Apr 18: Bernstein & Cullison: Evan's Letter
As published in the Wall Street Journal on April 14, 2023
Jailed WSJ Reporter in Letter Home Says He Is ‘Not Losing Hope’
By Elizabeth Bernstein and Alan Cullison; Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2023
Handwritten letter in Russian is first direct communication Evan Gershkovich has had with his family
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, in his first letter to his family since being arrested in Russia on an allegation of espionage, said he remained optimistic, looked forward to seeing them and joked about prison food.
“I want to say that I am not losing hope,” he wrote in a brief, two-page note that his family in Philadelphia received on Friday. “I read. I exercise. And I am trying to write. Maybe, finally, I am going to write something good.”
The handwritten letter, dated April 5, is the first direct contact Mr. Gershkovich has had with his family since his arrest more than two weeks ago in Russia.
The letter was written in Russian, the language he speaks at home with his parents, both Soviet émigrés. His mother, Ella Milman, said Mr. Gershkovich leavened the letter with gentle teasing of his parents, in an apparent effort to keep his family’s spirits up.
“Mom, you unfortunately, for better or worse, prepared me well for jail food,” he wrote. “In the morning, for breakfast, they give us hot creamed wheat, oatmeal cereal or wheat gruel. I am remembering my childhood.”
Mr. Gershkovich addressed the letter to his “dear family”—his mother, father Mikhail and sister Danielle, whom he referred to by her family nickname, Duscia. The family recently spoke out for the first time since their son’s arrest, in a video interview with the Journal.
Ms. Milman, 66, said she felt “great joy” upon receiving the letter, because she is finally hearing firsthand how he is doing. “These are my son’s words, not someone else telling me,” she said. “And his spirit is shining.”
As he faces an allegation of espionage, all of Mr. Gershkovich’s prison meetings and correspondence will be monitored by Russia’s security services, and court proceedings will be held before a judge behind closed doors, according to the Russian legal specialists.
So far, Mr. Gershkovich has only been allowed visits from his Russian lawyers. He hasn’t yet been allowed to see friends or officials from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, despite repeated demands for access.
Read Evan Gershkovich’s Work
A sampling of the WSJ reporter’s coverage of Putin’s Russia and a country at war
In the letter, Mr. Gershkovich confirmed he received a care package, arranged by a friend and containing sundries such as toiletries, slippers, clothes and pens, to ease his life in confinement at Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison, run by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor to the KGB.
“I now have more clothes and stuff than mom and dad at home, I think,” he wrote.
Lefortovo traditionally has held high-profile inmates including Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, several 1991 coup plotters against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who has been held since 2018. Mr. Gershkovich is the first overseas journalist to be charged with espionage by Russia since the Cold War.
In a nod to the emotional toll his imprisonment is taking on his family members, he acknowledged that they would probably like to smack him.
“Don’t worry. You will have your chance to do it,” he wrote.
He signed the letter with his nickname: “Until we meet soon. Write me. -Vanya.”
Write to Elizabeth Bernstein at Elizabeth.Bernstein@wsj.com and Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com