The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

seryozha was not sure when he first heard about the case—it was fairly soon after he moved back to Moscow from Kiev in 2010—but at some point he became obsessed with it. There was no other word for it. He had to know everything. He read every article about the case several times over, to make sure he grasped every detail. This was how he started reading Novaya gazeta,

a Moscow weekly that specialized in human rights issues and investigative stories. Several of the paper's reporters had been killed—including Anna Politkovskaya, who had been covering Chechnya for the paper—but though he had heard of Politkovskaya's murder, the existence of the paper had not registered with Seryozha until now. He joined an online community called the Makarov Case, downloaded every document that other members made available, and wrote detailed commentary. It did not take long to understand that the charges were bogus, but Seryozha still felt that the documents could shed light on something. There was a genetic study, done by a scientist who had taken part in identifying the remains of the czar's family—that had to count for something, right? The forensic geneticist's conclusion was that there was nothing in the urine sample that indicated sexual contact. The study was not admitted into evidence. In the end the only expert opinion acknowledged by the court came from a young psychologist who had asked the alleged victim to draw a nonexistent animal—a common task in psychological screening tests—and then concluded that the drawing, of a black cat with a disproportionately large and bushy tail, suggested that the girl had been molested.

Seryozha learned what he could about Makarov's family. They were good people. They loved each other and their daughter. Makarov spent more time with his daughter than a typical Russian father. Somehow, this made it feel even more tragic. Seryozha had not seen that many families who seemed simply, intuitively happy, and this one was being destroyed. And the little girl, the girl all the prosecutors and police and the psychologist were supposedly trying to protect—she was being destroyed too.

Once he started reading Novaya gazeta,

Seryozha became aware that this case was not unusual. The paper was publishing a lot of articles about Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant who had been tortured to death in a Moscow jail in 2009. His former employer, an American- British financier, was running his own investigation, which was making it clear that Magnitsky had inadvertently stepped on the toes of high-powered officials who were embezzling state money. For this, he had been jailed and killed. It was a wrenching story, but it made at least some sense: Magnitsky had stood between men and money. Makarov had not been in anyone's way. His life and his family were being destroyed just because hospital workers had been instructed to be on the lookout for pedophiles, and because, once set in motion, the Red Wheel could not stop, and just because. Seryozha felt exactly like he had when he saw Lars von Trier's film Dancer in the Dark,

in which a helpless woman is falsely accused of a crime and executed. The movie had left Seryozha physically sick for days. The Makarov case was happening in real life. There had to be a way to do something. Right?

one of the members of the online Makarov Case community wrote that three people were needed to put in a request for a protest. Masha called him—it had taken a bit of investigative work to get hold of his number. She wanted to volunteer her name and her time. It was now late November, she had been a single-mother housewife for nearly three months, and she had to find another way to live. She had hired a nanny and was going to start looking for work, but for now, she could be useful at a protest—even if she and everyone else knew that protest was futile.

That man never followed through on the protest idea. Makarov received his final sentence—five and a half years—on November 29. A week later an old acquaintance, someone who had been involved with the protest youth group Oborona back when Masha wanted to get involved but Sergei said no, called to invite Masha to a protest. It was about the elections rather than the Makarov case, but Masha went.