Sobesednik interview with the mother of Svetlana Bakhmina

Yelena Skvortsova, Sobesednik, 12.11.2008

The fate of former Yukos lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina is again stirring society. Until now Valentina Bakhmina, Svetlana’s mother, has refused outright to talk to journalists.

A night student

We have driven far beyond the outer Moscow Ring road with Bakhmina’s lawyer Roman Golovkin, although the district is still considered part of the city. The apartment block is a typical, prefabricated construction but it is one of the newer kind. Svetlana’s parents were given a flat here in place of a demolished 1950s block in the city. Accused of misappropriation of funds, Svetlana herself, incidentally, also lives in such a two-roomed “palace” with her husband and two children. They borrowed to buy it and they worked night and day, almost, to pay back the loan.

Valentina feeds us pancakes and curd cheese and nods towards the window sill where plastic food containers are piled up, ready to be filled and sent to her daughter in the penal colony:

“I cook as much of it as I can myself and send it to her ...”

At these words the mother’s eyes fill with tears.

“When does Mikhail [Svetlana’s husband] intend to go and see her?”

“He’s ready to go right away,” sighs Valentina Bakhmina. “He always has a bag packed. But it doesn’t depend on him. The procedure is that Sveta herself rings up and tells us when she has been allowed a visit. She hasn’t rung yet and I keep wondering how she will give birth there. Yesterday I went to Sergiev Posad, to the Trinity monastery: the icon of the Fyodorovsky Mother of God, which helps during childbirth, is there and I prayed and prayed to her ...”

It’s true what they say, that misfortunes come in droves. Six months before her daughter’s arrest Valentina’s husband died. All his life he worked as a welder on building sites. For a long while before his death he was sick and they amputated one leg. Then this new misfortune. Since Svetlana has been away her mother has become disabled. She no longer works. She cannot stand at the dairy counter in the shop any more: her legs won’t take it and her blood pressure is up. She still cannot believe that such misfortune has befallen her clever daughter who always earned gratitude whatever she did.

“I was at home with Sveta until she was three. Then I used to wash the floors in the housing management office. I would clean there and quickly return home. She started going to the kindergarten. She also attended school nearby. But then she asked to be transferred to a more demanding school. We went to Moscow and she was accepted at a very famous school. Svetlana studied there from the 7th class and even became chief Komsomol organiser at the school.

“It was hard on her, travelling a long way and, while I was at work, she was also responsible for her little sister, 11 years her junior. When I got home Sveta would immediately start doing her homework. Sometimes I woke up at night and she was still sitting there, studying. You should go to bed, I told her. No, she’d say, I must still do more homework. ‘Must’ is the most important word in her life.”

Svetlana was always serious and well-behaved, says her mother. Not only did she not smoke: she didn’t waste time chatting to her girlfriends. She had no time to do so. She made clothes for herself and her sister and was very good at knitting. The family did not have a great deal of money to spend. Svetlana went to all the preparatory courses to enter higher education and, as a result, she was accepted into the prestigious jurisprudence faculty at Moscow University without any extra help. Once there she did not waste her time, she studied, she joined the construction volunteers ... Despite this Spartan existence she somehow managed to acquire many friends: among those who today support her unfortunate mother are neighbours and those with whom Bakhmina became friendly at the kindergarten, in school, at university and those with whom she once worked. Her present lawyer is also an old friend of Svetlana’s.

They waited 5 years for a family

“Sveta is a very kind person,” continues Valentina Bakhmina. “Perhaps that’s why everyone respects her. You know, there’s a page in the Kommersant newspaper where they appeal for help for sick children. After Sveta’s arrest it turned out that she had frequently sent her own money to help those children. Yet she never said a word! She helped them and that was that.”

Svetlana and her husband waited 5 years for children of their own. When their firstborn Grisha appeared the family was over the moon with joy. The grandmothers and the young parents themselves looked after the infant. Very rarely did they invite a nanny. It’s hard to understand how Svetlana and Mikhail found the time (Bakhmina’s husband runs his own small business). There was never any home help.

