Sergey Abashin
August 25, 2015
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Today’s news is impressive even compared to the usual madhouse. The ruble has “stabilized” at just under seventy to the dollar. Vasilyeva, a minister’s lover who stole millions, was released “for good behavior” almost immediately after being sentenced [in May of this year], while the filmmaker Sentsov, who stole nothing and killed no one, was sentenced to twenty years in prison for “terrorism.” Rospotrebnadzor [The Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-Being], which has now replaced the chief sanitary inspector, has banned imported washing products in order to “protect consumers.” And someone else tried to block access to Wikipedia, because it contained “extremism” or something of the sort. The symptoms are clear.
Sergey Abashin is British Petroleum Professor of Migration Studies at the European University in Saint Petersburg. His most recent book is Sovetskii kishlak: Mezhdu kolonializmom i modernizatsiei [The Soviet Central Asian village: between colonialism and modernization], Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2015. Translated and annotated by the Russian Reader. Photo of Bruce Willis and Russian flag wavers courtesy of Google Images.
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