Childhood Is Over.” The Story of a Schoolgirl from Stavropol Who Was Criminally Charged Over the Graffiti “NAVALNY!”

“Childhood Is Over.” The Story of a Schoolgirl from Stavropol Who Was Criminally Charged Over the Graffiti “NAVALNY!”

Hi! This is Marina-Maya, an OVD-Info journalist. A month ago I traveled to Stavropol, where I met Sonya (name changed) and her family. This 15-year-old girl, a straight-A student and academic competition winner with a background in an Orthodox gymnasium, really stirred things up!

After Alexei Navalny’s death, she would wait for her parents to fall asleep and then leave the house at night to study the walls of her neighborhood and the distant blocks. She read what was written on garages, deciphered messages at bus stops. She and the city developed their own language, a secret code. And she talks about it so brilliantly:

“On our street, there’s a dialogue of political ideologies through street art. There are right-wingers and left-wingers, neo-Nazis and antifa, anarchists and liberals, and everything under the sun. Some write ‘Lenin lives,’ others write ‘Lenin’s a loser.’”

Soon anti-war symbols and graffiti began appearing on the walls. Sometimes they were crossed out with the word “traitors” or the letter Z, but sometimes someone would write beside them, “you are not alone.”

Basically, this went on for a year until Sonya was violently detained not far from her home: in her hands was a can of black spray paint, and in front of her was a bus stop with the word “NAVALNY!” across the entire shelter.

When the court proceedings began, her parents became a real source of support for the girl, her homeroom teacher stood up for her, and Sonya herself is capable of standing up for herself. It was important for me to hear why she did all this, and believe me, she can answer for herself and does not feel like a victim at all.

Read the story about this family! They’re worth getting to know.

🛟 All summer long, together with psychologists from the project “First Line,” we are advising parents of teenagers affected by the Russian political regime. Full details of the project are at the link.