“I would come sometimes and find she had ironed the linen and neatly piled it up,” recalls Valentina Bakhmina. “’How do you manage?’ ‘That’s how I spend the night,’ she’d reply.”

“I heard that Svetlana worked for the Khoper Invest company. Many today reproach her for that and say that she was probably linked to the firm’s collapse.”

“Really! She worked just one year there after graduation! Would they let an inexperienced newcomer get involved in such serious matters?”

Not only joy but torment

“Not every prisoner is let out for holiday. Did you know that she was coming?”

“No. It all happened unexpectedly in March this year. She earns some money in the penal colony. That was enough for a cheap train ticket. It was a good thing that she had warm clothes there (she was arrested in wintertime) because it’s forbidden to send clothes to the colony. She rang me when she was already in Moscow, in her own flat.”

“I drove her to her mother’s,” interrupts Svetlana’s lawyer Roman Golovkin. “We stood for a long while in front of the door. She could not bring herself to ring the bell. She kept steeling herself so as not to cry.”

“Yes, I could see she was holding back but I couldn’t: I burst into tears ... Her children would not leave her side and clung to her hands,” says her mother. “The young one Fyodor did not remember his mother; Grisha thought she had been away on a long business trip. We didn’t tell them what had actually happened to her. At school they have also been understanding [Grisha is already 11, while Fyodor is 7]. Also they have their father’s surname so we have been able to keep the secret so far. But when Grisha learned that she had only come for 10 days he hung up a calendar on the wall by his bed and marked off every day spent with his mother. When she left he became very sad and would shut himself up in his room and sit there for hours ... He’s even become a bit aggressive: I’ll kill the man who sent my Mama away on such a long business trip, he says. When Sveta left she looked appalling. So the holiday brought not just joy but torment as well.”

“When her husband and I accompanied Sveta back to the colony we were sure it would not be for long,” says Golovkin. “She was now eligible for parole, had numerous citations and a holiday is the highest award. And she herself was sure that her request for parole would be granted. When it was turned down the first time, and very strangely (the judge referred to long discounted reprimands), everyone was astounded. But Sveta thought it was simply a misunderstanding. Especially since the Supreme Court of Mordovia over-turned that decision and said that the references to discounted reprimands was unlawful. So we thought that the second examination of her request for parole would be a formality. However ... the judge, who was this time a man, again turned it down. Most strange of all is that the first time even the prosecutor’s office was in favour of parole. Yet at the second hearing, 3.5 months later, the prosecutor’s office changed its position. For Sveta, of course, this was very stressful.”

“When should she give birth?”

“In early December,” her mother begins to cry.

“Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“Yes, a girl.”

“Have you thought what to call her?”

“Not yet. We haven’t even discussed whether to bring the child to Moscow or leave her with her mother. Either is bad for Sveta and for the baby. We very much hope that she will be released soon: she’s earned it, even the colony administration say so. If not ... Then we all have the date 6 June 2011 before our eyes, the end of her sentence. If I live that long.”


A note on life in the penal colony

“Penal colonies form a large part of Mordovia,” says lawyer Roman Golovkin. “First Sveta was in colony No 14, near the Parets settlement. Then, in October, she was moved to LPU-21, the hospital for prisoners near Barashevo. It’s 24 kilometres from the penal colony. It looks like a prison camp, with barbed wire and guards.”

Now Bakhmina is in the Federal Penitentiary Service hospital for Mordovia in the settlement of Yavas. It’s somewhere between the colony and LPU-21. There’s no barbed wire or guards and it’s an ordinary building. It’s even more difficult to get into than the colony, however.

In the colony everything is simple but clean. The prisoners have weekends off and holidays, in the sense that they do not go to work. In their free time they can watch the television or get on with their own affairs. There’s no limit on the number of parcels they can receive. They can have four short (3-day) visits a year. Of late Sveta was held under a freer regime and so she could have 8 visits. The building for the visits is like a dormitory. There’s a room, a kitchen, crockery, a shower and a toilet. For those days the guest is also, in some sense, like a prisoner.