Month: April 2018

Vladimir Mayakovsky, “Zigzags in the Evening”

astral plane.jpg

Vladimir Mayakovsky
Zigzags in the Evening

The windows shattered the city’s colossal hell
Into minuscule light-sucking hellets
The cars cavorted like rust-colored devils
Horns exploding in the ear like rockets

And under the sign for herring from Kerch
An oldster, run over, groped for his glasses
And wept when amid the evening’s lurch
A tram threw up its pupils at a dash

While in the holes of skyscrapers where ore blazed
And tunnels were piled by the iron of trains
The aeroplane yelled crashing into the place
Where the injured sun’s eye drained

And finally balling up the blankets of gaslights
Loved out the night was drunken and a mess
While somewhere beyond the suns of streets
Hobbled the moon flabby and utterly useless

Photo and translation by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrades Stas and Lena for the heads-up. Originally published in the Futurist anthology Milk of Mares (Moscow: Gileya, 1914), the poem was later republished in a slightly different rendering, featuring punctuation marks, as “The City’s Colossal Hell.”

 

Life During Wartime

DSCN5429.jpgRussians at war

 1.
“There’s really no place for self-righteousness in war.”
—Lord Richards, BBC Radio 4, Today, 14 April 2018

Lord Richards said this by way of arguing everyone should give up, permit the butcher Assad to win his genocidal war, and “let the Syrian people [?] get down to the business of rebuilding their country.”

He was immediately followed on the air by a bloke named Frank Gardner, who made the ludicrous claim it was the Russian “intervention” “that prevented Islamic State and the other jihadists from taking Damascus.”

Mr. Gardner was immediately followed on the air by yet another bloke, an MP of some sort, who was just as defeatist, but somehow, unaccountably, thought the “people responsible” for war crimes in Syria “would be held to account.”

Mr. Gardner and the MP weree followed by an American teenage girl, apparently a former member of the Obama administration, who absolved the second coming of MLK, Jr., of all responsibility for the bloodbath.

As if this were not bad enough, the teenage American girl was immediately followed on the air by Sebastian Gorka. Oddly enough, his comments were the most reasonable.

They were immediately followed on the air by the ridiculously ubiquitous Anne Applebaum and another bloke with a posh accent (David Stevenson), who didn’t “want to see an all-out war.”

This entire clown circus was preceded by a nice little chat with a “former” Russian general, whose only purpose was to tell the radio audience, “If you so much as scratch one of our boys, you’ll have all-out war.” (I am paraphrasing.)

All of this was camouflaged by an alleged concern for the “people of Syria,” and yet not a single actual Syrian voice was heard all morning.

What disgusting white freaks.

DSCN5424Russians at war

2.
Predictably, various so-called leftists on my Facebook news feed are in high dudgeon today over the milquetoast missile strikes on a few Syrian military facilities carried out overnight by France, Britain, and the US.

These very same people, some of whom are Russian nationals, have had absolutely nothing to say about Russia’s critical intervention in Syria on the side of the country’s war criminal dictator Bashar Assad for the last two and a half years.

How does that work? Russia gets a free pass because it is . . . what? Building socialism in Syria? On the right side of the conflict? Has been suffering so much since the collapse of the Soviet Union that it has the right to bomb whole cities into rubble and occupy neighboring countries without provocation?

No, Russia gets a free pass, especially from Russian leftists, because 99.9999% of the Russian populace knows quite well that their own homegrown dictator, Vladimir Putin, has certain pet projects that are off limits to criticism and protest.

Destroying Syria is one of those pet projects.

So, they are simply too scared to criticize Russia’s absolutely criminal actions against Syrian citizens in Syria, i.e., against people who have never, so far as I know, harmed any Russians at all, especially not in Russia itself.

Hence, when the so-called west makes a feeble, almost laughable gesture to oppose the Assadist-Putinist-Iranian-Hezbollah massacre in Syria, these Russian and Russophile leftists awake from their usual slumber, happily quoting Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn and other great advocates of “peace in our time.”

It never occurs to any of them, apparently, that this is an absolutely demoralizing, pointless, and impossible stance on the matter. They are leftists who unconditionally support fascists and imperialists, and who support other, world-famous leftists who unconditionally support fascists and imperialists. They are thus leading the international leftist movement down the garden path either to utter destruction or utter irrelevance.

Sanders and Corbyn are dangerous clowns. If you don’t get that, you might not be as politically savvy or as leftist as you imagined you were.

