"This is how I repay my debt to humanity."
Why has a Khabarovsk activist, a descendant of White Guards and repressed individuals, been picketing for four years, despite dozens of arrests, detentions, and the threat of criminal prosecution?
Everyone in Khabarovsk has probably seen the short, gray-haired man wearing a T-shirt with a portrait of Boris Nemtsov. He used to have T-shirts with the slogan "No to War" and a portrait of Alexei Navalny, but he stopped wearing them due to "extremism" and the "discrediting" charge. Every weekday at 6:00 PM, and earlier on weekends, he goes out for an hour to Komsomolskaya Square in the city center. At pickets, he supports political prisoners, speaks out against corruption, and calls for a change in Putin's regime. He is regularly sent to pretrial detention for either ten or 25 days. But he says he is ready to serve his sentence.
"I'm telling you on the record—everything I said, I'm saying so that everyone knows and hears it, so that it's published. I'm not afraid of my words," Sigmund Khudyakov will end our conversation with these words. A few days later, he will be back again. will be arrested — for 22 days, for the promotion in January of this year.
Sigmund has reason to be afraid. The activist began regularly picketing in 2020. after the arrest former governor Sergei Furgal. Since then, he has been detained numerous times and were arrestedLast year, there were five arrests. Since the beginning of 2024, Khudyakov has already served 63 days in custody: he was detained on January 9 (23 days), March 11 (15 days), and May 3 (25 days). Each time, he was sent to pretrial detention for violating protest laws under Part 8 of Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation. Several arrests and fines under this article could lead to a criminal case under the so-called "Dadin" Article 212.1 of the Russian Criminal Code—meaning Zigmund could have had a criminal record long ago, but for now, the courts, for some reason, have refrained from imposing criminal punishment.
Khudyakov speaks philosophically about possible criminal prosecution and arrests. He says he can't even remember how many administrative charges there were—apparently about fifty detentions, about thirty arrests.
"This is how I repay my debt to humanity; I know and understand that I must serve time for freedom. I mean, I'm not afraid of it at all. I had relatives who were repressed, enemies of the people. When I learned about this, I understood that I would live my life and, in the end, I would repay my debt. And here, too, it's like... You kind of become part of this system," the activist reasons. "They [the authorities] started pressuring me, I resisted, they pressed me again, and I resisted. And people are already keeping an eye on me. If I miss a picket, they write: 'What happened to him?' So [it's] also a principle now. I heard that the police are counting on me, whether I'll speculate or not."
The third generation of repression
Khudyakov's family is now the third generation to suffer under state pressure. However, the activist knows little about his repressed relatives. His grandparents lived in St. Petersburg and found themselves in the Far East during the Civil War. His grandfather served as a captain in the Tsarist army and retreated to the Far East with Kolchak's troops. He was captured by the Bolsheviks and exiled, and his grandmother was sent along with him under a "trumped-up charge," as Khudyakov puts it.
"After my father's death, my uncle would tell me one thing, then another [uncle] would tell me another. And so on, little by little. Because even after the repressions ended, people hid everything, afraid of being sent back to the Gulag," says Khudyakov.
During the First World War, my grandfather was awarded four St. George's Crosses — three were silver and one was gold, but they were not saved - either they disappeared during searches, or they were exchanged for food.
"During the war and the famine, they literally traded everything they could for bread. I even know that they collected crosses from our old cemetery when there was nothing to heat the stoves with—there were no metal monuments back then."
After their release, Khudyakov's grandparents settled in Khabarovsk. They decided not to flee to Harbin or other Chinese cities, although many did at the time. "All of Russia can't flee," Khudyakov notes philosophically, acknowledging that the persecution of his parents left a permanent mark, and "his relatives were on notice."
Khudyakov's father, Anatoly Karpovich, was born in the city of ImanHe lived in Khabarovsk and later ended up in the camps. On November 6, 1943, he was arrested by the SMERSH counterintelligence department of the Far Eastern Front. He was only 18 years old at the time. The Khabarovsk Regional Court sentenced Anatoly Khudyakov— locksmith Kaganovich Auto Repair Plant (now Dalenergomash) to three years in the camps under Article 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. They were exiled to Semipalatinsk.
"He was already dying there a year later, lying in a barracks where both the dead and the dying were. And then the war ended, and he was amnestied. So, you could say, I was born by chance," concludes Sigmund.
