Such a small life, such a dense fear
On April 8, 53-year-old artist Andrei Akuzin died in a pretrial detention cell in Kosmsomolsk-on-Amur. Officially, he committed suicide. A day after his death, Rosfinmonitoring added him to its list of "terrorists and extremists." What kind of person was Andrei Akuzin? арестованный For a comment that was largely unknown to the public before the tragedy, what drove him to commit suicide—if that's what really happened? We tried talking to his friends. Not everyone was willing, but we did manage to learn something.
A cramped office, a grey door that looks more like the entrance to someone's personal office than to a new company, a ceremonial red ribbon stretched across the entrance.
"Hooray!" a small group of people shouts in unison as a woman cuts the ribbon.
A simple office partition bears a simple sign: the word "Haku" against a backdrop of a mountain reminiscent of Mount Fuji. That's the name of the printing shop opened in mid-July 2021 by Andrey Akuzin. He's 48 years old in the video, dressed in a modest black kimono.
"We consider the Haku salon open! I'm so glad we've finally gathered here. We've been working towards this for a long time, and we're tired of it!" says Akuzin.
Haku is a Miyazaki character, a dragon from Spirited Away, who embodies the spirit of water. Akuzin drew him for the second anniversary of his salon.
By this time, he had already managed to try out various jobs: he worked as a prop master (a creator of scenery and objects used in performances - NM) at the city Drama Theater, printed He designed custom mugs, designed business cards, banners, and flyers—his portfolio includes many local companies. Finally, he started working for himself.
… Last week, his family and friends said goodbye to him. One of them wrote: “I felt so sick that I didn’t even call my lawyer.”
"The consumer has forgotten how to think"
Tatyana Frolova, director of the KNAM Theater (the theater's name is an abbreviation of Komsomolsk-on-Amur – NM), and Andrei's friend, says he didn't even have a passport—he had no desire to leave the city. Another acquaintance confirms: Andrei was born, studied, and has always lived in Komsomolsk.
"I told him many times about leaving, but he was a fatalist, believing that he would live as long as he was destined to, and he didn't want to be a burden to anyone. Moving is a very difficult thing, and he understood that," Tatyana recalls.
She met Akuzin in Komsomolsk at the KNAM theater in 1998. He was a young artist then. He commented on one of his paintings at a 1999 exhibition held at the theater during the first international festival, "Perspective of a Room," as follows: "It's a collection of unique lines. It simply has to convey some impression—the viewer just looks, nothing more. I see a tree, for example, and that's how it should be. The painting is called 'A Little About Zen'—there's such a culture. I was once fascinated by it, and Zen is something and at the same time—nothing."
A local journalist, filming archival footage, continues to press him: is abstraction the future? Why does he choose this style? Andrey Akuzin tries to explain: "The world is so tired; consumers have forgotten how to think, so alongside something concrete and formal, there must be abstraction, something incomprehensible, something that can't be called anything. Let people think, let them see."
He admitted that sometimes he wants to “paint a landscape or a mud puddle, ducks over a lake,” but abstraction attracts him more.
“You can depict whatever you want, expand your horizons, and create something for yourself that you haven’t seen,” Akuzin concluded in 1999.
The only landscape shown at that exhibition, and only a photograph, he left after his discharge from the unit where he did his military service.
Frolova calls Akuzin "the little train," like in the cartoon "The Little Train from Romashkovo": he was very funny, with a thousand stories to tell about his life. He was also always available, always running to help if anything happened.
Putinism
Andrei didn't have the opportunity to travel much, says Frolova, but he loved hiking and cycling. He collected ferns and other wild plants in the taiga, recalls his friend Dmitry; they often went into the forest together:
"He was an open, engaging, and sociable person. And he loved our Far Eastern nature."
Dmitry says he never discussed politics with Andrey. He learned of his death from an acquaintance.
"It was a shock to me that he was arrested, that he ended up in prison, and that he decided to commit suicide like that. It was a complete shock to me. I don't know why he did it; maybe he was going through some kind of crisis," Dmitry suggests.
Since 2020, Andrey's Instagram has been filled with videos and photos of nature: a rafting trip, a campfire on the banks of the Amur or the Silinka River in Komsomolsk. Lilacs are blooming, and there are lots of parks, flowers, bugs, cats, dogs, the sea, and even seedlings on a windowsill. There aren't many of himself, but there's a lot of mood, beauty, and sensations.
But with the start of the war, a different theme appears in the posts.
“Putinism,” he writes under a photo of a destroyed building in the city center.
"They're cutting down healthy trees. It's a fucking era," read another post.
"The road is new, but you can't drive on it. Shit, Putinism."