At least, if you feel strongly about the issue, make your own arguments as to why it is okay for Putin, Assad, Iran, and the Hezbollah to slaughter Syrians at will, while it is a crime against humanity to toss a few missiles once a year at a few Syrian military bases and chemical warfare production facilities that were given a week’s notice and thus had happily been evacuated long before the missiles actually struck them.

But, no, amazingly enough, pro-Assadist and pro-Putinist leftists almost never make their own arguments, cowering instead behind the drivel spouted by the likes of Corbyn, Sanders, and Tariq Ali.

DSCN5422.jpgRussians at war

3.
Why would any “progressive” or “anti-authoritarian” leftist in their right mind refuse solidarity to the nine Penza and Petersburg antifacists caught up in an insane frame-up, engineered by the folks at Vladimir Putin’s old stomping grounds, the Russian Federal Security Service (the FSB, formerly known as the KGB), who have accused them of being members of a wholly fictional “terrorist community,” codenamed The Network, and charged them accordingly?

I ask this seemingly nonsensical question because, as I was thinking about the knee-jerk reaction of various “anti-imperialists,” Russian leftists, and Russophile leftists to last night’s missile strikes in Syria, it suddenly occurred to me this same mob of righteous Marxists has been as nearly as quiet about the so-called Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case as it has been about the Kremlin’s war against Syrian civilians and anti-Assad forces in Syria.

Why should that be? What is the connection between these seemingly unrelated events?

The answer is simple. If you pay too much attention to the Penza-Petersburg case and its gory details, you will realize all too quickly that Russia is ruled by a fascist clique of power-hungry ex-KGB lunatics who have somehow persuaded themselves that their greed, corruption, and ultraviolence are a supreme form of patriotism, not an utter degradation of all reasonable notions of governance, justice, and balanced international relations.

Thus, leftists who only get exercised over Syria when the so-called west makes a tiny, milquetoast, one-off gesture of resistance to the Putinist-Assadist-Iranian-Hezbollah killing machine are reluctant to talk too much about the horrifying Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case and many other similar cases that never make the headlines around the world, since they would reveal too palpably and obviously the natural affinities between Assad and Putin, two dyed-in-the-wool fascists who believe all resistance and opposition to their perpetual regimes is illegitimate, “extremist,” “terrorism,” etc.

If you are an “anti-authoritarian” or “progressive” leftist, however, it will not do to admit you stand for the same things as Putin and Assad cherish, so you just gloss over their crimes before and during the Syrian revolution, and hope no one will notice what violent criminal thugs they have been from day one, and how their violence and thuggery have only been spreading like wildfire across their own countries and all around the world ever since they came to power.

DSCN5326.jpgRussians at war

4.
God forbid the Russian people should rise up against their own dictator, Vladimir Putin, and the Chinese, Iranians and Hezbollah, say, rushed to help the Russian dictator put down the uprising. Not only would it be extremely humiliating were Chinese warplanes to bomb ancient Russian cities such as Pskov and Vladimir, were terrorists from Hezbollah and Iranian fundamentalists to murder innocent Russian children, women and men, but the whole world would remember how once upon a time not so long ago the Russians themselves helped the bloody dictator Bashar Assad gut and slaughter a grassroots revolution in Syria. Everyone would thus turn their backs—unfairly—on the Russians fighting to the death for their freedom and remain silent until their dictator, ably assisted by the Chinese, Iranian and Hezbollah killers, would force one half of the Russian populace to take flight to other countries, while killing and enslaving the other half. // TRR

Photos by the Russian Reader

___________________________

FSB and NTV Pressure Mother of Man Accused in “Terrorist” Frame-Up

maxresdefaultIn the 1990s, people speculated what the call letters of Russia’s first independent TV station, NTV, actually stood for, but they had no doubt the TV station itself stood for groundbreaking, hardhitting, objective journalism. Since Putin crushed the network as one of his first acts as appointed savior of the Motherland, NTV has been synonymous with yellow journalism and filthy Nazi-like exposés of the regime’s opponents, leading an anonymous folk artist to suggest “NTV” stands for nasilie (“violence”), tupost’ (“stupidity”), and vran’yo (“lies”). Courtesy of YouTube

FSB Investigator and NTV Reporters Pressure Network Case Defendant’s Mother
OVD Info
April 12, 2018

A FSB investigator and NTV reporters have pressured Yelena, mother of Ilya Shakursky, one of the nine young men charged so far in the so-called Network case, as reported in a communique by the Parents Network, a committee of relatives of the young men, who have been accused of involvement in a “terrorist community,” allegedly codenamed The Network.

