And the devil today, unfortunately, increasingly appears to us in the guise of the civic activist.

This is Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly Member Vitaly Milonov, as quoted on page 5 of the July 13, 2015, edition of local weekly newspaper Smena, on apparently thwarted plans to build a Russian Orthodox church in Malinovka park, in the eastern part of the city. The project has been opposed by a vigorous grassroots campaign on the part of local residents.

The newspaper also continues, for the second issue running, its wild denunciation of local supporters of improved conditions for bicycling in Petersburg. As things stand now, only the extremely bold or the recklessly suicidal would ride a bike on Petersburg’s mean streets, which are nearly totally bereft of bike lanes or other safety amenities for cyclists.

Darya Tabachnikova, recently appointed by city hall as its advisor on cycling issues, is denounced by the former local Communist Youth League newspaper as follows (on page 3):

Firstly, the modest cycling advisor Tabachnikova has worked in the past at the World Bank (an international organization headquartered in Washington, DC) and a branch of the major American company PriceWaterhouseCoopers. In general, when it comes to “Europeanization,” is probably an old hand.

You cannot make this stuff up, which is why I would suggest Smena should be adopted as classroom material by all progressive centers of Russian language pedagogy abroad such as Middlebury College and so on.

Because this is more and more the guise in which the Russian language is appearing to us today (to paraphrase the estimable Milonov): as an instrument for deliberately and cynically attempting to turn white to black, disrupting the critical faculties altogether, and turning the populace into a quivering, paranoid bowl of jelly. TRR