Grigory’s Ode to Joy Facing six years in prison, Russian election monitor Grigory Melkonyants delivers closing statement in court
On Monday, a Moscow court heard closing arguments in the criminal case against Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of the independent election-monitoring group Golos. He faces up to six years in prison for allegedly organizing the activities of an “undesirable” organization. In his final statement, Melkonyants shared his philosophy of joy and civic engagement, telling the court that the experience of being prosecuted unjustly has only reaffirmed his faith in the value of election monitoring. Meduza translates his full remarks into English.
Your Honor, esteemed participants in these proceedings, dear friends!
I am in good spirits today. As the verdict approaches, our trial draws to a close. It’s been an incredible experience. I listened to the beautiful, sometimes emotional words of those who testified as witnesses, read heartfelt letters, and received wonderful postcards. At times, it felt like a real celebration, as if I were a guest of honor, not the defendant.
Twenty-one months ago, on August 17, 2023, a new and exciting chapter of my life began. Since then, I’ve lived through a police raid, an arrest, time in a temporary holding facility, three pretrial detention centers, 12 different cells, more than 100 cellmates, and 26 court hearings. I deeply value this experience, knowing how much it’s cost me. More than anything, it helped me reconnect with my own path and learn much about a world I’d long overlooked.
I’ve seen how prison destroys people’s lives by robbing them of joy, which is the very heart of happiness itself.
You might be surprised by this word — “joy.” You might wonder what joy there could possibly be in my situation, locked away in the dark and cut off from family, friends, and colleagues for months. It’s the joy of knowing that, through this ordeal, I’ve become stronger and never lost faith in the cause to which I’ve dedicated my life.
While incarcerated, I’ve met many people I probably never would’ve encountered otherwise — people from all walks of life, with all kinds of educational backgrounds and criminal records. And every day, we have to figure out how to live together: how to organize chores in the cell, whether to open the window, where we might get a fridge or tea kettle. Basically, we hold little referendums all the time and find common ground.
Being an optimist has really helped me in prison; I look for the positive in any situation and try to lift people up. In that, I share the outlook of Pollyanna, the orphan girl [from Eleanor H. Porter’s 1913 eponymous novel]. Pollyanna’s father, a minister, taught her the “glad game,” where you have to find something to be happy about in everything and always look for the bright side. In the book, she goes on to teach it to everyone she meets. It’s not about ignoring problems, but about seeking solutions and learning something useful along the way.
Try playing the “glad game,” too. After all, if you think about it, each of us only ever has the present moment — the one we’re living right now. At no point is life anything other than “this moment.” And it makes no difference where you are in this instant: in your homeland or far abroad, on vacation or at work, at home or stuck in traffic, at a polling station or in a jail cell — you should live this moment with joy and positivity. There’s nothing but the present, the here and now.
That’s why prison has turned out to be a remarkably productive period for me, both personally and professionally. My creative side flourished: I started drawing, making collages and crafts, and writing poetry. And I began to see people, relationships, and the systems around us in a new light.
I’ve come to a deeper appreciation of the flow of life itself, along with work, creativity, and intellectual freedom. After all, you can imprison a person, but you can’t imprison a thought; you can’t stop it or take it away. Nothing can erase the road I’ve traveled or the world that has been — and remains — my own. Some may find it boring, but the kind of society we all dream of is impossible without fair laws and a transparent process that works. I think about this all the time, and I know I’m not alone. What unites us is an unshakable drive to think critically and imagine a better world, and the will to contribute something, however modest.
But what if we consider joy from a different perspective? Is there any true joy to be found in deceit, in tampering with the truth, in persecuting someone who’s innocent? What joy is there in pursuing a case like mine? A case that should have fallen apart at the pre-investigation stage, but kept getting kicked from one agency to the next because nobody wanted it. A case grounded not on evidence but on assumptions and the investigators’ ignorance of basic civil, administrative, and criminal law. A case that has seen eight different investigators. The very injustice of prosecuting an innocent person is what drains the joy from everyone entangled in this case.
But I hold no grudge against anyone. The strength to forgive and let go of bitterness, even when it feels beyond you, makes forgiveness one of life’s joys.
Your Honor,
The prosecution’s investigators have engineered an unprecedented situation. For the first time in our country’s history, they want to declare the Russian Central Election Commission’s assembly hall a crime scene and brand an invited expert speaker as a criminal.