Sigmund doesn't talk about his mother. When asked about her, he shakes his head, as if to say, "Let's change the subject." His father was rehabilitated posthumously on October 18, 1991. He died in 1986.
"I didn't swing a baton, that's why I don't get any benefits."
Zygmunt Khudyakov was born in Khabarovsk. He was given this unusual name in honor of his grandmother's brother—she was half Polish. The activist is often asked about his name—was it after Freud? Some, as he puts it, "spit on him, saying, 'Go back to your Poland.'"
Zigmund finished school but didn't go anywhere—times were hard, so at 16, he went to work as a lathe operator at a factory. He then served two years in the army—also in Khabarovsk. Then he went back to the factory. Khudyakov jokes that no one has lived in the city as long as he has:
"In my entire life, I've only left Khabarovsk for a month or two. So, 67 years old—and I've been in my hometown forever. I haven't even been on vacation... Well, I don't understand why I need to travel through dusty cities. I go fishing, to the islands, to the taiga. Which are right here, nearby."
According to the activist, he tried to spread anti-communist propaganda everywhere—at work and in the army. For example, he criticized Soviet elections, refusing to vote for a single candidate on the ballot.
"They had that system in the army. They bring a ballot box and herd everyone from the list into a polling station. And they give you a sheet with just one name on it—you don't even have to check a box. In the city, you could even cast a ballot for your entire family. I say, 'What kind of election is this, just one person!' The commanders shrugged at first, and then came up with an excuse—like, the people nominated him, so if you're against the candidate, you're against the people.' Well, that's Soviet nonsense," Khudyakov recalls.
He says he tried to explain to his colleagues at the factory what Soviet propaganda was and how it worked. He had high hopes for perestroika, but they weren't realized.
"You know, I was wrong. I expected the communists to collapse, and then we'd take the democratic path. I thought the information would be out there, and people would wake up right away. But this endless garbage dump, I no longer believe that everything will stabilize in my lifetime... In the 80s, I was shocked when I realized that people still believe this stupid propaganda. I don't want to make that comparison, but the homeless are sitting in a ravine, and everyone who lives a normal life—it's all their fault. It's a Bolshevik thing—take it and divide it up. And then drink it away. I don't understand it, but that's how it works here, in Russia's new propaganda."
In the early 90s, Zigmund Khudyakov staged a strike at the plant. Well, not really. Initially, everyone planned to demand a wage increase, even doubling it right away. Khudyakov suggested taking a realistic approach and starting with 25%. He claims he approached everyone and asked, "If they threaten to fire you, will you quit?" Everyone was prepared for such an outcome. But when it came down to it, when the director came and said, "We have four people on the job—get lost," only Zigmund quit.
"It was unpleasant. It turned out that everyone had set me up. No one else came out for me," the activist recalls.
Conflicts over his anti-government stance at work also occurred, but they were minor and he didn't pay much attention to them. He says there was one boss who constantly talked about Khudyakov needing to be "isolated and locked up," but when he himself was in dire straits, when officials cheated him out of an apartment he'd been waiting for years, he went to Khudyakov to talk—he knew he'd listen. Since then, one of his main principles has been "working with everyone."
After a failed strike that brought no further hardship than the loss of his job, Khudyakov was forced to work wherever he could. In the 90s, his most pressing problem was how to feed his family.
"I worked on construction sites: as a laborer and in supply chain. Then, when I went to apply for my pension, it turned out that several companies weren't registered anywhere, practically nonexistent—everything was done under the table. That's why my pension is so small. And now a lot of people give me the cold shoulder, so to speak: 'Why is your pension so small? What did you do, and did you even work?' I usually reply, just as rudely, that I didn't swing a baton or beat up pensioners or schoolgirls, and that's why I don't get any benefits. I toiled my whole life, just to get paid..."
"I'll serve one minute for each of them."
Zigmund is used to being arrested. He lives alone, and his children are grown. According to the activist, they support his position, but Khudyakov has forbidden his family from interceding on his behalf—no lawyers, no complaints.
"You can get bogged down in this nonsense if your dad is in jail several times a year. And you don't have to worry about it, and you don't need any packages from them, there are people there to deliver them, I'm fully supported... I've forbidden them from doing this altogether, let them live their own lives. Setting up relatives is a burden, it's just stupid."
— And if your children, for example, also started to go out on pickets, how would you feel about it?
