Kalyapin biography

My initial upbringing as a human rights activist began in an institute chicken. Nizhny Novgorod was the city of technical intelligentsia, the capital of electronic industry. Numerous research institutes were seedlings of all kinds of democratic ideas. Igor Kalyapin analyzes the documents after aiming the office of human rights activists in Chechnya I have the first education, unfinished.

Due to active social activities, I was expelled from the Institute of Chemistry, where I worked for a long time. At that moment, it was not obvious that in the next two years the political situation in the country would change so much. It seemed that a “heroic dissident future” awaited me ahead of me. There was no point in continuing physics and electronics, because I would not have accepted me in any defense enterprise.

It was necessary to prepare not for the career of the engineer, but the career of Vladimir Bukovsky. The future of the year was drawn something like this, very gloomy. The now deceased Boris Nemtsov came out of another research institute with his team, who worked with him when he became a deputy, and later - the governor. It was obvious to us that the front of the struggle, our section in this so -called “perestroika” is the protection of human rights, the organization of human rights movement.

Today, human rights activists are perceived as carriers of a certain enemy ideology. But in the beginning it was different. Everyone understood that the country was changing and that these changes forever, there would be no return to the USSR, therefore it is necessary to perceive new ideas, to change the established standards. The people who worked in the system understood this and looked at us as a kind of “agents of the future”.

It always seemed important to me to develop the ideas of democracy as a way of political structure. I never wanted to become a very rich person or oligarch. There was an understanding that the presence of its business would give me independence. I did not consider it normal to engage in some kind of work to earn on a piece of bread, and in my free time to engage in human rights activities.

The very concept of “grant” and the fact that there are some professional human rights organizations where you are engaged in human rights activities, and someone pays a salary for this, this could not even occur to you. It seemed to me that it was necessary to organize your business and engage in human rights activities for income from it. In the courtyard of the house, business in E was an activity related to real military operations.

There were a great many structures engaged in racket in those days. One could pay a tribute to one, and then others would have arrived, which on the timid remark “Guys, you will decide there with each other who pays to whom” beat you face and broke the equipment. They did not find out the relationship between themselves, entrepreneurs always turned out to be beaten.

It was useless to contact the police. At the same time, pressing from officials and inspection organizations grew in exposure. These people came with crusts and frankly said that they needed money, furniture, kettles, equipment for work, building materials for the cottage of civil servants: “If it is like this, then we will not notice that you don’t have a second door in the store.” And she could not be there, because the store was in the basement.

The officials were impudent before our eyes, they instantly privatized the power that was given to them. Once I became a victim of an operational-search error. I was suspected of organizing a scam that ended in the theft of a huge amount of money from one bank. I was detained, arrested, and they beat me within a day without ceasing. Then, in the police, I found out in my own skin what violence is, what is chaos and what to torture is.

I was preparing for the fact that I would appoint me like this, without asking any questions, the organizer of this scam would be appointed and put for ten years. I was lucky: the valiant Rubop found a team that committed this theft, and one fine day they released me, saying: “Well, it happens, you see how lucky you are? And I went out with the thought that I was really lucky.

If it were not for a happy combination of circumstances, I would have sat down, and several more people would have sat with me. When once again the operative put my head on the safe, he sentenced me to: "Your Jew of Nemtsov will not help you." It is logical that this story left a deep mark in my life, although the same RUBOP employees later repeatedly saved my life during the confrontation with the bandits.

What is the torture by electric current I learned from the bandits. They hung me, tortured me, hunted my family, tried to kidnap my daughter. I remember police officers who spent the night at my house and escorted to work with weapons. I had a riot police in my office. I and people in uniform at that time of my life contacted a lot of life and learned the work of law enforcement agencies in my own skin on both sides.

The problem of torture has always been associated with the paradox, because from the point of view of the right of torture are perceived as some kind of absolute evil.But if in the USA, for example, a decent part of the population supports torture during interrogations of terrorists, then it was always obvious that torture is what should be under an absolute prohibition.