Quotes about Nikita Before the Murders: His Childhood and Teen Years
This will just be a large collection of quotes about Nikita before the arrest, from several different sources, though mainly his mother, childhood friends. What he was like as a kid, in school, and as a teen. You'll notice that descriptions of him are very, very consistent. Shy, anxious, and withdrawn. It's also consistently reported that he changed in the fifth grade, going from relatively shy, to severely isolated.
Marina Lytkin - Nikita's Mother
"He could not resist violence. He couldn't fight back at all. He was afraid of everything, he was a coward." Marina says. And in her mouth, this does not sound insulting to her son. It is now merely a fact of Nikita's past life.
"He was always withdrawn. He never complained about anything. But there were depressions and grievances. And he would never tell, you had to drag it out of him with pliers. He never showed initiative. He was afraid of everything. He was even afraid to talk on the phone. His friend Artur would call, and he wouldn't want to pick up the phone. And when he did pick it up, his little hand would sweat."
"In elementary school, Artur looked after him. He took him by the hand and led him around. What did Artur see in Nikita back then? He treated him like an object. But he also helped a lot, he helped him adapt. Nikita didn't know how to refuse, didn't know how to say "no." He had no opinion of his own. I taught him that you need to be able to say that very "no." And when he learned, he and Artur parted ways and stopped being friends."
"At first, Nikita was teased, they bullied him. And then they started extorting money from him. Then one of his classmates offered him protection, and in exchange, together with older guys, demanded money. To put it simply, he engaged in extortion."
"If I understood you correctly, Nikita used to have friends. The press talked a lot about the fact that he was a loner and peers avoided him. Until the 5th or 6th grade, Nikita had many friends. Then he met Artyom."
"Nikita never brought anything to an end. He practiced music a little, played scales, but as soon as it got harder, he quit. He went to the "Iskatel" club to study drawing. He had talent, he even took first place in a city competition. The teacher wanted to transfer him to art school, but Nikita refused. He went to kickboxing in the same way. But there was no success there, he never won. The only time he took third place, but then he kept saying it was undeserved, an unfair result. Then he stopped going to classes altogether. I ran into him on the street once at a time when he should have been at practice. Nikita never found anything constructive, work to his liking. No purpose in life was ever discovered."
"He told me that he considered himself shit, that he was a nonentity, scum, and was not going to live long." Her son's destructive remarks filled Marina with horror. Now she believes that faith could have saved and can still save her son.
"His taciturnity, the desire to keep everything inside, and his withdrawal manifested themselves in full measure in late adolescence. The boy had obsessive movement syndrome. Lately, for example, he was struck by yawning. He yawned often and wide, so that his jaw started clicking."
"... I tried taking him to psychologists in his childhood. We went with him to the city psychological help center on Krasnoarmeyskaya. They didn't even talk to him. We went there for three days and took various tests the whole time. Finally, Nikita declared that he would never go there again. Then I found a female psychologist through acquaintances. We went to her house. She told us about Nikita's lag in psychological development compared to his peers. She advised not to pressure him, to give him more freedom, to give him personal space... We went, but nothing helped. Nikita withdrew further and further. I was already in despair. I even went to see a psychologist-astrologer. I was in such a desperate state."
In the summer of 2009, a few months before the start of the "hunt," Marina and Nikita gathered to go to the sea. Nikita promised that he would go. The closer the departure date got, the less he wanted to go. But he still boarded the train. However, once on the train, he began to sob. "He cried. He said he didn't want to go. It seems to me he was pulled back, to Artyom. When we got back, he immediately ran to his friend."
"He didn't leave the computer since he was about 16. I hid the keyboard, fought it somehow. But it was useless."
