Denis Karagodin, a resident of the Siberian city of Tomsk, wanted the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to hand over the body of his great-grandfather, who was shot in 1938, and to bring the killers to trial.
However, some people do not like the fact that he is rummaging through the past - they complain about him to the state prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The BBC reveals how a PhD student at the Faculty of Philosophy, who almost left Russia forever, went in search of the historical truth about Stalinist repressions.
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A man in white sneakers and a light yellow raincoat has parked his scooter near the Tomsk detention center and is stepping over clay, rails and a construction site to reach the weed-covered hill.
This part of Tomsk is called Kaštak and is the place of mass executions of victims of the civil war and Stalin's repressions.
Karagodin is not here for the first time - even dogs living in abandoned garages stop barking when they see him.
He took a picture here, among a pile of garbage and half-broken concrete slabs.
He also studied this ravine by filming with a drone.
There he brought a dozen foreign journalists who made stories about him, about the lone fighter for justice, who requested an investigation into Stalin's repressions - Denis Karagodin.
The whole world heard about the thirty-eight-year-old Kargodin when he told reporters that since 2012 he has been looking for the names of the members of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKUP) of the USSR who shot his great-grandfather in 1938 because he wants to sue them posthumously and seek a conviction.
"I was neither interested in, nor am I interested in, any kind of repression - I deal with the murder of one man," says Karagodin.
"That's why I stay away from all human rights activists in greasy sweaters from Memorial [an international historical-educational charity researching political repression in the USSR].
"The first thing I heard was that they were discussing planting plants on the full moon... The State Prosecutor's Office is more important than the Memorial - it is the most important human rights organization in Russia," describes Karagoda's own approach.
The beginning of 2021 for him was marked by lawsuits - he was reported by citizens who were enraged by his research, and the chief of police forwarded the case to the Investigative Committee, an institution in Russia in charge of conducting pre-investigative and investigative procedures.
While waiting for the investigator's decision, Karagodin rides around Tomsk on a white scooter, writing his doctoral dissertation on the subject The phenomenon of aesthetics of dynamic incompleteness in the temporal anthropogenesis of culture of the post-structuralist tradition at Tomsk State University.
He likes to have lunch in Uzbek restaurants, where local inspectors are happy to stop by for lagman and pilaf.
Karagodin, it seems, has settled into the role of investigator himself - he greets plainclothes operatives when he meets them at the cash register or prosecutors on the street.
He even plans to rent the first floor in the building of the Investigative Committee in Tomsk on Bakuninova Street, which is being rented out on one of the most reliable real estate sites Cian for 22 thousand rubles a month.
However, for now he works in a two-room apartment not far from the FSB building in Tomsk.
The apartment is amazingly clean and tidy.
The cables are meticulously wound and attached to special nails according to size - from the smallest to the largest.
Three suitcases with a drone, audio equipment and similar gadgets.
There is also a box from the Ikea department store with the requests he made and the answers from the authorities.
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On the table in the hallway is a hard disk, flash drives and pliers so that, God forbid, if something happens, he can quickly destroy everything.
"Well, this is me, as a joke. I store all information in the cloud, under a code. If they take my phone, they will either decode it with Israeli software or stick a soldering iron in my butt," explains Karagodin.
There are two tables in a large room with white walls.
For one, Karagodin is writing a dissertation, and for another, he sheds light on the murder of his great-grandfather.
"You shouldn't do two things at the same table, you'll lose your mind," he believes.
Karagodin's picture is also on his desk.
- WITHwhat you keep on the table your picture?
- This I'm like replacement therapy. There was another photo here before. You can add that, to add some humanity, so readers don't think I'm a total psycho, Karagodin alludes to his recent breakup with his girlfriend.
There are a few more photos on the next shelf.
At one, former Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin presents Karagoda with the award for his research.
On the second, his great-grandfather with his family in a house near the Ukrainian city of Blagoveshtensko, and on the third, an article about Karagodin, published in Wall Street journal.