The FSB investigator summoned Shakursky’s mother and suggested she give an interview to NTV, promising her it would “count towards [her son’s sentence] at the trial.” However, he told her she must tell the reporters Shakursky was, in fact, a member of The Network and under no circumstances mention that her son and the other young male defendants had simply gotten together to play airsoft.

The NTV crew, accompanied by the FSB investigator, came to Yelena’s house and filmed the interview, finishing at eleven in the evening. Yelena told Lev Ponomaryov, leader of the Movement for Human Rights, what happened.

According to Yelena, the NTV reporters were curious not only about Shakursky’s involvement in the alleged organization but also in her own interactions with human rights defenders. They insisted she say on camera that human rights defenders had made promises to her and tried to persuade her to do something.

The Parents Network communique quoted Yelena’s statement.

“I am in such a state. I am constantly in tears. I start to swear, then I calm down. They asked leading questions. I couldn’t get my bearings and give them normal answers. I swore and I cried. I really don’t know what they filmed. They picked my weakest moments.”

Before leaving, the NTV film crew warned they would be telephoning Yelena to clarify certain details. The communique from the Parents Network claimed she planned to demand NTV not broadcast the interview.

Yelena also recounted that the investigator handling Shakursky’s case had been constantly trying to persuade her of her son’s guilt.

“He sits there and says, ‘Your son is guilty, your son is guilty.’ He says all the evidence is against him. I’m so utterly confused. I realize I can’t be friendly with him, because they tortured my son, but on the other hand, I’m afraid, and again I’m under their thumb. I’m afraid he will be sent down for nothing,” she said.

Yelena asked the Parents Network to go public with her story. She also asked that they quote her statement.

“If anything happens to me or Ilya, the people holding my son and pressuring both him and me will be the ones to blame,” she said.

[…]

Thanks to Yana Teplitskaya for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader. You can read more about the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case and related developments as posted on this website. 

A New Face in Hell: Yuli Boyarshinov

“We Made It Worse for You, So Talk”: A New Defendant Emerges in The Network Case
OVD Info
April 11, 2018

30173702_10213690256883419_2044878347_1Yuli Boyarshinov, 2015. Photo by Maria Shuter. Courtesy of OVD Info

A new defendant has been added to the case of the so-called Network, Petersburger Yuli Boyarshinov. In the following article, OVD Info reports what it knows about how Mr. Boyarshinov was charged in the case, and about the pressure put on him in the remand prison where he is currently jailed.

Mr. Boyarshinov’s defense attorney Olga Krivonos told OVD Info that he was charged with involvement in The Network on April 11. Ms. Krivonos cannot discuss the particulars of the case, since she was made to sign a nondisclosure agreement concerning the preliminary investigation. Mr. Boyarshinov has been charged with involvement in a terrorist community (Russian Federal Criminal Code Article 205.4 Part 2) and illegal possession of explosives (Russian Federal Criminal Code Article 222.1 Part 1).

27-year-old Yuli Boyarshinov has worked the last several years as an industrial climber. From 2010 to 2015, he was a co-organizer of the Free Fair in Petersburg, events where people donated and took home all kinds of things free of charge. He [CENSORED BY REQUEST OF THE RUSSIAN ANARCHIST CENTRAL COMMITTEE]* volunteered at animal shelters.

yulik.jpgYuli Boyarshinov. Photo courtesy of Mr. Boyarshinov’s friends and OVD Info

Arrest
Mr. Boyarshinov was detained on the evening of January 21, 2018, in Petersburg’s Primorsky District, most likely accidentally. Several local residents told OVD Info that anti-drugs raids occured there frequently and police regularly stopped passersby.

Mr. Boyarshinov recounted that police from the 53rd Precinct struck him in the face and stomach several times: they did not like the fact the young man had refused to talk with him, citing Article 51 of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees an individual’s right not to incriminate himself. The beating ended when another policeman entered the room, was outraged by what was happening, and asked his fellow officers not to “cause mayhem.”

Police found 400 grams of smoke powder, a relatively weak explosive obtained by mixing saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur, on Mr. Boyarshinov’s person. Smoke powder is now most often employed in the manufacture of fireworks, as well as by hunters and sport shooters who pack their shells manually. Mr. Boyarshinov has a hunting license, but not a firearms permit. Ms. Krivonos could not say why Mr. Boyarshinov needed the smoke powder, since it fell under her nondisclosure agreement.