Soon Nikita stopped sleeping at night. At all. He demanded sleeping pills from his mother. From being meticulous, he turned into an absolute sloven. His bed was a gray ball of dirty laundry. He slept in his clothes. "I think his soul was getting dirty and he didn't want anything else" (source)
As Nikita Lytkin's mother explained, in elementary school the children communicated normally with the child, but in the fifth-grade math class, where he was assigned based on test results, "his classmates did not accept him." (source)
"One or two years before all this happened, he 'drowned' on the internet. I don't know what went through his mind. I can't explain it to you, I can't explain it." (source)
Irina Lytkin - Nikita's Grandmother
"He wasn't behaving normally. He didn't sleep well, he only fell asleep in the morning. He was always on the computer and his mom can't do anything about it. He stopped taking care of himself, even though he used to be neat." (source)
Sergei - Nikita's Childhood Friend
"Overall, he was quite an unremarkable person. In people's words, he was kind of goofy. He would play by himself during breaks. While the rest of us normal guys were playing volleyball, running around, and so on, he would just walk around, tossing a ball against the wall. He was a bit odd. Like I said, it seemed to us like he was just shy. He didn't have a strong character, just withdrawn."
"At his core, Nikita was a good, reliable friend. He was very interesting, very unique."
"Nikita was bullied constantly, at least whenever he wasn't with me. When he was with me, I would stand up for him. Such moments didn't happen around me because people knew me; I was an influential guy in class, so to speak. There were a few strong guys among us who were always fighting, but nobody touched me, and when Nikita was in my group, nobody messed with him either. But yes, he was bullied. Schoolchildren can be quite harsh. They did mean things, they'd smear his pens or write slurs in his pencil case."
"Do I know why they bullied him? I can guess: for one simple reason: he was different from everyone else. He was very quiet and peaceful, but he never fought back. He was likely weak and fearful. So people thought, "I'll pick on this loser, what's he going to do to me? Nothing.""
"How easy was it for Nikita to make new friends? Extremely difficult. Again, because Nikita was different. Withdrawn, insecure. He was afraid that people would hurt or mistreat him."
"Do I think Artyom noticed Nikita was naive/vulnerable and used it for his own interests? Of course he noticed it. I personally believe that it was under Artyom's influence that Nikita committed all that terrible stuff. On his own, he would never have done it. He was too fearful and cowardly; he wouldn't have done it on his own. He was a follower, he was very easy to control and direct. I never used that against him; I just considered him a friend. But fate showed how it turned out."
"Did I ever notice Nikita being depressed? Nikita was depressed almost all the time. Walking to school, coming back from school, he was always down. He was a homebody, he hated going out or doing activities outside. Just chilling at home was his favorite thing."
"What was he most afraid of? Good question... He was afraid of many things. He was afraid of being considered a coward, even though he was one." (source)
Andrey Kornilov - Nikita's Childhood Friend
In the fifth grade, something incomprehensible happened to Nikita. He withdrew into himself and began looking at his classmates like a wolf cub. "I remember very well the day it all started. When he distanced himself from me, from everyone..." Andrey recounts. "During the first class, Nikita walked into the room; we were all sitting together. He didn't greet anyone. I said to him, 'Hi,' and he muttered something in response. From then on, he never greeted any of us again. He crammed himself into the back desk, stopped studying, didn't do his homework, and stayed silent at the blackboard."
Around the same time, classmates began mocking Nikita. Andrey insisted on a milder phrasing: they were just amusing themselves. Every day, two or three times a day, the kids poked fun at him. Once, the main bully in the class grabbed him by the collar of his jacket. Another time, Nikita was doused with white correction fluid. Andrey himself never touched his former friend. He felt sorry for him, but couldn't do anything. "He might not have been bothered if he hadn't reacted that way. When people poked fun at Nikita, he would say, 'Die.' The kids found this hilarious."
"Why didn't the teachers intervene?" the lawyer asked. "Everything happened during breaks. The teachers didn't see anything. But once, a teacher did notice. She said, 'Leave him alone.'" (source)
They recounted that by the fifth grade, Nikita had already become an object of mockery, the kids "picked on" him, and gradually he withdrew into himself. The character reference documents reviewed during the judicial investigation at the last session also generally point to the same psychological changes.
Nikita was a most ordinary kid until he wanted, as he stated in that same interview with our newspaper, to prove to himself that he was not a "trembling creature."
According to the witness, neither of the defendants possessed a strong-willed or leadership character in elementary school, but when Lytkin withdrew into himself in the fifth grade and gradually became an object of mockery, "a line was crossed" after which he could no longer be considered a leader unconditionally.
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