Human rights and LGBT activist Valentina Likhoshva gave an exclusive interview to Gpress about the anti-war civil resistance in Russia, listed the reasons for the lack of mass demonstrations of Russians against the war.
Business card of the interlocutor
Valentina Likhoshva. Since 2019, she has been an honorary member of the Belarusian human rights initiative “J4T — Journalists for Tolerance”. PhD in Psychology, an employee of the Moscow Community Center for LGBT Initiatives, she has been advocating for social justice and the rights of LGBT people, migrants, refugees, and other discriminated social groups for many years. In March 2021, she received the Thorvald Stoltenberg Award.
— Has it become more difficult to be a human rights defender now? After all, it seems that everything that was done before turned out to be meaningless — the war has begun, and terrible things are happening.
— There used to be more vegetarian times. And that former inspiration is no longer there… Now there is a natural process in which we do not divide time into what was then and what is now. If you are fighting against a regime, any regime, and you want it to change, then you don’t have to wait for its beautiful death.
The system will never die beautifully. This is a myth. Regimes die terribly, taking a lot of lives with them.
And only human rights defenders can pull someone out of there and help, document for these lessons to be learned. The idea that we are fighting against evil and have defeated some kind of dragon is very naive.
The problem of frustration is that people who come to the human rights activism think that they can change something. But the protection of human rights is a process that does not have a noticeable result now. In order not to be disappointed, one should not be charmed.
Human rights work does not imply any satisfaction with the result. Here, the result is like in the case of a housewife. That is, there is no result.
Neither Lukashenka nor Putin will stand up and say: “We understood everything, we were a little wrong. Maybe let’s go to the court…”
It will never be like this. The dictatorship will always resist. Human rights values are opposed to dictatorship. If you work in this field, you understand that you are bringing this ugly death of the regime closer.
— Judging by the statistics of the Google search, it is important for Russians when the war ends. What are your thoughts on this?
— I’m not Vanga. But there was always a feeling that it would be difficult. And before, when I had been asked “what will happen next?”, my answer was: “it will be even worse, but not for long.”
The development of the situation may follow two opposite scenarios. And to make predictions about the timing and method of ending the war is a little naive.
The situation will deteriorate catastrophically. And in this case, the most insulting thing is to give up the day before the regime falls.
Do not have any illusions that the course of history can be changed. There will be disappointment when it turns out that this is not the case.
The leaders of the regimes have illusions that they will stop the course of history now.
It is clear that the regimes will fall. It is clear that this will be painful for everyone. And it will be clear that we acted correctly. We did what we could.
— This war has changed the attitude towards Russians and Belarusians, Ukrainians on the planet. This is discrimination based on nationality already. A terrible trend. What is your position as a human rights activist?
— The Russian and Belarusian regimes were supported by Western countries, which are now blocking some opportunities for Russian people, for Belarusians on the basis of nationality.
People are in a difficult situation, people are fleeing. Many people face problems if they have a Belarusian passport, for example, to get insurance or banking services. The same is with a Russian passport. No one is looking at your background.
Europe continues to support the regimes: to shake hands, to finance, to support expertly, to supply uniforms for the Rosgvardiya, which disperses rallies — is it OK?
And at the same time, Europe demands that human rights defenders and ordinary Russian people who live in constant fear, who are just trying to survive, go out against the war, realizing that this method works only in democratic countries.
In Russia and Belarus, the value of life now tends to zero — a person understands that being dead on the street is inexpedient.
Yes, there is a certain responsibility of the Russian population for the system in which we live.
But it is naive to expect from a Russian who does not have access to education, languages that an average European citizen has to have critical thinking and an idea of human rights, especially if we talk about people born in the 50s. It is naive to think that the majority of the population will read articles in English and watch the BBC or CNN news and compare these news.
The lessons of the Second World War have not been learned — neither in the post-Soviet space nor in Europe – and we are entering the second round.
The time when it was possible to react and change something has been missed. Then, people often said, “well, these are difficult political decisions, we are not ready to make them.” Now I think we should look at the situation with our eyes open.
— Has anything happened during the war in your professional life that inspires?
— After Covid, we really wanted to hold the Barents Pride, which takes place on the border of Norway and Russia. If you look at the map of LGBT rights, Russia is all red, and Norway is all green. We didn’t really believe in these issues with visas, border crossing. Because of the war… Circumstances were against us. But we undertook to organize it.
Two days before the start of the Barents Pride, mobilization in Russia was announced. And when our team was preparing it, I kept saying:
“You understand that now we are doing the impossible.”
And we did it. It was one of the biggest prides that we have had in our experience since 2017. This story motivated me. It’s about doing what needs to be done and come what may. About the fact that even if you have no hope, you need to somehow act to change the context a little. And it’s worth it. I don’t know how inspiring this example is for you.
— What to talk about at LGBT pride when there is a war around?
— We want to talk about the fact that there are different people who live in Russia.
We want to say that the Russians are against the war.
Mobilization was announced: Russians were leaving, self-evacuating, there was a migration problem. We talked about the fact that
we are returning to Russia, despite all this. Russian people want to live at home.
They are not born with the dream of becoming refugees. This is also very important now.
— What messages were there before?
— Earlier, even before Covid, before the war, when it was easier for Russians to cross the border, the messages of the pride were that it was necessary to increase the visibility of violations LGBT rights in Russia.
When there is a war around, it is impossible to talk about LGBT rights in open international cooperation, it is impossible to say how vulnerable an LGBT person is both in Russia and in Ukraine.
