Screenshot from the YouTube video of the trial of Grigory Melkonyants. DW Russian YouTube channel. Fair use.

At the Basmanny District Court of Moscow, the trial against the co-chair of the election observer movement Golos, Grigory Melkonyants, accused of organizing the work of an “undesirable” organization, came to an end. On May 14, Judge Evgenia Nikolaeva of the Basmanny District Court sentenced him to five years in a general-regime penal colony. Golos published his final statement, which has been translated and edited for clarity by Global Voices. 

Your Honor, esteemed participants in the proceedings, dear friends.

Today is a joyful day for me. With the approach of the verdict, our trial is drawing to a close. This has been an enthralling experience. I have listened to wonderful, sometimes emotional, words spoken by people who testified as witnesses; I have read letters filled with warmth and received astonishing postcards. At times, it felt like a true celebration — as though I were a guest of honor at a jubilee, and not a defendant.

Twenty-one months ago, on August 17, 2023, a new and captivating chapter of my life began. Since then, I have passed through a search, an arrest, a temporary detention facility, three pre-trial detention centers, twelve cells, over a hundred cellmates, and twenty-six court sessions. I value this experience deeply, for it came at a great cost. But above all, it granted me the chance to remember my path and to discover much about a world to which I had not previously paid enough attention.

I have seen how prison destroys people’s lives by depriving them of joy and, thus, of happiness. For the joy of life is true happiness.

Do not be surprised by this word — “joy.” One might ask, what joy could there be in my situation, in the gloom of prison confinement, when for months you do not see your family, your friends, your colleagues? It is the joy that comes from the fact that, passing through this trial, I have become stronger and have not lost my faith in the cause to which I have dedicated my entire life.

Here, in captivity, I have met many people whom I likely never would have encountered in ordinary life — people with varied life experiences, different levels of education, and convicted under all manner of articles. Every day, we must find ways to agree on how to live together: how to organize chores in the cell, whether or not to air it out, where to get a refrigerator or a kettle. In essence, we are constantly holding small referenda and arriving at consensus.

What helps me greatly in prison is that I am an optimist — in any situation, I try to find something good, and I strive to support others. In this, I feel akin to the heroine of a novel, the orphan girl Pollyanna. Her father, a minister, taught her the “happiness game” — to find in everything something to rejoice over and seek grounds for optimism — and from then on, she taught the game to everyone around her. This does not mean one must deny problems, but rather that one should seek ways to resolve them and extract useful experience from them.

Try playing the “happiness game” yourselves, because, if you think about it, each of us has only the present moment we are living in, and there is no other time when life would not be this moment. And it does not matter where you are at this moment: at home or in exile, on vacation or at work, in an apartment or in a traffic jam, at a polling station or in a prison cell — this very moment must be lived with joy and with a positive spirit. There is only the now, which is why it is called “the present.”

Thus, the period of imprisonment has been, for me, both as a person and as a lawyer, a very fruitful one. I have turned to creativity: I began drawing, making collages and crafts, writing poetry. I have looked anew at people, at relationships, at processes.

I have begun to take greater pleasure in the flow of life itself — in labor, in creativity, in intellectual freedom. For a person may be locked away, but thought cannot be locked, cannot be stopped, cannot be taken away. My journey cannot be taken away, nor can what has been and remains my world. Perhaps to someone it may seem dull, but without just laws and clear, meaningful procedures, the kind of society we all dream of is impossible. I think about this constantly, and I am certain I am not alone. What unites us is an unshakable drive to think, to reflect on what can make the world better, and the will to make our own small contribution.

But let us consider joy from another angle. Can one feel true joy from deception, from fabrication, from the persecution of an innocent person? What joy can there be in pursuing this case? A case that should have fallen apart even at the preliminary review stage. A case no one wanted to open, tossed from one agency to another. A case not built on evidence, but on assumptions and the investigative authorities’ ignorance of the basics of civil, administrative, and criminal law. A case that has seen eight different investigators. This injustice — the persecution of an innocent person — is precisely what drains the joy from those entangled in it.

But I bear no malice toward anyone. The ability to forgive and let go of the bad, even in situations where one feels incapable of doing so, makes forgiveness a joyful moment in life.

Honorable Court,

The investigators have constructed a unique situation. For the first time in our country’s history, they wish to designate as the scene of a crime the hall of the Central Election Commission of Russia, and to declare a person who spoke there as an expert, a criminal.