On January 22, police searched the home the young man shares with his parents. Law enforcement officers confiscated equipment, books, and the anarchist magazine Avtonom.  He was then taken in a police cruiser to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Hospital staff did not ask him for either his internal passport or insurance policy. The detainee was given an MRI scan of the brain, and his blood was drawn. Mr. Boyarshinov told his lawyer the physician who administered the MRI scan was quite worried about his condition. After the examination, the young man was transported to the Temporary Detention Center. In conversation with his lawyer, Mr. Boyarshinov suggested he was taken to the hospital first so that it would be impossible to say he had been injured in the Temporary Detention Center. The doctors noted bruises on his face.

On January 23, Primorsky District Court Judge Yelena Tsibizova ordered Mr. Boyarshinov remanded in custody for thirty days. His relatives were not informed of the court hearing. Ms. Krivonos had not yet taken the case, and so Mr. Boyarshinov was represented by a state-appointed attorney. At that point, he had only been charged with illegal possession of explosive substances.

1523224346412_1Yuli Boyarshinov. Photo courtesy of Mr. Boyarshinov’s friends and OVD Info

Pressure in the Remand Prison
After the hearing, Mr. Boyarshinov was incarcerated in Remand Prison No. 1 aka The Crosses Two, where doctors noted his injuries: blows to the stomach and head, and a black eye.

As the young man told his lawyer, his cellmates immediately tried to chat him up.

“I’m also in for Article 222.1. I’ll tell you what’s what,” one cellmate said to him.

The anarchist symbol had been traced on the dusty glass in the cell’s window.

On January 31, Mr. Boyarshinov was visited by two men who gave only their first names, Kostya and Dima. Kostya had been present during the search at Mr. Boyarshinov’s home. When he asked where they were from, Kostya and Dima gave him their work number at the Petersburg office of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). The supposed FSB officers listed the names of defendants in the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case and many other names, promising Mr. Boyarshinov that if he did not talk to them, “things would get worse” for him. The young man refused to speak with the FSB officers, again invoking his rights under Article 51 of the Russian Constitution.

“You’re making things worse for yourself, and you’ll go to prison,” the security service officers told him.

On February 12, Mr. Boyarshinov was transferred to Remand Prison No. 6 in the village of Gorelovo, Leningrad Region, on the orders of an investigator in the Primorsky District office of the Interior Ministry, allegedly, “for the purpose of conducting investigative procedures.” Ms. Krivonos said that then, after she filed an appeal against the extension of Mr. Boyarshinov’s remand in custody, staff at the Primorsky District Court telephoned her and asked her client’s whereabouts. They were looking for him to fill out papers. Ms. Krinovos argues the transfer to another remand prisoner violated her client’s rights. The Gorelovo Remand Prison is a former medium security correctional labor colony, and the conditions there are considerably worse than in The Crosses Two Remand Prison, which was built to satisfy the requirements of current legislation.

Mr. Boyarshinov told his lawyer he was placed in a cell where there were forty inmates, although it was designed for thirty-five. When he moved into the cell, his cellmates beat him up for no reason. They forced him to clean the cell, and because of this he was not let out for walks outside in the yard.

On February 13, FSB officers again came to talk with Mr. Boyarshinov.

“We made things worse for you. Now talk, or conditions will get even worse.”

Mr. Boyarshinov again refused to speak with them.

photo_2018-02-19_19-27-57.jpgYuli Boyarshinov and defense attorney Olga Krivonos at a custody extension hearing on February 19 in Primorsky District Court. Photo courtesy of Ms. Krivonos and OVD Info

On March 2, the remand prison was inspected by members of the Leningrad Region Public Monitoring Commission (PMC). Mr. Boyarshinov told his lawyer the Leningrad PMC members summoned the inmates one by one to chat with them in the office of a warden, who was present during their conversations.

FSB officers visited Mr. Boyarshinov again immediately after the PMC’s inspection. The very same day, he and another inmate (who had not spoken to the PMC) were transferred to a cell that held approximately 150 inmates: the number of inmates constantly changed. There were only 116 bunks in the cell, which was reserved for men charged with murder, rape, and robbery, and who had served time before. However, the inmates who smoked were not segregated from the nonsmokers. At first, Mr. Boyarshinov had to sleep on the floor.

“During the nearly two months of his incarceration in Gorelovo, no investigative procedures involving Yuli have been carried out. Due to the fact the conditions of my client’s imprisonment in terms of cell assignment and personal safety have been violated, his state of mind has deteriorated considerably,” said Ms. Krivonos.

On March 16, Sergei Shabanov, human rights ombudsman for Leningrad Region, and his staff member Sergei Gavrilovich visited the Gorelovo Remand Prison.

