Oleg Sentsov’s Poetics of Conscience

- By Sandra Joy Russell

In a letter smuggled out of Labytnangi Penal Colony in September 2016, Crimean-born, Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov writes, “If we’re supposed to become nails in the coffin of a tyrant, I’d like to become one of those nails. Just know that this particular nail will not bend.”

On October 25, 2018, nearly four and a half years after his arrest, the European Parliament awarded Sentsov the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, named after Russian dissident Andrei Sakharov. Established in 1988, the prize honors those “who have made an exceptional contribution for human rights across the globe.” Michael Gahler, the Parliament member who called for Sentsov’s nomination, commented on the filmmaker’s embodiment of “the spirit of Andrei Sakharov”—a scientist and activist who stood for freedom of expression—with his “peaceful protest of the illegal occupation and annexation of his home, Crimea.” Gahler noted the “sense of urgency” within the international community “to change course in Russia” and expressed hope that the prize’s political statement will generate greater global awareness of the situation in Ukraine.

In May of 2014, Sentsov was arrested in Crimea by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on the suspicion of “plotting terrorist acts” in the region’s capital of Simferopol, along with three other political prisoners, Gennady Afanasyev, Alexei Chirnigo, and Alexander Kolchenko. He was accused of arson that targeted Russian political offices as well as other attacks on bridges, power lines, and public monuments. The four men were also accused of being part of Ukraine’s far-right paramilitary group, Pravy Sektor (Right Sector), a claim that both Sentsov and Pravy Sektor have denied. Russian prosecutors claimed that Sentsov confessed to the terrorism charges; however, he and his lawyer, Dmitry Dinze (who has also defended members of Pussy Riot) stated that this confession was received under duress, including the use of torture and threats of rape. Sentsov went to trial for the charges in July of 2015 and was sentenced to twenty-years in prison; he currently resides in Russia’s northernmost prison, Labytnangi Penal Colony, in the Arctic Circle.

Prior to his arrest, Sentsov’s work as a filmmaker had just begun to emerge; he directed two short films, A Perfect Day for a Bananafish, in 2008, and The Horn of a Bull, in 2009. His first feature-length work, Gaamer, premiered in 2011—a docu-style film about a young teenage gamer from a small Ukrainian village who, against the wishes of his mother and friends, drops out of school to pursue his passion for video games. The film has been compared to François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows; according to Filmkrant critic Oggs Cruz, it breaks “the barrier that separates cinema from real life.” Gaamer premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2012, and its success secured funding for his forthcoming feature film Rhino, which was postponed in 2013 during the Euromaidan protests, where Sentsov was participating as part of the activist group, “AutoMaidan.”

Sentsov’s open criticism of Crimea’s invasion and annexation, along with his growing public persona, positioned him as a likely and visible target for the Kremlin’s flexing of power following the Euromaidan Revolution. For much of the international community, Sentsov is viewed as a political prisoner, and the charges against him have been condemned by human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, who referred to him as a “prisoner of conscience,” and the Russian human rights group, Memorial (another recipient of the Sakharov Prize). The European Union and the United States have appealed to Vladimir Putin for his release, with the U.S. citing the case a “miscarriage of justice.” Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called his trial “a judicial farce,” and the European Film Academy deputy chairman, Mike Downey, referred to it as a “show trial.” On May 14, 2018, Sentsov begin a hunger strike that lasted 145 days, demanding freedom not for himself, but on behalf of his fellow Ukrainian political prisoners, most of whom lack visibility outside their circle of family and friends. After losing seventy pounds, severely compromising his health, and facing the looming threat of force-feeding, the filmmaker announced the end of his hunger strike on October 6, 2018. In a handwritten letter, he explained: “Pathological changes have already started in my vital organs. Force-feeding has been planned for me, and I have no say in the matter… In the current circumstances I am forced to end my hunger strike.” According to the deputy head of Russia’s prison service, Valery Maksimenko, the filmmaker had been “persuaded by doctors… to choose life.”

Such has long been the narrative of Sentsov’s imprisonment from Kremlin-backed media outlets: a consistent and calculated redirection of his message, framing it as “choice”—the choice between health or starvation, compliance or deviance, life or death. However, Sentsov’s story is no anomaly, and Ukrainians and others who live with the legacy of Soviet power, these events strike a familiar chord, an echo of Stalin, the Gulags, and the show trials—inheritances woven into the banality of everyday life. Masha Gessen has remarked on state indifference to such protests like that of Sentsov, noting the familiarity of the message: “there will be no rhyme or reason to the arrests and prosecutions. Anyone can be swept up for a small or even imaginary transgression, though not everyone will be swept up.” According to Gessen, these actions are strategic, symptomatic of a “machine of state terror” and with a singular interest in establishing power. For political prisoners, the body has long served as a visceral rejoinder to state power, instrumentalized as a space of silent resistance, through which the subject is able to speak. Such a performance of agency, however, ought not be mistaken for choice—as the Kremlin narrative would have it. Sentsov refuted such claims in a letter from September 2016, “For three years I’ve been sitting in a Russian prison. For those three years a war has been conducted against my country. The enemy is fighting like a coward, vilely, pretending he’s got nothing to do with this. Nobody believes it. But that doesn’t stop him.” Choice, much like consent, is achieved through the body’s physical and psychic liberation, an act that requires the radical acknowledgement of a subject’s autonomy.

On Sentsov’s forty-second birthday, writers from around the world recorded themselves reading from his essay “Testament”—an homage to the nineteenth century Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, whose poem “Testament” describes the longing for his native land, even beyond death. Like Sentsov, Shevchenko was a political figure imprisoned in Russia on account of his anti-tsarist poetry and promotion of Ukrainian independence. In Sentsov’s “Testament,” he writes, “I want to live my young, full life a bit longer, to receive pleasure from life and to give pleasure to others, to walk, or even better to run, to sleep at night or not sleep, and I want to be the one who decides all of this, not my organism and my doctors.” In much of the world, bearing witness to the public delegitimization of facts has become troublingly routinized, so much so that our so-called “post-truth” era often feels mundane. We remind one another to remain vigilant and to interrogate our relationships with the conduits of information as well as the information itself. In this spirit, Sentsov’s message inspires a return to conscience and offers a much-needed salve. 
 

Sandra Joy Russell is a Ph.D Candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; from 2012-2014, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lutsk, Ukraine. Her doctoral research explores Ukrainian and diasporic representations of Soviet legacies of violence in the formation of an independent Ukraine.