As a lawyer, I do not understand why I am here, and why I stand accused in this case. And more importantly, I do not understand why it is I who must prove my innocence, rather than the investigators proving my guilt, as required by Article 49 of the Constitution of Russia. This case lacks the very occurrence of a crime. Yet I am compelled to prove a negative fact: that the “Golos” movement is not a structural subdivision of the international organization ENEMO, whose activities have been deemed undesirable in Russia; and to prove that I did not organize ENEMO’s activities by speaking at a roundtable in the Central Election Commission.

Ultimately, it was state authorities and stubborn facts that helped prove my innocence. From the first official response of the Ministry of Justice of Russia, it follows that ENEMO has no structural subdivisions in our country. From the second response of the Ministry of Justice, it is clear that the activities of the Golos movement were never declared undesirable. Nor were there any judicial or other decisions banning or restricting the activities of Golos. Finally, the fact that ENEMO and Golos are two different organizations is confirmed by the decisions of competent state authorities, who included them in two separate registries: ENEMO, in the list of organizations whose activities are deemed undesirable, and Golos, in the registry of so-called “foreign agents.”

It turns out that the entire prosecution is built on unfounded and unreliable information provided by operatives, lacking any evidentiary value, and on the subsequent fabrication of conclusions that distort the content of documents submitted to the case.

At this point, the constitutional guarantee must take effect — the principle that irreconcilable doubts regarding a person’s guilt shall be interpreted in favor of the accused, which must inevitably lead to an acquittal. Let it be that today, such verdicts account for only 0.26 percent across the entire country. But that means they are possible, and that not always, when passing judgment, does the court operate under the assumption that guilt is a foregone conclusion.

Friends!

I am a citizen of Russia. I love my country, and I hold my constitutional rights and freedoms in the highest regard. I am sincerely grateful to our forebears for these hard-won gains. Today, rights and freedoms may appear commonplace, but how differently they are perceived in prison, and how sharply one comes to understand here that it is not enough to win them once, with sweat and blood, they must be continually defended and upheld.

That is why I found great joy in working on proposals to ensure electoral rights under the conditions of pre-trial detention. For instance, how can an inmate, under conditions of isolation, sign in support of a candidate’s nomination? How can one make a donation to a campaign fund? How can one receive election materials from candidates? How should an inmate’s identity be properly verified when receiving a ballot? How can extraterritorial voting be ensured? How can effective observation be introduced? All of this is critically important because a person held in pre-trial detention retains the full range of voting rights until they are sentenced and sent to serve a term. This is often forgotten. Over these months of focused observation and reflection, I have managed to find many good solutions.

I do not know how long my imprisonment will last, but I am certain that sooner or later I will be free and reunited with my loved ones and friends. And the anticipation of that fills my heart with joy. I am happy that, even in prison, I can speak with my mother by phone, exchange letters with good people, meet with my attorneys, and continue to engage in the work I believe in.

Of course, I am deeply concerned for the fate of the Golos movement, to which I have devoted 12 years of my life. I cannot know what will become of it after the verdict is rendered. But I do know that over these years, hundreds of thousands of educated and honest people have become election observers. These thousands of my fellow citizens, while I have been behind bars, have not wasted time. They have continued, with great benefit to our country, to defend voting rights and monitor elections. During this time, nearly nine thousand electoral campaigns have taken place across Russia. This is a unique experience of citizen self-organization, an inspiring example of civic virtue. And I am filled with joy to be part of this community.

There are those who doubt whether honest elections are possible, who wonder whether participation is worthwhile. These are fair questions. In moments of doubt, one should not forget that human beings are imperfect — and so, too, are elections. In elections, we see revealed all the human flaws that we struggle with throughout our lives. Each of us, every day, makes choices between kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, loyalty and betrayal, strength and weakness, generosity and greed, truth and falsehood, optimism and apathy, humility and pride, sincerity and self-interest, joy and despair, engagement and indifference.

To make the right choices — to raise the level of honesty and common sense — this is our path. Elections cannot make themselves honest. Honest elections are made by people. By happy people. Observe. Participate. Rejoice more in life, raise the level of honesty and common sense — drop by drop, step by step, day by day.

Thank you for listening to me so patiently. In closing, I want to express from the bottom of my heart my gratitude to my family, my defenders, my colleagues, and the many kind people who support me and do not allow me to face injustice alone. To me, this means that what I have done is needed and important to people, and that it has not been in vain.

Thank you!