In the closet in the hallway, in front of the kitchen, Karagodin built a podcast studio.
He plastered it inside with black foam rubber, installed the strongest equipment and three photos: an economics professor from Moscow University, a programmer friend and an unknown, cute brunette from Instagram.
Closing the door and standing in front of it in the semi-darkness, he begins the story of his own research - a real podcast, the publication of which he has high hopes.
"Very cool character"
Karagodin was born as the oldest child in a multi-member family.
His mother is a mathematician by education, and his father worked in the military-industrial complex of the USSR.
Both are immigrants, and the family started their own business in the nineties.
"People from the military-industrial complex dispersed at that time.
Some soldered computer motherboards and sold gold from them, and some did all sorts of other things," says Karagodin.
He refuses to discuss the family business because he wants to protect his parents from Internet freaks.
His acquaintances add that the family has never pocketed money.
In the fifth grade, he traveled to France, attended the city's main high school together with the children of local officials, security forces and businessmen.
According to Karagodin, the Tomsk humanistic lyceum is a reflection of the deep state, referring to the American theory, according to which in the United States there is a group of officials and intelligence agents who influence state policy regardless of the elected leadership.
Many of Karagodin's friends enrolled in university with the help of a security quota, which meant five years of working in the security sector after graduation.
Karagodin, on the other hand, did not use this quota, but enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy of Tomsk State University because he wanted to study political science.
However, he made a mistake during the application and ended up in the Department of Philosophy.
He struggled there until his third year and even failed the year twice.
"Hades. Purgatory. All the traditions of ancient philosophy, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, continental, are all there," he recalls.
There he also studied mathematics, physics, biology and genetics.
"And then you think you've lost your mind until post-structuralism started and specialized seminars on mass consciousness and mass culture, semiotics, narratology.
"It is like a weapon of the originator of social systems," says Karagodin.
This is exactly what he will be dealing with for the next few years, as he begins an investigation into the shooting of his great-grandfather.
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In general, there are not many options after the Faculty of Philosophy, says Karagodin.
"You can work in a madhouse. At the counter that everyone forgets after graduation. In the security sector - many philosophers work in the Federal Security Service.
"Or in marketing. I chose marketing, advertising and design. Graphics, branding, slogans, campaigns.
"I started making money. "Between 2000 and 2005, there was an economic boom, we were broke and had nowhere to spend our money," he recalls.
According to his colleagues, he was known in the city as a very cool character, he was recognized in the cafe and on the street.
Organizing advertising campaigns, Karagodin and his friends opened clubs and bars in Tomsk, held parties, brought musicians - from the rap group Krovostok to the popular Lena Popova.
He traveled with the bar to Kazantip, a music-sports rave event in Crimea, where he drank antibiotics and was one of two sober people on the entire coast.
He was also engaged in lomography.
He took over abandoned garages and filmed naked people running there. "The regular cultural life of that time," he says.
There was less and less money in marketing, businesses collapsed in the 2008 crisis, and in 2011, when Vladimir Putin returned to the presidential chair, friends began to leave.
"Already then, we understood the path that the country would take to the devil," Karagodin's friend recalls the mood at that time.
With a teacher's degree in all subjects, except literature and history, Denis decided in 2011 to apply for a Fulbright scholarship in the USA.
When Putin announced on September 24 that there would be a political showdown with Medvedev, Karagodin was at the first meeting.
Soon after, one evening while sitting at the iPod, he happened to visit the Echo of Moscow website, where he saw an article on the 10 pluses of a Lithuanian passport.
The text mentioned the Law on Citizenship, and he became interested and continued reading.
It turned out that he was able to apply for a European passport - his great-grandfather on his mother's side was a Lithuanian who immigrated to Russia during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II.
According to Lithuanian laws, the descendants of such settlers could receive Lithuanian citizenship, but before that they had to renounce Russian citizenship with the possibility of regaining it.