“There were no complaints and statements from the persons held in custody,” reads a report of the visit, posted on the remand prison’s website.

“He has not been tasered, but the conditions in which my client is being held are tantamount to torture,” argued Ms. Krivonos.

She also said that Mr. Boyarshinov has chronic tonsillitis, which has been aggravated by his living conditions.

9ac654e24a7baa41f22dbfeb5e102410Visit by Leningrad Region Human Rights Ombudsman Sergei Shabanov to Gorelovo Remand Prison. Yuli Boyarshinov sits with his back turned to the camera. Photo courtesy of Remand Prison No. 6 website and OVD Info

Petersburg industrial climber Ilya Kapustin was a witness in The Network case. He claimed FSB agents tasered him, after which he left Russia, requesting political asylum in Finland. Kapustin told OVD Info that, during his interrogation, investigators had asked him whether he knew Boyarshinov, when they had last met, and why he had telephoned him on the day he was detained.

“We had a professional relationship. I telephoned him around the time of his arrest to ask him whether he wanted a job shoveling snow off rooftops,” Kapustin explained.

  • Novaya Gazeta writes that the Gorelovo Remand Prison is considered a torture chamber. According to the newspaper, inmates are tortured and raped by order of the wardens. This was the reason Vladimir Malenchuk, former head of the local office of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service was dismissed, and his deputy, Vyacheslav Tippel, who was involved in the torture, was sentenced to seven years in prison. However, the beatings and abuse of inmates at the remand prison have not stopped.
  • On March 16, antifascist Viktor Filinkov was transferred to Remand Prison No. 6. Mr. Filinkov has been charged with involvement in the terrorist organization The Network (Criminal Code 205.4 Part 2). The FSB claims members of The Network were preparing for the outbreak of unrest in Russia. Mr. Filinkov confessed his guilt, but later claimed he had done so under torture. Members of the Petersburg Public Monitoring Commission noted numerous taser burns on the antifascist’s body. Businessman Igor Shiskin was charged in the same case. He did not complain of torture, but the Petersburg PMC likewise noted injuries on his body. The criminal investigation and arrests in St. Petersburg were sanctioned by a district court in Penza.
  • In October 2017, five young men were arrested in Penza. A sixth man was arrested in Petersburg, transferred to Penza, and also remanded to custody there. All of them have been charged with involvement in a terrorist community. The FSB claims the young men were also involved in The Network, which, allegedly, has cells in Moscow, Petersburg, Penza, and Belarus. The defendants in the terrorism case in Penza have spoken of psychological pressure, torture by electrical shock, being hung upside down, and having weapons planted by FSB officers in their cars and flats.

* There is no “Russian Anarchist Central Committee,” of course, but I was asked—twice—to expunge a perfectly trivial, innocent passage because it supposedly endangered Mr. Boyarshinov’s safety in remand prison. I dared to doubt out loud that the wardens at Gorelovo Remand Prison read my website and much less that they would happen on this passage. The anarchist authoritarian “we” was forced to repeat its peremptory request, referring to the meaningless fact that it was a “common decision.”

This is what you will discover about 99% of Russian “anti-authoritarian” leftists if you spend enough time with them. They do not understand that solidarity is a two-way street. So, God forbid, for example, that any of them would take the time and then have the guts to speak out against the Russian government’s crimes in Syria. But if something untoward happens with any of their own kind, you can be sure they will demand the world’s attention, because, at the end of the day, they are good “white people,” like the good “white people” in Europe and North America, so they imagine they do not deserve to be treated the way the FSB has been treating their antifascist comrades in Penza and Petersburg.

Of course, they should not be treated this way, but nor should anyone else on God’s green earth be treated this way, even if they do not happen to be good “white people.” 

The other thing you discover is that the mindset of most Russian “anti-authoritarian” leftists is completely authoritarian, which is no surprise because Russia has been an authoritarian country for most of its thousand-year history. There has been the odd decade here and there down through the centuries when Russia was not an authoritarian country, and Allah be praised, how sweet it was to live during one of those rare decades, as your humble servant did during the 1990s. 

Now, however, the country has endured nearly two decades of increasingly oppressive authoritarian rule, so it should be no surprise that people who nominally espouse democratic, progressive, “anti-authoritarian” beliefs would revert to authoritarian type when push comes to shove. 

