Comic book delivered from pretrial detention center
The story of convicted student Tatyana Laletina, born in 2003.
Following recent media reports about Tatyana Laletina, a Tomsk student sentenced to nine years in prison for treason, she received numerous letters. Previously, by her own admission, she had no idea about support groups for political prisoners. However, she also had no idea about media outlets like "NotMoscow Speaking" and "Mediazone" who wrote about her.
Wow, I never thought I'd attract so much attention. I think every young person has dreamed of becoming famous at least once, but I never thought I'd become famous this way. Well, life gives you lemons—make lemonade, right? Last Monday, a lot of people messaged me unexpectedly—some heard about me from Telegram channels, others from Twitter.
(excerpts from Tatyana's letters are published with her permission)
According to Tatyana, on February 24, 2022, she transferred $10 to a Ukrainian fund from her Sberbank card. Two years later, in February 2024, FSB officers came to her home because of this transfer. After hacking her correspondence with Tatyana's best friend, who lives in Dnipro, they discovered another $20 transfer made in April 2022. "Well, that's it! So, 19-year-old me contributed to my now 21-year-old self getting into such a difficult life situation." — writes Tatiana.
Tatyana was arrested in February 2024, and on April 17, the FSB for the Tomsk Region issued a press release announcing the arrest of two individuals in Tomsk for "providing financial assistance to a foreign state in activities directed against the security of the Russian Federation." Having already spent two months in a cell at Pretrial Detention Center No. 1, Tatyana saw a report about herself on Channel One. The arrest of a young woman for "30 bucks" and a young man about whom nothing is known was broadcast nationwide. "My story in today's reality is just ordinary.", says Tatyana.
The Tomsk City Court demonstrated its compassion and sentenced Tatyana to just nine years for $30, even though the treason charge against her could have given her even more. This is exactly what judicial humanism looks like these days! Surely, you can't acquit someone whose case came from "the bureaucrats"! That would send them to prison themselves.
In fact, it is unknown when and how the outside world would have learned about Tatiana and sentence, which would have been handed out to a 21-year-old student for donations two years ago, if not for an accident.
After her arrest in February 2024 and detention in a special detention center (details in the comic below), Tatyana was sent to Pre-trial Detention Center No. 1 in Tomsk, where her cellmate was Ksenia Fadeeva. former deputy of the Tomsk Duma, as well as the former head of Navalny's Tomsk headquarters. NeMoskva has written extensively about Ksenia over the past year, for example, here и hereBefore being transported (Ksenia was sentenced to nine years for participating in an extremist organization) to her "place of imprisonment," Ksenia passed on Tatyana's information to her acquaintances, asking them to write to this very young girl, arrested far from her family under the dreaded Article 9. And they wrote to Tatyana immediately.
To be honest, I'm very moved by your letter, as I haven't spoken to anyone outside since the end of February, except for Mama and the lawyer who occasionally visits me. Forgive me if this is a bit chaotic! If it weren't for Ksyusha, I wouldn't have known that political prisoners receive any kind of outside support, that they aren't simply forgotten, branded traitors or sick, but that people write to them, instill hope in them, and keep them from truly going crazy. A new person in this confined space is always so exciting... Or rather, anything new in this confined space is exciting. And if that "something new" isn't bad, but good, then it's a real event! And there's very little, if any, good new here, I think you already know that.
Tatyana, originally from Kamchatka, came to Tomsk to study at Tomsk State Pedagogical University. After two years of studying as a primary school teacher, she realized she preferred foreign languages and transferred to the Translation and Translation Studies program at Tomsk State Pedagogical University. She studied for one semester, and then they came for her. Tatyana's mother lives in Kamchatka, where she is from. She has a brother who is disabled.
In prison, Tatiana keeps a diary and draws.
«"Conversations with myself and my own drawings are a kind of monument to the era, I think. But I still want to preserve them so that when all this horror is over, I can reread my thoughts and refresh my memories."
In her very first letter, Tatyana demonstrated her talent as an artist.
I save myself by drawing every day—either in letters to Mom or in my diary, which I've kept since the first day I was placed in pretrial detention. Incidentally, the drawings are of me, or rather, a cartoon version of me. I always draw "her" in the margins of my letters to Mom to brighten up the overall theme of the letter, add color and mood, and also to share a little more about my "life" here.