While collecting documentation for Fulbright, as well as the commission of the Lithuanian Government, Karagodin was reaching for the closet in which there were family papers.
A certificate fell out of the red folder with birth certificates and health insurance documents.
The document in question was a document of the military collegium of the USSR from 1955 on the rehabilitation of Karagodin's great-grandfather, who was shot in 1938 - due to deficiencies in the factual state of the crime.
"It was black and white. I transferred it to my gallery and thought why is it black and white when all the others are in color... I decided to get the original," he says.
"And you have never tried to deal with family history?", a former resident of Tomsk and Karagodin's acquaintance, the author of the book Siberian Correctional Labor Camp NKUP (Personal the experience of finding the punished).
“When you first pick up a document related to your family... It will leave a very deep mark, to say the least.
He intrigued me terribly. You can forget about fictions and legends and build the real universe that was before you."
In the registry office in Tomsk, which was visited by Denis, they dusted off a pile of files and found a report on the cause of death of Stjepan Karagodin - a brain hemorrhage, and above it was written shooting with the stamp of the KGB.
“So, the color pink. She came in handy for the gallery," Karagodin recalls, and he went with her to the administration of the Federal Security Service in Tomsk.
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"There has been a murder"
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- Legs. You walk in and there's the second lieutenant on duty. You ask him to call the officer on duty. The major came. I tell him that a murder happened, and he's like, what?
I give him a copy of the military collegium and say that they have documents on this topic and ask that we review them. He instructs me to write a petition.
Karagodin wrote: Please grant me access to the archive file regarding my great-grandfather.
After 30 days, he received an answer and an invitation to stop by. They showed him a 74-year-old object.
An employee of the Department was sitting at the table with Karagodin, drinking water and watching as Denis wrote down the names of NKUP investigators in his diary.
- And where is the list of those who killed?, he asked.
- Submit a request for that information, she suggested.
In the first response to Karagodin, it is stated that the head of the City Department of the NKVP was to blame for the death of his great-grandfather and that he was prosecuted for violating socialist legality.
Karagodin was not satisfied with that: maybe he just went through the red light at the traffic light.
Later it turned out that he was shot for terrorism.
"I realized that no one is responsible for my great-grandfather's case. Now we're going to roll the dice, I've decided," he says.
In a year, he collected dozens of documents, requests and answers. He wrote to the courts, prosecutor's offices, FSB administrations, extracted certificates from the archives.
Although he intended to emigrate, in 2013 he did not go to Europe, but to the Far East to the village where his great-grandfather came from the south of Russia, from Kuban.
"I've always wondered what we're doing in Tomsk anyway. What happened that we all moved here? Nothing turned out," he says, implying that if his great-grandfather had not been arrested and his farm had not been destroyed, the Karagodin family would still be living in the Far East.
"When you think that those from the European part of Russia went to Blagoveshchensk for three years... On oxen... They survived the First World War, the Japanese and Civil War... These are great people".
In the village of Volkovo, near Blagoveshtensko, relatives of those who tried to save Denis's great-grandfather still live.
When Stjepan Karagodin was arrested, the villagers stood up for the president of the village council and at the meeting demanded that he be released on bail.
Karagodin met with the great-grandchildren of those people and presented them with letters of thanks to the countrymen from Karagodin's descendants.
The previously printed papers in A4 format were signed by descendants of Stjepan Karagodin from all over the world.
Denis and his friends were welcomed at the village school: children listened to the story of the founder of the village, grandmothers sang Kazakh songs, everyone took pictures together with the flags of Tomsk and Blagoveštensk.
In the meadow, where his great-grandfather's house was, Karagodin brought and buried the soil from the alleged place of his shooting in Tomsk.
Then he picked up earth from there to bury it in Tomsk, in the ravine, where death sentences were carried out.
Horses are grazing nearby.
Karagodin took a picture with one of them, and then he still doesn't know how it happened and how to formulate it.
"I saddled my horse and we galloped up that hill and with every thump of his hooves on the ground, the sky seemed to darken and thundered, as if a part of me had been left in this place.