During the ten-plus years I have been translating, editing, and writing this website and its predecessor, Chtodelat News, I have been clubbed over the head, slandered, and bossed around by my putative Russian “anti-authoritarian” leftist allies so many times I have lost count. On the contrary, the number of times I have been thanked for what I do or encouraged and vigorously supported by these selfsame so-called anti-authoritarians has been much less numerous.

They really don’t get it. Until they do, most of their efforts will be doomed to failure. Despite what Putin and his junta have done to Russia and its people, the country and its people are way past the point where they have the time of day for authoritarians of any stripe, whether nationalist, leftist, rightist, centrist, neoliberal, Anglican or Presbyterian. When and if they rise up to overthrow their oppressors, it will be a democratic revolution. Or it simply won’t happen at all. TRR

Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade NN for correcting a typo.

Read more about the insane FSB frame-up of the wholly fictional Network aka the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” cases, and related current cases involving torture and framing on the part of the security service once chaired by President Vladimir Putin and in which he proudly served as an officer for many years. It is their increasing dominance of politics and the economy that has pushed the world’s largest country to the brink of toxic governance and administrative insanity.

Fyodor Krasheninnikov: Russian History According to the Crimean Calendar

brickwall faceThe writing is on the wall.

Russian History According to the Crimean Calendar
A New Period of Russian History Kicked Off in 2014, But There Is No Proof It Will Last for Centuries
Fyodor Krasheninnikov
Vedomosti
April 11, 2018

In a recently published article, Vladislav Surkov argues we should regard 2014 as the first year of a new calendar, the beginning of a centuries-long era of “political solitude” that emerged after a long period of ambivalence on Russia’s part. Although the thoughts outlined in the article are primarily Mr. Surkov’s personal convictions, they do in some way describe the outlook of Russia’s supreme political elite, to which Mr. Surkov certainly belongs, and they are interesting only in this sense. Among other things, his take suggests that, after 2014, nothing comparable in importance to the events in Crimea has happened nor will happen, meaning Russia seemingly experienced the “end of history” in 2014.

2014 will undoubtedly go down in history as the year of Vladimir Putin’s most memorable achievement. Russia’s annexation of Crimea led to many changes both at home and abroad, but what mattered most was that it was accomplished easily, quickly, and bloodlessly, and led to an incredible surge in the president’s popularity due to the fact that a large segment of society rallied around him. The more alarming the circumstances of spring 2018, the dearer to the president and his entourage are the memories of the happy spring of 2014. Surkov’s article can read as a belated reiteration of Faust’s “Stay a while, you are so beautiful,” as a reluctance to accept the inevitability of change and the ephemerality of all “forevers.”

The flip side of the myth of a new era’s beginning is the fear 2014 was actually the culmination of modern Russian history and things will only get worse in the future. The tendencies of recent years have fully confirmed this fear. Only four years have passed, but the spring of 2018 is nothing like the spring of 2014 in terms of feeling and mood. Russia is not on the offensive; instead, it is on the defensive. The west’s pressure on it has been multiplying and causing palpable problems for the economy. For the first time in four years, the country’s leaders have been forced to acknowledge the dangers posed by US sanctions and give up repeating the argument that all sanctions are a boon to the economy. It is no wonder. In 2014, the sanctions were much weaker, and given the euphoria in the air, they went almost unnoticed. Besides, in 2014, it was still possible to believe the sanctions were temporary. They would be lifted in the very near future, the west would swallow what had occurred, and everything would go back to what it had been. In 2018, the euphoria has long vanished, and if there is still talk the sanctions will soon be lifted, it should be put down more to inertia and confusion than anything else. Although it was intentionally timed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the Crimean triumph, the presidential election did not produce anything comparable to the inspiring impression generated in the wake of Crimea’s annexation. The celebration of Putin’s electoral victory lasted only ten days, cut short by the disastrous shopping mall fire in Kemerovo and the official day of mourning announced in its aftermath.

Russia cannot look forward to proud “political solitude” in the coming years or at any other time. The modern world is too small for anyone to isolate themselves, especially on their own terms and inside borders of their own choosing. At home, especially among the elite, one can still live in the past for a time and pretend this is still the triumphant year of 2014. One call still pretend Russia is threatening everyone, denouncing everyone, and demanding a reaction from everyone, and that it has centuries and millennia ahead of it. In fact, however, it is Russia that is threatened, Russia that is denounced, and Russia from whom everyone demands a reaction. There are no grounds for supposing this onslaught will wane in the foreseeable future instead of intensifying. Russia’s main trump card in 2014 was its willingness to engage in confrontation and brinksmanship, which the west was not willing to do. That card has now been trumped in turn. After a long period of wavering, the leaders of the Nato countries have also proven capable of engaging in deliberate escalation and frightening their opponents with determination. This seems to have been a major surprise to the current regime in Russia.

