My Conviction Wasn’t about a Couple of Bangs: The System Was Pissed Off by My Body of Work as a Whole

Pavel Krisevich became known for his performances in support of political prisoners: he handcuffed himself outside a courthouse and staged his own hanging from a bridge and burning on a cross outside the Lubyanka. In June 2021, on Red Square, Krisevich read out a manifesto denouncing the police state and fired three blanks: two into the air and one at his own head. A criminal case was brought against the artist, and he was sentenced to five years in a penal colony. Because his pre-trial detention was counted towards his sentence as time and a half, Krisevich ended up serving a little over 3.5 years.

“I’ll Probably Remain the Only Person to Shoot Themself on Red Square”

— Was the Red Square performance worth 3.5 years in prison?

— I do still think it was worth it. If the performance hadn't made at least some impact, people would have stopped writing to me much sooner. But the opposite happened — I got more and more letters towards the end of my sentence. Plus, the media kept describing me as a performance artist.

To this day I feel like I had to do that performance, and I’m glad I managed to do it in time. There was always a chance that, even if I didn’t do any performances, I would be imprisoned for something else anyway. At the very least, no one else is likely to try shooting themselves on Red Square now, because everyone knows the consequences. So I’ll probably remain the only person to shoot themself on Red Square — as an artistic gesture, I mean.

— Did you expect to be charged with a criminal offense for firing blanks?

— Yes, my lawyer even warned me against it. I was consulting with Mansur Gilmanov at the time. He took away my first gun and told me, “You’re not doing this. You’ll end up in jail.” He was seriously scared. But I got impatient and did it anyway. Of course I knew I’d be jailed. I just didn’t expect a level of persecution where they make a case out of thin air.

My conviction wasn’t about a couple of bangs: the system was pissed off by my body of work as a whole. This performance just gave them a pretext. It came as a shock, and they used that to make up whatever case they wanted.

Pre-trial Detention vs. the Work Camp

— Was it hard serving out your sentence?

— At some point I got very bored of sitting quietly in [the pre-trial detention center] Butyrka. But honestly, I would’ve rather spent the whole term there than go to the colony. I already had an inkling of what my creative path would be there.

You could draw, sew stuffed animals, and embroider clothes. The staff didn’t care, and no one ever tried to stop me.

But the colony in Metallostroy was a complete throwback to my time [of mandatory military service] in the army. At some point, the colony’s weird mix of an insane asylum and a barracks really got under my skin. There was constant pressure, which made it hard to work creatively.

The worst part of the colony is the rut, the Groundhog Day effect. The hour-long standing on the parade ground for morning and evening inspections. The canteen line: first you wait for your turn, then you wait while those with connections get to cut in line [editor’s note: because they cooperate with the prison guards], then you wait for everyone to finish eating, then march back to the barracks together. And that was the daily routine. We went everywhere in formation. There was also mandatory morning exercise. And you were always worried a guard would start harassing you about something random. You just always felt controlled.

I was in the most restricted unit. Inmates had to pay to eat in the kitchen and to shower. I didn’t pay. Staff were always watching you with surveillance cameras: if something bothered them, they’d have the trustee [editor’s note: an inmate with low-level guard duties] put pressure on you. At some point I just told him, “I don’t give a fuck what the officers say — get off of my back, or I’ll make your life hell, too.” And they backed off.

There was one time when some inmates filed complaints that no letters were being let through because the censor was on vacation. The guards started watching the cameras, looking for any excuse to penalize me. But I would just spend the whole day sitting in the education room, squeaky clean, drawing cats. When the cops passed by, I’d stand up, deliver a dumb formal report, which they couldn’t find anything wrong with. Then they started hinting that if they couldn’t find anything to punish me for, they’d fuck the whole barracks over. So I gave in and laid down on my bed — which is breaking a rule — and got sent to solitary for four days.

— In 2020, you said, “After the army, you no longer change from week to week. People come out of there as men instead of boys. A year there is enough time to rethink your whole civilian life.” What would you say about prison?