"It was an absolutely mystical experience," he says.
Karagodin spent two weeks with his friends in the Far East. He returned to Tomsk, as he says transformed.
"I stopped being just a silent observer of history - after such an experience, I became its actor.
"With letters of thanks, soil and a photograph of the place of the house, I crossed the ravages of time and began to act," he says.
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"I refused to workfor the FSB intelligence service"
"Anyone can do that," says Karagodin.
He sees the research technique as simple, formal and stupid methodical work, but he admits that his studies came in handy, especially when you take into account the help of those colleagues who worked in the security sector after college.
Karagodin did not receive the Fulbright scholarship.
He failed interviews twice - he got annoyed when they asked him questions in English that related to him personally.
"During the exam, they forced us to take off everything, even the watch. And I can't function when I have nothing on hand, nothing to pick at. It certainly annoys me, especially when I have to talk about myself in public...", he recalls.
As he continued to communicate with courts, archives and the FSB, in 2013 he moved to Moscow, from where he traveled to European analytical centers.
He says that some people offered him a job, but on the condition that he does not return to Russia.
He also received offers in Russia, but with a ban on traveling abroad.
"It's about two competing organizations and I didn't like that, I don't live for the fact that I can't travel to or from somewhere," he explains.
As he says, he refused the offer of the Russian FSB.
"It would have been interesting for me if I had worked in IT, but it's not worth it.
"Believe me, once you fall into the system, after that you do everything to get out of it. And you can't leave from there. Only those who don't know what it's like inside think that you can escape from there," says Karagodin.
He received his Lithuanian passport in 2015.
As the child of migrants, he obtained a residence permit in Russia, but does not have the right to vote.
Three years of living in the capital were marked by personal drama.
He did all kinds of jobs.
In the club Arma-17 and at the Outline music festival, he followed the work of a bartender. He worked in the dressing room at the Redakcija bar for 1000 rubles (about 1800 dinars).
As a courier, he delivered orders from the flower shop.
The following year, in 2016, he realized that the jobs he liked in Europe required a defended dissertation.
He no longer wanted to work as a delivery man and returned to Tomsk.
"In Russia, this topic is not in the public discourse"
Then the FSB Department in Tomsk had its way: they did not show Karagodin the record of the shooting, they deleted the numbers of the shooting orders from the copies of the documents, and without them it is impossible to form a true picture of the event.
"Only I didn't shout at them - where are the documents? I didn't get any information again," he says.
He was so furious that he couldn't fall asleep right away.
"In order to calm down, I played my favorite Volček and Genis show on Radio Sloboda and fell asleep.
"And when I woke up, I was still mad," he recalls.
It was a June day in Tomsk.
Karagodin checked his mail and saw an invitation from Radio Sloboda journalist Dmitry Volchek to be a guest on his show.
By the end of 2016, Karagodin's name was all over the news - the public began to discuss his project.
Karagodin continued to search for documents about the shooting.
"I already thought that I would have to start a campaign through the State Duma, and I established connections with the deputies in order to go on the offensive through them.
Nevertheless, I decided to send another official request to the FSB administration in Novosibirsk."
From there, in November 2016, he received an envelope with ten stamps.
Inside were copies of documents that the FSB administration in Tomsk said did not exist.
It was written on the papers that on January 21, 1938, 36 people, including Karagodin's great-grandfather, were killed by firing squad in the Tomsk prison.
"I couldn't believe my eyes. There were the names, surnames and functions of the executors. I was stunned".
Karagodin wrote a controversial text for the Radio Sloboda website and he went a little too far - the text shook Russia and went around the world.
The article states that there is no national discussion on this topic in Russia, and now Karagodin is starting it.
"It was a false start for five years. We wanted to place the story on foreign platforms when we collect all the documents and submit them to the court.
However, the news spread on its own, and we had to direct it and lead it in the right direction," says Karagodin.
