A prosecutor who is seeking a guilty verdict against political performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky presented a unique argument in a Moscow court on Wednesday. According to charges read out by Anton Sizov, the door of the Federal Security Service or former KGB on Moscow’s Lubyanka Square, damaged when Pavlensky set fire to it last November, is a cultural heritage site because “leading figures of science and culture were imprisoned here”.
The prison was known as a site used for interrogation and torture during Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s Great Terror in the 1930s. Natalia Samover, a historian and architectural preservationist, told Gazeta.ru that the FSB door doesn’t qualify for cultural heritage status since it is a replica made in 2008. She also noted that other sites that deserve cultural heritage status in connection with Stalin-era repressions do not have it.
Pavlensky could face up to six years in prison for damaging cultural heritage if convicted.