"The scarecrow burned. Let's wish the same for all scarecrows," he comments on Maslenitsa in the local park.
"No to war" - under a video of an orchestra in the city in June 2022.
He removes anti-war graffiti in the city, such as "Putin is a f**k" and "Save your life, don't go to the front."
It is unknown what exactly led to the criminal case; he did not have a lawyer. Wrote Mediazona. It's known he was sent to pretrial detention for a comment on social media, but we don't know for what reason. According to some reports, he was interested in the Artpodgotovka movement, which is banned in Russia.
Akuzin turned 53 on April 7, already in prison, and hanged himself in his cell the following morning. Posthumously, on April 10, he was added to Rosfinmonitoring's list of "terrorists and extremists."
"He probably didn't want to endure torture and didn't want to fall into the hands of these people. He told me many times in our correspondence that the only free protest left in this country was suicide," Frolova believes.
Konstantin learned of his friend's death as unexpectedly as Dmitry, from the news. He had been friends with Andrey on LiveJournal and later on Facebook.
"At first, we talked about Siberia, Siberian history, then just about life. When he started an advertising agency, the main topic was technology, how and what to do. I also wanted to follow his example and open an agency," Konstantin recalls.
But he does not believe in Andrei’s suicide, although he characterizes Andrei as a complex person.
"He was alive, not a 'zombie.' Maybe 'social phobic,' but I might be choosing the wrong term—he could be very harsh at times if he disagreed with a situation or people. I do allow for suicide in one case, like the entrepreneurs' nut cases being so tightly clamped down on now, and then the arrest... But it's not so easy to kill yourself in a pretrial detention center, and that's what worries me about this theory," he adds.
Konstantin never opened an advertising agency: he left Russia, returned and now says that "works as a redneck".
A cat and more jazz
In recent years, Akuzin lived alone with his orange-striped cat, Morphy. He divorced his wife at least in 2023, and for about a year, he had no contact with her or his adult son. Akuzin's ex-wife, Tatyana, did not respond to NeMoskva's questions. Frolova says he was depressed for many years about what was happening in the country. She doesn't know whether his family supported his views.
"He adored his cat and jazz; he was an incredible harmonica player himself! He even recorded a jazz single with a friend in January. He never wanted to fight anyone; he simply wanted to live his short life quietly, like an ordinary person, but he was forced to become a hero. He hated the regime and was as unyielding as the pianist Pavel Kushnir," says Frolova.
In the cities where Andrei did visit, he tried to go to a jazz concert. Last fall, he left Several reviews from bars where such concerts were played in St. Petersburg.
"If you didn't like the blues, you'll love it there," he writes about the Hendrix bar.
"We were thrilled beyond words; it was a true delight for a blues lover. The guys played brilliantly," he commended the Philharmonic's Jazz Music program.
Jazz musicians from Komsomolsk who might have known Andrei refrained from speaking with journalists.
Better times will come
There is little precise information about Akuzin's life: repressions are very good at maintaining silence.
"They're terribly scared, but try it," one of Akuzin's contacts, sharing his contact information with NeMoskva, was quoted as saying.
"I can't say anything because I'm afraid for my own life. I'll definitely tell you when better times come," said Andrey's close friend.
“Everyone refuses to talk,” Frolova also noted.
Akuzin himself wanted to make repression visible, not just anti-war graffiti and Far Eastern nature. He and Tatyana Frolova dreamed of creating a project about this in their native Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
"We dreamed of doing walks around Komsomolsk, to the burial sites of political prisoners. The city stands on these cemeteries and bones, and in the center there are many areas where people were buried simply in the snow," says Frolova.
Komsomolsk was the Amurlag distribution camp in the Far East. It could accommodate be up to 120,000 prisoners. The "white Louis Armstrong"—the famous jazz musician Eddie—served his sentence in Komsomolsk. Rosner, poet and translator Nikolai Zabolotsky.
"The road from the train to the camp was popularly known as the 'road of death.' Andrey and I would often go there, walking along it all the way to the station square. We wanted to create a memorial zone there, a museum, but the authorities wouldn't even hear about the dark pages of the city's history," Frolova recalls.
A monument to the victims of political repression has been erected in the city, but the authorities are not in favor of installing memorial plaques refuseIn 2021, a plaque for the performer Eddie Rosner was not installed. In one of his jazz-inspired songs—which Andrey loved so much—he sang, "I know the path that leads only to happiness, and someday it will be in our power." Tatyana Frolova agrees, but it will likely be up to future generations to restore the names.
"The bones will come out, it's up to the new generations. If we don't bury people with dignity and don't return everyone's good name, the city will still be short of oxygen, and it will continue to be very difficult to live there."