Correspondents from the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Bild, Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Mundo, Times and other media went to Tomsk.
The crews of the Russian First Channel and Life News also came.
Karagodin did not speak with the Russian media, redirecting them to the project's website.
Broadcasts on pro-government channels were sabotaged, and according to him, the experts they called refused to come as guests.
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When he encountered stories about him on state television, Karagodin changed the game and began to apply the media manipulation methods of professor Valery Solovyov, known in Russia for his nationalist views.
"That's why, for example, an article appeared on the BBC," he says.
"My task was to encourage foreigners to a specific goal and it went well," he explains.
Each country has its own way of conceiving stories and gave each a different angle, says Karagodin.
"The Germans are questioning and accepting the stories in their own way, the Spaniards seem to have pushed this topic under the carpet - whatever, it's over, so we can talk about the forecast.
In South America, where the blood is hot - the third variant".
He had no nervousness before interviews.
"It was fine, you prepare a monologue at your own discretion, like a lecture or a seminar. "My hands didn't sweat," he says.
In November 2017, Karagodin published a letter from the granddaughter of Nikolaj Zirjanov, one of the employees of Tomsk NKUP, in which Julia publicly apologized for her ancestor's activities.
She said that she learned the truth about his real occupation from the material on Karagodin's website, which shocked her.
A new media storm followed.
"I was satisfied with this acquaintance as a source of information, and I don't care about the rest," says Karagodin.
He did not give Zirjanova's contact information to journalists.
As proof that the granddaughter is not a figment of Karagodin's imagination, he encloses the passport of an employee of the NKUP with a photo and a form from the shooting prison that Zirjanova sent him from the family archive.
"For someone, it's a goal so that the Independent would write an article about it, and for us it's a means, like money in business.
"It's a resource that you pay for with time spent.
We sacrificed privacy - you got on Google and stayed there forever.
"Our goal was to obtain documents, and after the campaigns in the media, the job became more difficult for me.
"I didn't expect media exposure because these kinds of activities should be carried out inconspicuously," explains Karagoda's attitude towards the media.
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"We don't need money, we need documents"
Karagodin received the award of the Foundation of Alexei Kudrin, a close comrade of Putin, in the Air of Freedom category, which was presented to him personally by the former Minister of Finance.
The ceremony was attended by Karagodin's acquaintances - foreign media correspondents whom he himself invited, and he dedicated his speech to Julia Zirjanova, the granddaughter of the NKUP worker who asked for forgiveness.
The next day, together with Ingeborg Dapkunajte, he participated in Kirill Serebrenikov's performance of Stalin's funeral.
Karagodin invited the representative of the European Union to the performance.
"Dennis always knew how to establish social interaction," say his acquaintances with a laugh.
Karagodin remained selective when it comes to the media.
When the Kommersant publishing house nominated him for Person of the Year, the resident of Tomsk asked that everyone who wants to vote for him, vote for the girl who saved the children in the tragedy at the Syamozersky Lake in Karelia.
He refused to speak at the academician Sakharov's center, he refused the Boris Nemtsov Foundation award and the Profession - Journalist award from Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
“God, not that! It's a political tool, and we don't need something like that even under the miscellany. I didn't want to take part in the political revenge of third parties," Karagodin recalls his reaction.
He asked the Khodorkovsky Foundation to transfer the money to the school's account in Blagoveshchensk.
The Foundation replied to the BBC that they did so.
However, the school in Volkovo said that they did not receive the money.
"The students and I were happy and planned to restore the museum, but the money did not arrive. The other teachers later made fun of me for a long time and asked me where my money was," said the teacher.
Karagodin and his five acquaintances do not want to say how much and how they earn a living.
"I earn enough. When needed, I take on the family business, and earn extra money as a media consultant," he says.
He recently bought a scooter and is now looking to buy a motorbike.
Karagodin does not shed light on the cases of other families.
He only helps those whose story resonates with him for free, like the letter from the daughter of an 85-year-old pensioner who wanted to know the names of those who shot her father.
