Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:36:24 -0500
From: Alexander Winfield <sheepwpunks-AT-gmail.com>
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Nikolai Shishkin


I am very sorry to hear this. I remember being nervous when I heard he had
passed away due to 'mysterious injuries' I believe the phrase was. I have
followed the uprise of such deaths over the last ten years (or more?), being
particularly shocked at the recent death of noted journalist and human
rights activist Natalia Estemirova, who was last seen being bundled into a
van while screaming she was being abducted. Natalia was at work exposing
injustices the current Russian-backed government of Chechnya was accused of
committing against its own people, if memory serves.
What did Shishkin know? Or what did he say in the wrong company? If Shishkin
was silenced violently (as seems to be the suspicion) then, like the many
deaths of journalists, his loss is not only a tragedy for his family, but
for their country and our world as well. We are granted only so many
extraordinary people in a lifetime, and their extinction means it will be
all the harder to rise to the heights they aspired to, and achieve the
victories against cruelty they gave their lives fighting for.

-Alexander

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Robert Rogers <
robertrogers-AT-robertrogerspuppets.com> wrote:

> I recently reported the death of puppet theater director Nikolai Shishkin,
> who was back in Russia to direct a production for the Obraztsov company.  He
> had been attacked in October and lay in a coma for a month.  John and Carol
> Potocnik of the Catskill Puppet Theater was in touch with his family, and
> sent me this e-mail:
>
>
>     Galina (his wife) called us Sunday morning about the wake.   We didn't
> really get a chance to talk much to the family because it was structured so
> that people got up and spoke about Nikolai.  There was a sign up saying that
> he was beaten by 'strangers' but then picked up in an 'ambulance' and taken
> away to parts unknown for 22 hours before he finally was brought to the
> hospital.  Galina bribed an administrator to read his records and found out
> that he had come out of his coma on Nov. 11th but nobody had told her.  She
> got up at the wake and asked  "What did he know? What did he find out?" So I
> guess her theory is he "knew too much".  He wasn't robbed so it's all pretty
> mysterious.
>
>
> Galina said that the Russian Mafia made it really difficult to bring him
> home, but Dasha (his daughter) didn't want to leave him there in Russia.
> That's about all I know so far.  It's really a sad and scary situation.
>
> Robert Rogers
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