As a lawyer, I find it incomprehensible that I’m on trial here at all. Most of all, I don’t understand why the burden is on me to prove I’m innocent when it should be on the investigators to prove my guilt, as Article 49 of Russia’s Constitution clearly states. This case is missing the very foundation of any criminal prosecution: the occurrence of a crime. Yet I am forced to prove a negative: that the Golos movement is not a structural subdivision of the international organization ENEMO [European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations], whose activities are banned in Russia; and that I did not organize ENEMO’s activities by speaking at a roundtable at the Central Election Commission.
In the end, it was the authorities and the facts themselves that helped prove my innocence. The first formal response from Russia’s Justice Ministry confirms that ENEMO has no structural subdivisions in our country, and the second clarifies that Golos has not been classified as an undesirable organization. No judicial or governmental body has ever moved to block or constrain the activities of Golos. And finally, the fact that ENEMO and the Golos movement are two separate entities is supported by official government decisions that list them in two separate registries: ENEMO in the list of “undesirable” organizations, and Golos in the registry of so-called “foreign agents.”
In effect, the entire case rests on baseless and inaccurate claims by law enforcement officers — claims that lack any evidentiary weight — and on fabricated conclusions that distort the content of documents in the case file.
And this is precisely where the Constitution’s guarantee should apply: any unresolved doubts must be interpreted in the defendant’s favor, inevitably resulting in an acquittal. Yes, such verdicts make up only 0.26 percent of cases nationwide today, but that proves they’re possible, which means courts aren’t always bound by the assumption of guilt.
Friends!
I am a citizen of Russia. I love my country and deeply value my constitutional rights and freedoms. I am sincerely grateful to our forebears for securing these hard-won gains. These days, rights and liberties may feel like a given, but behind bars, you understand how precious they are. You realize that winning them through blood and sweat isn’t enough — you must defend them and uphold them, again and again.
This is why it brought me real joy to develop proposals for how voting rights can be exercised inside a pretrial detention center. I’ve worked on ways for detainees in isolation to sign petitions in support of candidates’ nominations, donate to campaign funds, and receive campaign materials. I’ve also developed proposals for identity verification to facilitate ballot access and voting outside home districts, and to ensure meaningful election monitoring. This work is crucial because you retain your full voting rights in pretrial detention until you’re convicted and formally sentenced to prison. People tend to forget this. Over the past few months of close observation and reflection, I’ve come up with several useful solutions.
I don’t know how much longer my imprisonment will last, but I’m certain that sooner or later, I will be released and reunited with my loved ones and friends. That anticipation brings me great joy. I feel fortunate that, even behind bars, I can speak with my mother, write letters to kind people, meet with my defense attorneys, and continue the work I believe in.
Of course, I worry deeply about the future of the Golos movement, to which I’ve devoted 12 years of my life. I don’t know what my verdict will mean for Golos, but I do know that hundreds of thousands of educated and honest people have served as election monitors over the years. And while I’ve been locked up, these thousands of our compatriots haven’t wasted any time. They went on doing vital work for our country, defending the right to vote and monitoring, as Russia held nearly 9,000 election campaigns. It’s a remarkable case of grassroots civic organization and an inspiring display of citizenship. It brings me joy to be part of this community.
Some people question whether fair elections are even possible and wonder if voting is worth it. These are valid concerns, but in moments of uncertainty, we should remember that humans are flawed — and so too are elections. Elections lay bare the same failings we spend a lifetime trying to overcome. Every day, each of us chooses between kindness and cruelty, love and hate, loyalty and betrayal, strength and weakness, generosity and greed, truth and lies, optimism and apathy, humility and pride, sincerity and selfishness, joy and despair, engagement and indifference.
Our path is to do the right thing and to elevate honesty and common sense. Fair elections don’t happen on their own — they depend on us. It’s people who make elections honest. People who are happy. So, observe, participate, and find the joy in life! Elevate the level of honesty and common sense, little by little, one step at a time, every single day.
Thank you for listening to me so patiently. In closing, I want to thank, from the bottom of my heart, my family, my legal team, my coworkers, and the many good people who’ve stood by me and ensured I didn’t have to face this injustice alone. It tells me that what I did mattered — that it wasn’t all in vain.
Thank you!
Translation by Kevin Rothrock