"We found everything for them, and then I received a video of a woman, who has no idea what the site is, lying down, crying over the papers and thanking us," he says.
"We don't need money, we need documents.
"The project lives entirely on donations, which are not many.
"The average amount is a little more than a thousand rubles, which is enough for equipment, VPN, secure mail and archive requests that can amount from 500 rubles to 50 thousand," says Karagodin.
They asked the readers of the site to provide them with a drone, which required about 150 thousand rubles (about 180 thousand dinars).
Karagodin thought it would take them 4 months to collect that amount, but it turned out that a few weeks were enough.
When his laptop was stolen in Novosibirsk, Karagodin was left with his phone and hotel key in his shirt pocket.
By the time he got home, they had already transferred so many donations that he was able to buy a more expensive and faster laptop than the stolen one.
Kudrin spent the prize on a server and a new iPhone.
At his own expense, Karagodin records podcasts in Russian and English about investigations.
Each episode costs about 200 thousand rubles, and his plan is to make money from paid subscriptions and advertisements.
He had to postpone the spring premiere due to two reports to the police and the prosecutor's office for revealing the names and biographies of the employees of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which the investigator published on the website in the section Executors.
"He's trying to beat the system with their arguments"
In March 2020, a lawsuit was filed with the prosecutor's office by Novosibirsk pensioner Sergej Mityushov, the son of the NKUP inspector whose signature appears on the certificate of shooting Karagodin's great-grandfather.
He demanded to shut down the site that tarnished his father's honor and reputation, and stated that Mityush Sr. was only an official, not an executor.
Another complaint that Karagodin bears responsibility for what was said was submitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs by a resident of Ryazan.
"Karagodin's great-grandfather participated in the uprisings and planned to undermine the Bolshevik government. He was guilty," Mečislav Prokofiev, a former cadet of the Ryazan Military School, explained his pretensions to journalists.
"Only five to 10 percent of the 600 executed died in vain. And the people from NKUP that Karagodin mentions were not convicted, so he slanders them.
"He's doing it for money - on every page of the site there is a big yellow Donate button, of course, all in order to blacken history," he said.
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The problem with the lawsuit lies in the fact that Prokofiev blames Karagodin for publishing personal information, even though he found out about it in the FSB.
In this, Karagodin saw an opportunity to fight the system using systemic arguments, and he does not hide that he is looking forward to the fact that the Investigative Committee will check the material.
Critics of Karagodin's work still do not understand why he does all this.
"Why keep stoking the fire? Maybe it's better to forget those times if you don't want a civil war?"
"After the shooting of my great-grandfather, they had a plan to exterminate all relatives, but the orders were not carried out due to bureaucratic reasons.
"So it's a question of my existence.
"After all, what do you think, is it possible to kill a man and then act as if nothing happened? Physical extermination does not always solve the problem. Well, they killed Jesus, and?
"It is important to collect and consolidate facts, whether legal, symbolic or cultural. I inserted that into the semiotic structure and now they live their own lives, Karagodin counters the critics.
- That is, that is what you studied for the last two years at the university.
- Yes, and what I did after my undergraduate studies, working on my dissertation. It is a mixture of temporariness, bureaucratic practices and post-structuralists. Michel Foucault's heterotopia - the transition theory of interdepartmental interaction.
You can choose their methods and apply them, for example, during an investigation. And I am an autonomous unit of power that builds its own part of reality.
- Write it on the business card. And what will happen next with the project?
- Our goal is to collect the legal facts of the murder and do a separate campaign with the body. Give the body. Where are the remains? Do the DNA. It's a good separate and powerful campaign, so they'll have to do something about it.
We will be the first Russians to receive the Nuremberg International Prize for Human Rights, and it is not an award for just one process, but many smaller ones.
In April 2020, the Investigative Committee of the Tomsk Region announced a competition for artworks about its own activities.
