This past spring, I posted a translation of an article, originally published on the news and commentary website Grani.ru (which has long been banned in Russia) about the plight of Boris Yakovlev, a singer-songwriter from the town of Dno, in Pskov Region, whom the FSB had charged with “extremism,” allegedly, for the “seditious” content of his songs. Yakovlev has now left the country and applied for political asylum in Finland, where Grani.ru caught up with him.
My personal, unsurprising prediction is that the number of “extremists” will quadruple, if not worse, in the coming year. TRR
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The Herald of Revolution from Dno Station
Grani.ru
October 11, 2017
On October 10, Pskov City Court ordered the arrest of the dangerous [sic] extremist Boris Yakovlev at the request of the FSB. By that time, the 44-year-old Dno resident had ignored an written undertaking to report to court on his own recognizance and applied for asylum in Finland. Criminal charges had been filed against him for anti-Putin songs posted on YouTube and the Russian social network VK. The crime Yakolev has been charged with (calls for extremism on the internet) carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison.
The forensic examination in the case was performed by Andrei Pominov, a lecturer at Bashkir State University. He discovered in the lyrics to Yaklovev’s songs “psychological and linguistic means aimed at inducing an unspecified group of persons to carry out extremist actions aimed at forcibly changing the existing state system or seizing power.”
Translated by the Russian Reader
In Helsinki, Boris Yakovlev explains that revolution in Russia is inevitable given the country’s deteriorating economic, political, and social conditions.
The Russian Reader 