"But here it's simply impossible. They'd be fired from their job right away, and then it would take a long time, and they have their own children. Not everyone has that opportunity."
— It turns out that you marry everyone.
— Well, yes. I remember being detained at one of the first Furgal rallies, and when the police were already pushing me into the car, I said on camera, “I’ll serve one minute for each of you.” They gave me 10 days.
It turns out that he served time for 14 thousand 400 people.
The activist is "fully provided for"—largely thanks to the pensioners who supported the Furgal protests. According to Khudyakov, when sending packages, they "organize a flash mob"—whole groups of them come to the detention center, so much so that "the police officers there go crazy":
"I tell them, 'Carry a little at a time,' the main thing is to show that you haven't crushed anyone, that people support each other!' In fact, I don't even know many of the people who bring them. Sometimes they bring three parcels at once, and 'they' probably get angry at whoever receives them. Sometimes the parcels are big—you can tell a group put them together. And sometimes it's a small packet—one pie, something else, a few tea bags—not even in a pack, just scattered. And you understand that this person, a pensioner, is simply tearing off something from themselves. These little packets are especially dear to me—I always show them to my cellmates.
One day, a funny thing happened with a package: one of his comrades handed over a book, wrapped it in paper, and on top of it, by chance, was an interior plan of some building with the caption "The Path to Freedom." Packages were usually delivered during the day, but this book didn't reach Sigmund until eight in the evening—apparently they were checking the plan on the wrapping paper and whether it would allow the criminal Sigmund to escape.
The activist tries not to quarrel with those who share his cell. Conflicts usually arise over smoking—his cellmates ask Khudyakov to order cigarettes, but he doesn't smoke and refuses:
"I'm telling you—have they really gotten too brazen, asking pensioners for cigarettes for the common fund? I once found myself with smokers, and they didn't have any cigarettes at all. The whole night was filled with the howling of the Baskerville Hound in the swamps! Maybe they wanted to starve them out, I don't know."
Sometimes, Sigmund claims, they plant provocateurs. But they work "the same way, it's almost disgusting":
"What do you manage, what organization, who do you represent..." They keep saying the same thing over and over again, like they gave me the assignment! I certainly don't have any organization.
In prison, Khudyakov says, he learned a lot of "interesting things": how to saw through bars using tea bag threads and baking soda, and how to make a kettle from a boiler. Whenever possible, he strikes up conversations with the police, and they are quite frank with him, including about problems within the law enforcement agencies. "They don't have a great job either," Sigmund says, feeling sorry for the police.
One guy needs 450 for an operation, but where can he get it? Another guy is supposed to have 35 police officers in his area, but only seven are working.
The activist doesn't deal with lawyers. There are several reasons. First, he had a negative experience: one of his defense attorneys asked him to photograph his documents, but the quality of the photos wasn't satisfactory. He offered to retake them himself, but for two thousand rubles. "He started demanding money," as Khudyakov puts it. Second, the activist sees no point in having a defense attorney—"Why bother trying to defend me if I'll just get out of the detention center and head back to the streets?" Furthermore, the sentences remain unchanged, regardless of whether defense attorneys are involved.
Thirdly, the activist doesn't recognize "these courts" in principle, which means she doesn't recognize any attempts to defend herself in them. She says it's as if Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya were writing petitions: "Dear Heinrich Himmler ... ".
During court hearings and interrogations, the activist refuses to give any testimony or explanations—because "say 'A' and you'll spill the beans; you can extract something from any information." However, he meticulously collects all the documents related to his cases. He says that "when everything collapses, I'll present them to absolutely everyone."
Although it's become more difficult to document the reality lately—sometimes they refuse to issue a court decision, sometimes they detain you, hold you in police custody until evening—like on Alexei Navalny's birthday—and then release you without any paperwork confirming your detention:
"I said, 'Are you completely out of your mind? Give me a document proving I was here!' But they wouldn't listen. One captain's wife said, 'Go and file a lawsuit.' But what's there to file? All the courts are working for them," the activist laments.
The hardest thing about being in custody is thinking about housing. On January 31, 2024, the State Duma passed a law confiscating property for activities against the country and discrediting the army. Now Khudyakov constantly imagines returning home and seeing strangers removing the last of the furniture.