Karagodin found out about it on their website and quickly submitted two papers about his pre-investigation procedure and the investigation of his great-grandfather's murder.
He is the only one who applied for the competition and is now waiting for the prize.
"I understand Denis because our Russian reality is not possible without surrealism.
In order not to be a victim in Karpman's triangle [psychological and social model of human interaction], it is easier to be an observer, but Denis still became an actor," says his friend and fellow citizen, marketing expert, Sergey Gorelnikov, with a laugh.
- Are you afraid of prison? - I ask Karagodin.
- If that's the price for what I did, I'm ready to pay it. However, as for the latest charges, I know that there are no elements of crime there at all and the FSB and the Investigative Committee will not deal with it, although I have received suggestions to flee the country.
The only option for me to do that will be if the Investigative Committee announces a sports competition, then I will run the relay.
"He wants the system to trip over him"
He is alone in Tomsk. In order to discuss him, it is necessary to call Lisbon, Prague, Petersburg, Moscow.
Almost all his friends and acquaintances left the city.
Karagodin corresponds with a friend about planting ficus.
While having dinner, he watches the streams of Oleg Kashin and Yekaterina Šuljman.
They sleep in Siberia and wake up in Moscow time.
He is writing a dissertation, thinking about extending his academic career at one of the American universities.
He fantasizes about a house with wireless internet and a window overlooking the Pacific Ocean in a town of three hundred people, like the one they call a town with three houses and two bars in America.
- Usually in such cities alive maniacs.
- Exactly.
In Tomsk, where half a million people live, and with all the media fame, Karagodin is invisible.
"We know little about him, and on the other hand, there is no person he hasn't spoken to at least once," say local journalists about Karagodin.
"An unknown man with a double bottom," says his former friend Vasilij Hanevich, a member of the board of the International Memorial and one of the founders of the NKUP Investigation Prison museum, for the investigator.
"No one knows anything about him, he is a phantom," says Haničev.
"Not even the Lithuanian ambassador, in whose office Denis took the oath of Lithuania when he unveiled the monument to the oppressed Lithuanians in Tomsk.
"The ambassador asked me what kind of man Karagoda is, what he represents".
Hanichev says that he supported Karagodin even during the researcher's studies.
"He is doing the right and important thing, but he has changed, he has become a star.
"Heavy is not a good enough word to describe him.
"I have no desire to talk to him.
"He is conflicted, he initiates artificial conflict situations and then publishes them.
"We really don't know what he lives on.
"I see some kind of pathology in his spending money on coloring photos of those people he calls executioners.
"Well, they killed his great-grandfather, and I killed my great-grandfather, his brothers, uncles, the whole family.
"I'm collecting information, I wrote a book about his village, but who executed them is not in my sphere of interest.
"The topic of revenge is not close to me, while Denis is in a continuous investigation, as if he is playing the role of an investigator," Haneviča is worried about the researcher's post-structural approach.
Denis sees this approach as a price for the collected data.
We talk to Hanevich in the NKUP prison - the basement of the Soviet Investigative Detention Center located on the main street across from the native museum.
The former cells were converted into three halls, the doors with rusted latches were a gift from the Federal Penal Service administration, and in the investigator's office, according to Hanevič, visitors always sit on the chairs of the NKUP employees, and never on the suspects' seats.
Our meeting is interrupted several times by phone calls - people looking for oppressed relatives.
"Now it has become more frequent, the interest has obviously increased," Hanevič believes.
"Immortal Regiment, Immortal Barracks. The desire for a personal history, not a general one - it's encouraging to see that such things are happening," Hanevič believes.
At the same time, the discussion about the culprits, in which Karagodin participates, flares up.
"Then it's everyone's fault. Painters and directors who glorified it all. The West that was silent and that rejoiced in our free socialism," Hanevič counters.
"I haven't been sitting here for 30 years because I like this basement. This is my personal regret because I was a member of the party that shot my grandfathers.
"Karagodin's parents probably also had connections with the Soviet authorities," he says.