— Same thing. Say someone doesn’t want to serve in the army — you could just serve a year in prison and get basically the same collective dormitory experience. You’d find out if you can live with other people. And if you end up in a relatively humane place, like Butyrka, you’ll learn to behave humanely. But in a place like Metallostroy, you experience the same hierarchy and domination as in the army. You feel like just another cog in the machine. Then you have to choose: either keep the machine running, or get thrown into solitary or harsher conditions [editor’s note: for “persistent rule-breakers”].

“We Crossed Paths, Talked, and Supported Each Other”

— Did you meet other political prisoners there?

— Yes. For example, Seva Korolev is still in Metallostroy for “fake news” [interviewer’s note: i.e. posting about Russian war crimes in Ukraine]. There’s Yegor Balazeikin, who was accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a recruitment center when he was 16 (it didn’t even break). Andrei Pyzh also went to Metallostroy for divulging state secrets. Darya Trepova’s accomplice was also in the colony, but he and I didn’t meet — he had an assignment unloading some coal mixture. The others and I did cross paths; we talked and supported each other. But I wouldn’t say there was a real political prisoner community. There’s no way for it to form — your units are isolated. If people are assigned to work, you only see them at breakfast.

In Butyrka, I had crossed paths with Ilya Yashin and the guys [interviewer’s note: poets Artem Kamardin, Nikolai Dayneko, and Yegor Shtovba, who were charged with extremism and calling to overthrow the state]. We rode in the police van to Tverskoy Court together and shared a cell in the basement.

I was closest to Yegor Balazeikin. I want to ask everyone to support him and follow his case. It’s especially hard for someone his age to adapt to the adult colony system. Letters and solidarity really matter. I think if people keep supporting him, he has a chance at remaining a complete, unbroken person after prison.

— Given the current number of political prisoners, do you think it’s possible that they will become a class within the penitentiary system?

— I don’t think we have enough political prisoners for that. There are so many prisons and camps, and the prisoners are scattered across the country. Even in Metallostroy, there are only 3 or 4 political prisoners, and they’re in different units that rarely cross paths because of their schedules and separate fenced yards.

— Were you afraid they wouldn’t release you, like Azat Miftakhov?

— Yeah. The week before my release was a busy one, with all these different officers visiting me. My understanding is that they usually do rounds before releases to intimidate you, to say, “Mess up, and we’ll lock you up again.” They also pressure your family and friends. But I could tell that they were more afraid of what I’d do once I was free. That did add to the stress level. I felt like I had been waiting for freedom for 3.5 years only to realize that life on the outside was even more paranoid, more surveilled.

I think that’s the mark of contemporary Russia: it’s become more paranoid, more depressing, in that your words are much more tightly policed. They’re always trying to catch you slipping. You need to be careful.

Not that you really feel like doing that once you’re free. You think, “I’m finally out of the system!” Then you realize you’ve just ended up in a different system. It’s more spacious, with some nicer aspects — but you’re still inside a system, just navigating it differently.

‍War and Prison

— How did you find out about the full-scale invasion of Ukraine?

— One morning at 4 a.m., they started blasting Putin’s speech from every corner. Almost the whole place was asleep, and we woke up to hear each other wailing, “Oh no, what's going on? What’s going on?” Everyone jumped up and ran to the TV — and saw what the commotion was about. I don’t think anybody expected it.

— How did you perceive subsequent events on the outside? The military escalation, new repressive laws being passed, the number of political prisoners spiking?

— That news didn’t really affect us — it hardly even reached us. After 2022, of course, we could tell that there were more political prisoners. Lots of people showed up in Butyrka: the Mayakovsky Readings guys, Yashin, [Mikhail] Krieger. But overall, nothing changed in Butyrka during the three years I spent there.

When I arrived at the colony, it turned out there were a huge number of people there under Article 337 — they had decided to stay on leave a bit longer and got hit with 5 to 10 years for unauthorized absence from a military unit.