"Realization of the need for self-esteem"
July 9th marks four years since Sergei Furgal's arrest. Large-scale protests are unlikely to occur on the anniversary, especially given that the (formally defunct) "I/We are Furgal" movement has been designated as extremist.
"Maybe a few people will meet up somewhere and talk," Khudyakov suggested. He himself was at the picket that day, as usual. He wasn't detained.
Zigmund calls Furgal a "populist," but qualifies: "Long live the populist who decided to ride this wave and do something for the people." From his experience in pretrial detention centers and his observations of various people, the activist concluded that the former Khabarovsk governor had a harder time in prison than Navalny—because Furgal was completely unprepared for his arrest, while Alexei Navalny knew what he was getting into.
On the day of the politician's death, Khudyakov also went out to the square, even though people tried to talk him out of it, saying they would definitely put him in jail.
"But I had already taken a stand, to be afraid for my own life when people were dying for our freedom... No, I couldn't back down," the activist explains. "They told me later that the order had originally been to arrest me, but it was rescinded at the last minute. And I spent several days walking around with a 'prison bag' of my things; I could really feel it."
"And yet, when the Furgal protests began, weren't you upset that people hadn't tried to defend their rights before?" I ask. "During the pension reform, the new repressions, the constitutional amendments, and even the arrest of Alexei Navalny... There were protests then, too, but the numbers were incomparably smaller compared to the Furgal protests."
"Since childhood, I've been irritated by this human stupidity and cowardice. And yet, I understood why people kept silent. So no, I actually look at things realistically, and I'm surprised by something else—that I'm still free."
"Not everything in this world is done because it's necessary. Throughout the war, thousands of Russians have held anti-war pickets because their conscience won't allow them to sit and remain silent," says Maxim Ikhsanov, another Khabarovsk activist and former coordinator of Nadezhdin's Khabarovsk headquarters, a libertarian, and a thrifter, commenting on Khudyakov's activism.
It was he who sent Sigmund a paper book containing a "path to freedom" in the detention center, which unnerved the police. Maxim himself left Russia, and considers Khudyakov's position a "heroic achievement."
"What benefit could there be from expressing one's position in a police state? It's difficult to talk about it now," he muses. "We will only be able to truly understand the significance of Sigmund's heroism after the collapse of the current Moscow regime. Or at least when that regime ceases to occupy at least the Russian Far East. And there is no such thing as 'public opinion.' There are only the opinions of individuals."
Alexey Filimonov, a PhD in history and anthropologist, also notes that it's difficult to assess the impact of such street activism on people. He sometimes comes to the square to support the activist and, as he puts it, "say hello." Filimonov sees practical benefits in what Zigmund does, but primarily for himself:
I think there's some influence on young people just entering adulthood. The very existence of a different, polar position breaks the monopoly of Putin's propaganda. Psychologically, it's very important to understand that there's another point of view, so you can start thinking independently. It's possible that Zigmund's picket is triggering reflection among some of the city's adults who are directly observing it. But the main thing is that Zigmund is going out to avoid feeling like a slave. This is an internal motivation. It's directed not at the outside world, but at himself. It's the fulfillment of a need for self-respect. I think this is currently the main motivation for those who go out to solitary pickets with political statements.
***
During the picket on the day we met with Zigmund, the square wasn't very crowded. Some people walked by without looking up, others glanced at his distinctive T-shirt. The activist himself complains that when he speaks, someone inevitably starts riding a scooter nearby or talking loudly—"uncultured," as he puts it. So, the activist doesn't presume to speculate about his influence on people and their opinions. Sometimes people approach him, listen, and argue. He's happy to speak to any audience, following his activist principle of "working with everyone."
Sometimes some punks come up to them, someone makes a remark to them—no need, it's stupid. And then I start working with them. I ask, "Do you support Putin, do you support the war?" Some start clowning around, some run away silently, some start talking. And sometimes adults come up to me, I ask them the same questions, and conversations begin. Let's say I haven't convinced them that Europe and America are normal, but at least they've cursed the authorities, we shake hands, and go our separate ways. I always say: if you put pressure on a person, they can change. Young people sometimes come up to me and start asking stupid questions, saying something about the current government. And I tell them, "Oh, that's the easiest thing, just repeat it in front of the TV!" You should read up, compare the two opinions... The police, who are supposed to "protect" me at the picket while I voice my position to the journalists, also listen. At least they'll learn something, I think! So, you could say I'm everywhere doing propaganda. It's my life.