Karagodin did not want to comment on these words.
Journalist Dmitry Volchek sees in Karagodin's investigation a multidimensional project that goes against reality.
"I really like that he perceives the dead as alive and that he is not disturbed by the fact that they are not alive.
I myself worked in the archive and I know what it looks like when you feel as if someone from another world is controlling you - this is what many archivists experience," says Volček about the mystical aspect of the project.
"Denis was not an ordinary student. And now it looks like he is obsessed with the project," says Karagodin's university professor.
It is personal history that has been transformed into social action and art, he believes.
"In addition to wanting to establish historical justice, he wants the system to trip over him.
"Fight him with his means.
"Nevertheless, I have the feeling that he is not aware of the risk that comes not so much from the state, but from revolted relatives," he says.
Of course, Denis has his own, little-known, principles that can be annoying, says one of his friends.
For example, he is arguing with the "Last Address" project.
In the part about the oppressed residents of various Russian cities, the names of the NKUP workers who were shot, that is, those who were primarily part of the organization and implementation of the great terror, and then became its victims themselves, are not mentioned.
"My view is that death is the same for everyone. Therefore, I decided to send them a request with the name of the prosecutor whom I consider to be one of the main killers of Tomsk at that time.
"However, he was almost shot, and he was also recorded in the book of memories as a victim of political repression. And in the Last Address, they started segregating people, which doesn't suit me," he explains.
- I don't like that kind of action. It is a poor and sensitive construction.
- And isn't that what they accuse you of when they say you used your great-grandfather and turned him into a media unit?
- You mean something like a grandfather merchant? No, that's different. His biography was partly in the books of remembrance of war victims, and on the website we have a special section - controlled publicity.
And where did the opponents, who say that my great-grandfather was allegedly on the side of Japan, get that information? Well, from our website, where we personally set it up. They follow the path we lead them to follow.
- That is, you apply your education and test the state and society.
- We can't wait for someone to figure it out.
"I wouldn't call him a sociopath, but there's something there."
Karagodin's acquaintances assure that fame has not changed him.
"Of course we make fun of him for being a celebrity, but that's not his goal," says his friend Sergey Gorelnikov, who deals with cognition, psycholinguistics and neuromarketing.
"To the media, it may seem withdrawn, but for him it was a special edition so that he would not melt away and continue to investigate, especially after the media boom he caused.
"He's not very extroverted.
"You can talk to him for hours without touching the topic of personal relationships. I wouldn't call him a sociopath, but there is something there.
It is chaotic and anxious, but also conceptual," analyzes Sergej Gorelnikov, who deals with cognition, psycholinguistics and neuromarketing.
"And according to the psychological profile, Denis fits into the paranoid-schizophrenic category," Gorelnikov says after analyzing him in rapture for a good half an hour.
After the conversation I find the book "How to understand the people of Arkadi Egides" and readsm.
"Paranoid personality profile. Persuasive speech. He has a messiah mission. He sacrifices himself and others. Mediator of social processes. He manipulates the crowd.
It breaks tradition. Traitor. Blackmailer. He makes mistakes and doesn't regret it. Intolerant. Makes you work for an idea. Hard on the family. His house is his office".
Wow, I'm thinking everything.
"Schizophrenic. People from this category think and act in such unusual ways that others around them cannot possibly understand them. Philosophical faculties are full of such".
Perhaps it is better not to ask anything more.
- What are you reading? -I ask Karagodin because I decide to specify at the end.
- Platonova. I almost sent quotes to my friend, and she asks me: "Don't you have enough?" What are you reading?
- Microbe hunter. There's a paragraph for you there. "All this may seem silly to you, but know that the most important thing in business is to stick firmly to your line and never deviate from the set path.
Pasteur suffered defeat and resumed his search with that total disregard for common sense which sometimes turns a hopeless case into a glorious victory."
And there is something there about senseless and aimless loneliness that appears as the main condition of true seeking.
- That's right. Let me read it.
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