the theater of the absurd that is scary.
Darya Pylnova: He is Kafkaesque.
Grigoriy Durnovo: Right. The name is also from Kafka, of course.
Now, if we turn to how it looked at the exhibition,
when the comic strips materialized and some of them were even tridimensional,
the prosecutor and the judge tower in the first of the two rooms and each one of them utters one of his remarks.
And sometimes those remarks sound together, and that indeed produces a fairly sinister impression.
On one end wall, there is a portrait of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev,
and on the opposite wall, there is a portrait of the judge, who looks at all that and says,
“Do you feel like laughing? I will now order the courtroom emptied.”
Our artist is Aleksandr Kotlyarov, and the exhibition space was organized by Anton Litvin.
Darya Pylnova: Grigoriy, you got a degree in linguistics;
then you worked in the media as a correspondent and an editor, and now you are practicing journalism.
For you, what is the main event that is happening now in Russia and in the world
that puts a face on the time in which we live?
Grigoriy Durnovo: I try to pay attention not only to events in big-time politics,
like certain meetings or certain decisions, but also to what concerns simple people,
when their interests are infringed upon, when the government machinery pressures them.
I think that this is indeed important and worthwhile to pay attention to.
For example, I am following attentively the developments in the Khimki forest story.
It is about simple people defending their right to breathe air
while the government at all levels does not give a damn.
There are numerous other stories as well.
Darya Pylnova: If we return to the topic of the trial of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev
and people who came to see your exhibition, you must be aware of their reaction.
Were there any comments that struck you?
Grigoriy Durnovo: The remarks we discussed at the beginning,
which in their overwhelming majority are taken from actual court sessions,
those remarks would surprise people and they would not believe
that those were actual remarks uttered at the trial.
They think that those have been invented by the artist,
just like he has invented those images, again, naturally, based on originals.
There have been many instances when people would come up to us and ask:
“Those phrases, where are they from? Did the artist make them up?”
We would say, “No, that is what was said in court yesterday.” – “I don’t believe it!”
Darya Pylnova: And what if we look at this story from the point of view of linguistics as well as psychology?
What if we try to analyze what individual participants in the hearings say?
Grigoriy Durnovo: No doubt, numerous phrases of the prosecutors show us
that they have problems with analyzing the texts that they read.
They have problems with tying the text to what they need to prove,
because, to support their charges, they bring texts that illustrate the opposite.
Witnesses for the prosecution turn out to be witnesses for the defense.
The documents read by the prosecution show that the charges are unfounded;
those documents fail to back up the charges.
The prosecutors’ sudden decision to wrap up the procedure may have come as a surprise to many.
Some suspect that a certain decision has been made by the higher-ups.
Darya Pylnova: Our program is named Glasnost Territory, and I cannot help
but ask you as a colleague about what do you think is happening to journalism.
And what is happening to glasnost?
Grigoriy Durnovo: If we talk about the possibility to say everything,
what is important is where it is possible to do that, isn’t it?
We know that on television in general, far from everything can be said.
And that concerns not only criticism of the authorities.
We know, for example, that information about metro bombings took a long time
to find its way to the principal television channels.
And even when reports did come, it took them a long time to provide information helping people.
If we talk about the work of the Daily Journal, of course, we have difficulties,
and those difficulties are purely technical.
Sometimes, when we publish a certain article, our Web site is attacked.
Darya Pylnova: You mean DDoS attacks?
Grigoriy Durnovo: Yes, DDoS attacks.
There was a DDoS attack after a story on the car accident on Leninskiy Avenue,
when we published an article on cars with winking lights and the behavior of certain motorists.
We came under an attack, which was unpredictable from my point of view.
Darya Pylnova: Another event that we have not discussed is the rally on Triumfalnaya Square [in Moscow on May 31].
It is a rather eloquent story.
What does it say do you think? What does it mean for you?
Grigoriy Durnovo: I think that everyone has gotten carried away in this chase
to find the enemy: both the authorities and a portion of the people
and well-wishers who speak with benevolent intentions either
on behalf of the authorities or on their own initiative.
They have gotten carried away too much.
Darya Pylnova: Political scientists tend to assess what is happening in the provinces
as a chance for Russia and speak about certain social activeness.
Grigoriy Durnovo: What is important here, I think, is that the protesters should have who to bet on.
A protest per se is okay, but the question is what will follow.
You can remove barriers or topple someone, but the question is what will follow.
I would like very much there to be people you may depend on.
Darya Pylnova: Do you see someone about whom you could say not simply
that he has a face of an honest guy but also that he has a worthy program.
Grigoriy Durnovo: I think that we are to see such people; I am not prepared to give you a name at this point.
Darya Pylnova: I thank Grigoriy Durnovo, a journalist of the Daily Journal,
for coming to our studio to take part in this program.
I will see you again later.