The editor of "NeMoskva" remembered Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya, a famous Gulag prisoner who, after twenty years in the camps (including in the Tomsk region, where strange encounters sometimes occur), wrote twelve notebooks of memoirs about the Gulag with her own illustrations. The complete version, with all the text and drawings, was published only in 2006 year.
And we came up with the idea of asking Tatiana to draw a comic about her life, which she did. Watch.
Hi! My name is Tanya, and until I was 21, my life was no different from the average Generation Z. I was born and raised in a small village in Kamchatka with my mother and disabled brother.
Because of my brother's diagnosis, he would sometimes have outbursts of aggression triggered by noise or arguments, so from a young age, a calm and peaceful atmosphere was maintained in my home, and I learned to control my emotions and be quiet and calm. Perhaps that's why I grew up taciturn and didn't have many friends at school. With the advent of the internet, I made friends, too. It turned out they were all very far away, so I always longed to be with them, somewhere far from my home. "The world is huge and beautiful, and I'm stuck here"—that's what I thought (and still think, because I never really saw the world when I came here) (lol).
Then I got into a university where I had enough credits. I applied during the height of the pandemic, so studying was... weird. I didn't like my department and quickly burned out. I considered taking a sabbatical, but I couldn't decide... And then...
…February 2022 arrived. I turned 19, and five days later, something happened that changed the lives of millions of people, including my loved ones and…
…my own.
I was lucky that on February 26, 2024, I fell asleep at 11 PM instead of 8 AM as usual (I'm a night owl). Because at 8 AM on February 27, 2024, unexpected guests arrived. I woke up to a loud knocking sound and texted my best friend (*best friend*) about it. We agreed it would be best not to open the door, but the knocking continued. It also started coming from the window (my rented studio was on the ground floor). So I opened it...
Five strangers immediately showed up in the apartment: three FSB officers and two student witnesses. They immediately confiscated my laptop and phone and began searching them. The LP was nervous about why I suddenly stopped responding to her messages, and they allowed me to casually text her twice, "Everything's fine," but I'm sure she didn't believe me even then. After a couple of hours of searching, they took me to their office, where I hung around until 11 PM. They couldn't let me go, so they conjured up a 15-day administrative arrest for me for allegedly swearing and aggressive behavior on the street (lol), so from February 28th to March 12th, I spent time in a special detention center.
It wasn't boring, because on March 1st, a young woman named Lena was moved into our cell. She said she streams on TikTok and has a large audience (I couldn't verify this, of course), had served four years for robbery, and had a girlfriend who was forty years old (of course, that didn't stop her from making some unambiguous hints to me). Overall, I had a relatively good time there. I was just constantly afraid of what would happen next. And I missed my friends.
And one night I woke up and heard my cellmates talking:
— What do you think will happen to her?
"I don't think they'll let her go, it's the FBI. Something bad is 100% going to happen, I don't like that."
— Yes... It was stupid to hope that everything would end with fifteen days in a special detention center 🙂
And... here I am. I've been through so much in just under five months. So many disturbing thoughts to sort through, so many unpleasant emotions to swallow and write down in my journal.
It helps me clear out the clutter in my head. Reading and drawing also help.
And even earlier, conversations with helped Ksyusha F
I remember the stream of words that came out of me when we first went out for a walk together.
There were pleasant moments, of course. But there were still more unpleasant ones. And there's more to come... The trial... The final word... The verdict...
...But this is far from the end. This is only the beginning. After all, the long journey to Kamcha and nine years of humiliation and deprivation still await me...
But I believe that in the end everything will be fine!
Feedback on Tanya's comic, as well as words of support and any good news, can be sent to her at the following address: Address: 634003, Tomsk, Pushkin Street, 48, Federal State Institution Pre-trial Detention Center No. 1 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for Tomsk Oblast, Tatyana Valerievna Laletina, born in 2003. You can write online through the website. Zonatelecom (payment only from Russian cards).
Tatyana is still there, awaiting an appeal.
So, I was given a prison sentence, and my lawyer and I decided to try our luck and appeal. It'll be in Novosibirsk, a different region, so maybe something will change? Who knows!