The prison world is different. It lives in isolation, watching sensationalist shows about conspiracies and paranormal phenomena on REN TV [translator’s note: a Russian national television network known for its questionable content]. The only thing that really affected us was Prigozhin’s mutiny. The air felt electrified. Everyone was waiting for something big to happen. But that was it. Otherwise, prison isolation works like this: even if people are aware of the news, they know it won’t affect them in any way. They play backgammon, get into petty conflicts, and so on.

— Speaking of Prigozhin, did you see him when he came to the colony?

— No, I didn’t. I heard he landed on the training ground in a helicopter. Prisoners’ attitudes were generally positive. It turned out there were quite a lot of people there with connections to the Wagner Group. Which makes them a bit biased, but almost all of them did at least get what they were promised — amnesty after six months of service. So they had a lot of trust and were willing to take a risk on its behalf.

— Did you get an offer to go to war while you were in prison?

— I did. Officers from the [anti-extremism] Centre E came a week before my release to interrogate me. They opened with, “We’re recruiting for the Special Military Operation — you want in?” That was their standard way of starting a conversation with someone in prison.

It wasn’t that apparent at first that people were being recruited at the colony. Once a week, the head of the military commission from Kolpino would come to our club [editor’s note: a small movie and concert hall]. Basically, everyone who wanted to join the Special Military Operation just signed up. He’d tell them what was happening with their paperwork, when they’d be picked up. Then something escalated, and they started taking us to the club almost every week to show us these Wagner movies. These were movies about convicts going off to war; they were even shot inside the colonies.

There was one called For Komarik. It was filmed in some colony in the Kursk Region. It’s about a dingy little prisoner nicknamed Komarik [translator’s note: “little mosquito”] who everyone mocks and harasses. He’s the only one in his colony who decides to join the Special Military Operation. One day, all his fellow inmates are sitting in the barracks watching TV, when they suddenly see that Komarik has single-handedly captured a fortified position and been posthumously awarded a medal. And after that, the whole barracks at the next recruitment drive are like, “That’s it, we’re going — for Komarik,” and they sign up for the operation.

The movies they showed were apparently meant to persuade us cons to sign up. But it didn’t always work. For example, after this other movie, the Wagner Group’s The Best in Hell, we were all like, “So everybody dies in the end? Why would we want to do that?” You could say it ended up being more of an anti-war movie!

— Did you have to watch these movies?

— Everyone who doesn’t have a work assignment has to attend the group events. And since I wasn’t working most of the time, I had to go and watch the movies [interviewer’s note: the administration assigns work posts; inmates cannot choose whether or not they work, or at what job].

“A Body of Knowledge and Principles”

— What political views did you hold at the time of your arrest? Have they changed since then?

— At the time of my arrest, my head was a mishmash of all kinds of ideas. I was more of a left libertarian: I was generally suspicious of state institutions and defensive of creative freedom and personal freedom. One of the highest values for me was each person’s uniqueness, and the belief that this uniqueness contributes something essential to public life, and that public life is really made up out of these individual uniquenesses.

I was reading Žižek back then, which toned down my ideology a little, but mainly in relation to performance art and the idea of creating events that impact time. I was gradually moving in the direction of not wanting to label myself politically at all.

After my release, I wouldn’t say I identify with any particular political label. I just believe in a body of knowledge and principles — like showing solidarity and supporting people whose rights and freedoms are being violated.

I also believe that by making art, you’re sending a kind of sonic and historical echo into the future that can influence society.

While I was serving my sentence, I was able to fully conceptualize myself as an artist. I carved out my own style. Before prison, when I did performances, I felt embarrassed to even call myself an artist, since my drawings were such crap. But now, after prison, art has become something much more professional, a part of my life. And with my criminal record, being an artist is really all I can be. So, what did prison change? Now I can call myself a libertarian artist.

— Aside from Žižek, who else would you say has influenced your thinking recently?

— While I was in the detention center, people sent me a lot of Joseph Beuys’ writings. During the first year of my arrest, he influenced me a lot. His idea that every person can be a creator, that any object can become art if someone designates it as such — that really resonated with me. And the way he draws a kind of parallel between the figure of the artist and the criminal also struck a chord at the time. His artistic and performative work, and his role as an educator, a kind of art-activism theorist, inspired me deeply.

