Ekaterina and Evgeny Malyshev's documentary about the Network case.

For the first time, a court officer helps me set up in the courtroom’s press area. He knows I’m from Novaya Gazeta and knows roughly what I’m going to write. What’s happening? What are they thinking about? Are they not afraid at all? Every activist, every person online who is subscribed to political groups now knows these names: state prosecutor Sergey Semerenko, presiding judge Yury Klubkov, FSB investigator Valery Tokarev, FSB officer Vyacheslav Shepelev. But this doesn’t bother them. We think they should be publicly shamed. But for them, this is a route to respect.

Before the sentence, Novaya Gazeta published an open letter by the defendants’ parents to president Putin. The article received more than 200,000 views - more than the number of signatures under other petitions in support of the Network defendants. The headline ran like this: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, you are being deceived, and the whole country is watching!” If somebody wrote me this kind of letter, I would have been touched. I don’t want the whole country to think of me as someone who’s been tricked by some swindlers. But it’s fine for the authorities, it seems. They’re silent.

The parents’ letter has been sent on to the FSB and General Prosecutor’s Office. There’s little chance that there will be any reaction, but still, there’s a chance. It’s not the norm for mistakes to be admitted nowadays - and definitely not crimes. But Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, did comment on the case for the press: interference by the head of state is impossible. All that’s left is to wait for the Prosecutor’s Office to punish themselves, and the FSB - to punish the FSB.

No point in waiting

Evgeny and Ekaterina Malyshev, the hero-like Penza journalists who have covered every court hearing in the Network Case (and who made a film about it), tried to convince me that society has woken up and that this is the main result of the case. And for this, the defendants will pay with years of their lives.

To be honest, I’m not sure that this is the case. Society’s reaction has been minimal. I saw myself how Penza residents reacted to pickets the day before the sentence was issued. “Ah, this is the ‘Moscow case’, it’s about bloggers.” Indeed, bloggers. One woman came up, read a placard, listened to what the picketer had to say, and then started laying out all her own problems: a 70-year old woman had been made the boss at her workplace, no chance of getting justice, etc. And that was that.

I notice this kind of reaction when I was on my way to Penza. I’m sitting on the train reading the paper - articles about Konstantin Kotov, about the New Greatness case, about the Network case. And then I hear: “What is happening in this country! I cannot believe it!” I think my fellow passenger has woken up, he’s also worried. But it turns out that the train steward has given him wet sheets for the sleeper car. And that was that.

No, Russian society has not woken up. Something else has happened: a front of resistance has sprung up, made up of people of different political convictions and different ages. The thing they share in common, though, is that when they hear of injustice by the Russian authorities, they react.