Kolotursky toured a significant portion of the Luhansk regional bureaucracy in search of support.
True, the police gave him a note certifying him alive; but in most cases Mikhail would spend a day or two waiting outside an office only to learn, sometimes in writing, they couldn't help him, as he didn't exist.
The Ukrainian legal system did of course offer its traditional solution to difficult cases -- while Mikhail was waiting for an audience with a Luhansk appellate judge -- and a "friend of the court" approached him offering to bring him back to legal life in exchange for a US$100 bribe.
"We live on about US$15 a month," Mikhail said. "Where am I going to get money like that?"
Eighteen months of documented death later, Mikhail now has a promise from the Ministry of Internal Affairs they will issue him a passport by August, but as yet no identification papers have arrived.
The Kolotursky family is still paying for Mikhail's funeral.
The unknown body is still in the Kolotursky family grave and -- since there is no money to replace them -- the etchings in the man's headstone will, for the foreseeable future, read "Mikhail Kolotursky 1954-2001."
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