It is impossible to break out of this model of evil and good when the whole of Russia appears in a demonic image.
Including because of journalists in the West. If you turn on the TV, you will see that apart from Putin, there is virtually no one there. Putin and the military are everywhere. It feels like the civilian population is extinct and no one is doing anything. That is, there are no stories about real Russian people. And it turns out that
everyone crossing the border for some reason puts on a Putin mask and represents his interests.
Now the main message was that we are not drawing lines there, dividing. We do not divide whether you are a gay or heterosexual person. We do not divide by whether you have a Russian passport, Lithuanian or Belarusian.
And we draw a line between elections and the vision of specific people. Between people and politicians. Between business, which is often interested in war, and ordinary people who are against war. The main message was about the groups that we are stereotypically pushed into. And breaking these stereotypes was the main task.
— What will it give to an average Russian who silently looks at what Putin is doing?
— Basically, it will give a return of dignity.
A Russian person whose opinion is not considered at any political or any other level, who does not decide about anything, is dependent on everything, is engaged in only one task — to survive.
This happens to people who, against their will, live in dictatorial states, have passports of these states. You have no dignity. You were driven into some group, everyone was divided – the whole world is divided. And in fact it is very difficult to break out of these artificial divisions and start moving somehow.
You may not have the resources to go outside — and it may be pointless right now — but you have the right to think and treat everything the way you do, despite the world that is given to you the ready-made.
There is the West — this is “Evil”; there are gays — this is an “internal enemy”, also “evil”, there is also some “evil”. And there is “Good”. And if you, a Russian, say something or write against the war, then you will be punished. And you can’t decide about anything.
The opportunity to understand that you are in this group artificially, the opportunity to understand that you can think — this is the guarantee that a person will change something when and as much as possible.
Russians have the last freedom of a person — to have attitude.
— How has the Russian society changed because of the war?
— This stage of the war became such a watershed when it was necessary to move from words to action. And then the actions were not what the authorities had expected. For example, Russians do not queue at military commissariats, do not claim conscription notices. And, on the contrary, queues line up at the border. This is a very serious, good indicator for us.
On the one hand, we see how much Russians are willing to survive when there is an oral alignment to the regime. On the other hand, we see how much people are willing to dirty their hands in the reality.
One very good trend is obvious — the establishment of horizontal ties. These are anti-regime communications at the personal level. There is a developed system for notifying residents when conscription notices are being handed out. There are certain channels where information spreads very quickly: where the police are, where to go, where not to go. A huge number of people subscribe to such channels, share information — Russians are against the war.
This is a new form of resistance to war, which emerged spontaneously, regardless of the human rights defenders’ efforts.
There is quite a big crisis in human rights defense work right now. And I think there will be big changes in this area, which is connected both with repression and with the younger generation coming to the fore, which sees the situation in a completely different way.
— How do relations between people look like now? Everyone for themselves?
— This stage has already passed. Now everyone is for their loved ones.
When women take their husbands abroad, when they begin to hide someone from someone – this is a story about the fact that everyone is for their loved ones.
I say it again: the line is not drawn in the right place. The line now is between whether you have the strength and resources to help another person in any way, or you are so vulnerable, you are so scared that you can’t do it all.
When they started creating borders no one asked if you were gay or not. People tried to help each other, chats were created about where and how to spend the night, who can help, where to jump out, and where to slip through, where is a checkpoint.
And this is not a line of Good and Evil. This is a line of certain resources. If you have two children under your care and you survive, work in some public institution, then it is unlikely that you have the resource to help someone. If you are an educated Russian and you have a resource to open some doors, most likely you will help someone.
— The crisis is everywhere; the situation will get harder and harder. And, on the other hand, we need to continue doing what we must do. But what’s the point then?
— There’s no point. It’s like searching for meaning in life.
It’s all merciless. Now you need to do what you can’t not do.
There is a very good play “Human Rights Defenders”, which was staged in the Театр.док (it has already been removed from the repertoire). This performance is based on interviews with various human rights defenders who started out as dissidents in the Soviet Union. They described this state, in which many are now. They were in it for a long time too.
Here you are standing, in front of you is open space. There are no results. You’re just doing what you can’t not do.
That’s why I answer like this: if you can stop doing something, then stop it. Save yourself. If you don’t see the point in it, then don’t act. Because there is no sense, as well as result, in this work.
There are things that are part of my inner world. And it will be the deepest internal conflict if I take a different stance, stop in my work.
I can stop to inhale or exhale. But I will still walk down the street and notice what I think is unfair. There’s no getting away from it.
But in general, human rights work is like learning to read. If you learn to read, it is unlikely that you will be able to force yourself not to read. If you are engaged in the protection of human rights, you cannot ignore human rights violations. You may be disappointed; you may burn out — but this is the prism that will stay with you forever.
— Yes… however, there is a suspicion that there is some sense after all. In maintaining the crystal lattice of society maybe?
— If you want to stay positive, then you can find it. Look at Russia, even in the Russian Orthodox Church, the term “human rights” appears, which did not exist before. Even in the Russian State Duma, which produces homophobic repressive laws, the concept of “LGBT” or “gender” is used, although other terms were used earlier.
If you look at the general trend since the Middle Ages, then human rights defenders have done a very good job in general.
If you need some results, then go back to the beginning of the last century and look at the state of psychiatric clinics, how elderly people lived, what level of violence there was, and how people live now.
Yes, we are not satisfied with life, but now it is much better. Now the level of violence in the whole world is decreasing. You just can’t measure it in short chunks.