— You’ve mentioned before that before your arrest you had some contact with the National Bolsheviks. They came to your court hearings. What was your view of them then? Has it changed since February 24? How do you relate to them now?

— I didn’t support the ideological part of the National Bolshevik Party — their hard nationalist stuff. But they still have members who do political prisoner support, who show solidarity, who care about human rights. I’m still in touch with some of them in one way or another. If they were to face persecution, I would support them — I don’t believe anyone should go to jail for their beliefs. But as for my relationship with the movement or the organization as such, I honestly don’t know. Especially considering some of their harsher statements.

It’s just a very sticky issue where people expect you to take sides, which I don’t want to. I try to see the humans behind the activism and disentangle them from their specific views. Whenever I interact with people from [the NBP], I’m talking to them as individuals first and foremost.

I guess I want to hold on to the spirit of 2021, when labels didn’t matter so much. And I think that’s one of the biggest losses we’ve suffered since 2022 — that it’s become much harder to tear those labels off your friends and comrades. Coming out of prison, it’s really painful to see how this conflict has made everyone hate each other so intensely. It feels like it’s no longer a time when we can just be human and make our art.

“The Letters Were My Fuel for Making Permanent Artworks”

— Did you feel supported during your imprisonment? What kind of support did you appreciate most?

— Of course, I felt supported. The strongest form of support ended up being my close relationship with Lena and with everything that came out of our letters to each other. [Editor’s note: Lena is one of the founders of the initiative Letters and Improvisation; she and Pavel got married while he was in the colony.]

Lera really strongly supported and cleared a path for all the creative work I sent out from prison. If it weren’t for her, most of my drawings and paintings would have stayed unseen for a very long time.

The second best form, of course, was the letters. They helped me pass the time by writing back, and they always came with interesting attachments, mostly photos of cats, which I incorporated into my own drawings. I used the things people sent me as fuel for making permanent artworks.

Thanks to the letters, I preserved my connection to humanity.

Because without letters, inmates very quickly stop thinking beyond their cells and their everyday squabbles. At some point, your head is completely occupied with conversations about the weather, military “analysis” on TV, or how someone next door overdosed.

But letters helped me step back from the prison atmosphere and philosophize the way I used to, at least briefly.

— Were you aware of which support groups were writing to you?

— There were all kinds of initiatives. I received envelopes from Letters and Improvisation letter-writing nights. Before many groups were declared “undesirable” and repressed after 2022, I would get letters from various leftist circles in St. Petersburg that I knew. Anarchists would write, too. There were letters from informal gatherings and letter evenings in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities, both in Russia and abroad. Even the National Bolsheviks sent letters.

After the start of the Special Military Operation, the number of foreign letters increased dramatically. A lot of people began writing from abroad — probably because the number of Russian-speaking people living outside Russia had grown as well.

— Would you like to say anything to those who support or want to support political prisoners?

— Absolutely. To everyone who supports prisoners: your work is incredibly important. You help people in prison stay themselves and find the strength to resist being crushed by the system. Letters carry the smell of freedom. They remind you of where you want to return to, where you would be if not for persecution. They help people hold on to the importance of their personal freedom and rights so that they don’t just go along with the current. Instead, they keep caring for themselves, even inside prison. Letters help you stay creative, keep developing, and not sink into despair.

Now that I’m free, I can see that I didn’t completely lose myself. I stayed open to the ideas of freedom and creativity that had inspired me before my arrest. The prison did its job: I now respect and observe the laws of the Russian Federation, I’ve been reformed, I’m prepared for life in freedom, I even got job training [editor’s note: Krisevich learned to operate a sewing machine in prison]. I stayed the same — but with one plus. And that plus is: in prison, I became a professional artist.

Interviewer’s note: Pavel Krisevich and I did not discuss Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine or LGBTQ+ issues, as he remains in Russia and could face new persecution under laws that criminalize LGBTQ+ identities and alternative views on the military’s actions.