A new phase in modern Russian history undoubtedly began in 2014, but there is no proof it will last for centuries and be a time of endless rapture over the annexation of Crimea. For the time being, everything points to the fact it will end much more quickly than many of us would imagine and in such a way that we shall not want to remember 2014 at all.

Fyodor Krasheninnikov is a political scientist who lives in Yekaterinburg. Translation and photo by the Russian Reader

Wife of Tortured Antifascist Seeks Asylum in Finland

P6240121In Finland

Wife of Antifascist Filinkov Seeks Political Asylum in Finland
Mediazona
April 10, 2018

Alexandra Aksyonova, wife of antifascist Viktor Filinkov, who spoke of being tortured by Russian Federal Security (FSB) officers and is currently being held in a remand prison outside Petersburg, has left Kyiv and requested political asylum in Finland. She reported the news to Mediazona herself.

She flew to Finland yesterday, April 9, and today she reported to a police station, where she requested political asylum. In conversation with Mediazona, she explained she had feared for her safety in Ukraine, noting there had been incidents in the past when Russian political activists had been abducted by the Russian security services in Ukraine, while local human rights defenders had told her it was nearly impossible to obtain political asylum in Ukraine.

In late January of this year, Ms. Aksyonova reported her husband, Viktor Filinkov, had disappeared on his way to Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport, whence he was due to fly to Kyiv. Soon, the Telegram channel of the Petersburg court system’s press service reported Filinkov had been remanded in custody on suspicion of involvement in a terrorist community, a crime under Article 205.4 Part 2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. Filinkov had, allegedly, confessed his guilt.

filinkov telegramScreen shot of the message posted about Viktor Filinkov’s arrest on the Telegram channel of the Joint Press Service of the St. Petersburg Courts, January 25, 2018

Subsequently, during a visit by members of the Petersburg Public Monitoring Commission (PMC) to the Petersburg remand prison where he was jailed, Filinkov said he had confessed his guilt after being tortured with a taser by FSB officers. Mediazona published Filinkov’s account of the first days after he was detained, an account in which he described in great detail how FSB officers had tortured him and threatened his wife. In March, Filinkov was transferred to a remand prison just across the border from Petersburg in Leningrad Region, which is thus off limits to the Petersburg PMC members who had regularly visited him in the Petersburg remand prison.

Petersburg antifascist Igor Shishkin also vanished in late January only to turn up later as an arrestee in the same case. He confessed his guilt. Despite the fact that members of the Petersburg PMC found evidence of injuries on his body, Shishkin said nothing about torture.

However, Petersburger Ilya Kapustin, detained as a witness in the very same case, claimed he had been tortured by the FSB. In February, he filed a complaint with the Russian Investigative Committee. He left Russia in March to seek asylum in Finland.

The Petersburg antifascists were detained as part of a case against an alleged “terrorist community,” code-named The Network. Online news and commentary website Republic, which was granted access to the case files, wrote that the FSB believed the alleged “terrorist community” had cells in Moscow, Petersburg, Penza, and Belarus. Members of the alleged terrorist group had supposedly planned a series of bomb blasts during the March 18 presidential election and this summer’s FIFA World Cup, which will be held in Russia.

The criminal case kicked off in October 2017 with the arrest of four antifascists in Penza. A fifth suspect in Penza was placed under house arrest, while a sixth suspect was detained in Petersburg and transferred to the Penza Remand Prison. Several of these young men subsequently recounted how the FSB had tortured them and planted weapons in their cars and flats. In particular, Ilya Shakursky and Dmitry Pchelintsev reported they had been tortured. Pchelintsev soon retracted his testimony.

Translation and photo by the Russian Reader

NB. If you are just now happening on this horrifying tale of torture and “law enforcement” run amok, read the first major international media report on the case, in Newsweek, and then read my translations of articles from Mediazona, OVD Info, and the other independent Russian media outlets who have been covering the story since it broke in late January 2018.

The FSB’s Tall Tales

FSB Head Talks of Terrorist Attacks Prevented on Election Day
Russian Security Services Have Prevented Six Terrorist Attacks So Far This Year, Including at Polling Stations on Election Day and a Mall in Saratov
Yeveniya Malyarenko
RBC
April 10, 2018

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FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov. Photo by Sergei Guneyev. Courtesy of RIA Novosti and RBC

During the first quarter of 2018, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) prevented six terrorist attacks. FSB director Alexander Bortnikov made this claim during a meeting of the National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAC), reports TASS.

According to Bortnikov, all the attacks were stopped in the planning stage. However, Bortnikov intimated that insurgents had hoped to carry out some of the attacks at polling stations in Ingushetia and Bashkortostan during the March 18 Russian presidential election. Thus, in February, as part of a counter-terrorist operation in Ingushetia’s Nazran District “that encountered armed resistance,” Bortnikov said, “two bandits who were supporters of Islamic State” (an organization banned in Russia) were killed while planning an attack.

In March, FSB officers detained two members of a “radical right-wing group” in Bashkortostan. As Bortnikov stressed, both individuals were planning to carry out terrorist attacks at polling stations in Ufa. Subsequently, two “high-powered” homemade  explosive devices were seized in the homes of the detained individuals.

In addtion, as Bortnikov reported, FSB officers eliminated several members of another IS cell while trying to detain them.

“They were planning to carry out a terrorist attack at a shopping mall in Saratov,” Bortnikov explained, stressing the security services had discovered weapons and a homemade explosive device containing the equivalent of nearly three kilos of TNT in the possession of the alleged terrorists.

Translated by the Russian Reader

NB. When reading this account of the FSB’s alleged successes in preventing terrorist attacks, it is hard not wonder whether its stats for the first quarter of 2018 included the yeoman’s work the agency has done in unmasking the would-be terrorists of the so-called Network and the New Greatness movement, two organizations that were, allegedly, planning nothing less than armed insurrection nationwide.

The only problem is all the real evidence points to the FSB’s having fabricated these terrorist organizations from whole cloth, in the first case, torturing eight utterly harmless antifascists in Penza and Petersburg into confessing their nonexistent guilt and, in the second case, embedding undercover agents in a tiny, loosely aquainted group of people, who were just as harmless, and actively encouraging them to establish an equally fictitious “militant group.”

When you know the gory details of these stories, you find it is plausible that Director Bortnikov’s tales of the FSB’s derring-do in Ingushetia and Bashkortostan are convenient fictions, too.

Judge for yourself. Or, if you don’t believe me or the two dozen translated articles listed below, read about the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case in Newsweek. TRR

Families of Penza-Petersburg “Terrorists” Form Committee

Антифашизм-800x445“Antifascism is not a crime.” Photo courtesy of Movement For Human Rights

Relatives of Defendants in Penza-Petersburg “Terrorism” Case Form Parents Network
Mediazona
April 9, 2018

The website of the Movement For Human Rights (MFHR) reports parents of the arrestees in the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case have come together to form The Parents Network: A Committee for Relatives of Arrested Anarchists.

The human rights activists report that a meeting of relatives of the young men accused in the case took place in Moscow on April 7. The loved ones of almost all the defendants in the case came to MFHR’s offices, while two relatives participated in the meeting via Skype.

The arrested men’s loved ones talked about the pressure put on their children and husbands, and the illegal actions of law enforcement officials. At the end of the meeting, the relatives decided to form an organization whose goal would be to mutually support each other as well as interact with the authorities and human rights organizations. MHFR’s website list contact information for the committee’s officers.

In October 2017, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers detained four antifascists in Penza: Yegor Zorin, Ilya Shakursky, Vasily Kuksov, and Dmitry Pchelintsev. In early November 2017, Andrei Chernov was detained in Penza, while Arman Sagynbayev was detained in Petersburg. In January 2018, Igor Shishkin and Viktor Filinkov were detained in Petersburg.

All eight men have been accused of involvement in a “terrorist community,” a crime under Article 205.4 Part 2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. The FSB claims the antifascists were members of a terrorist organization, code-named The Network, whose members planned to set off bombs during the March 2018 Russian presidential election and the FIFA World Cup, schedule for this summer in Russia, and thus “sway the popular masses to further destabilize the political circumstances in the country” and spark an armed insurrection.

Several of the defendants, including Pchelintsev, Shakursky, and Filinkov, as well as Ilya Kapustin, a witness detained in Petersburg, said FSB officers tortured them to make them to confess. Members of the Petersburg Public Monitoring Commission certified they found signs of beating and traces of taser burns on Filinkov’s and Shiskin’s bodies. It later transpired that Kapustin left Russia, and Pchelintsev withdrew his testimony after he was beaten in the Penza Remand Prison.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Please read my earlier posts on the Penza-Petersburg  case and two other current cases that also seem to be FSB frame-ups. Also check out the first major international press coverage of the case in Newsweek.