Guzel Leman
Petersburg Activist Becomes Victim of Online Hate over “Russian” Cinema
Activatica
September 13, 2020
Petersburg activist Guzel Leman has been harassed and sent threatening messages on social networks because she suggested that the Russian film website Kinopoisk rename its russkoe [“ethnic Russian”] cinema section rossiiskoye [pertaining to Russia as a multi-ethnic country], reports Fontanka.ru.
The young woman started corresponding with the website’s admin, and on September 10 received a response that her request had been sent to the relevant specialists. Two days later, however, she began receiving threatening messages on a personal account.
According to Leman, in literally just a few hours on the morning of September 12, while she still “did not understand what was happening,” she received more than 400 angry messages on social networks, in which unknown people threatened her, called her names, and “told [her] where and how to go there.”
The activist wrote about her correspondence with Kinopoisk and the idea of renaming the website’s “Russian” cinema section on a separate Telegram channel, where she published screenshots. According to Leman, her subscribers discovered that her correspondence with Kinopoisk had been leaked to nationalist community pages.
“Guzel Leman. ‘So, yeah: I’ve been ratted out on a chat for racists. They attacked me by writing nasty things in the comments.'”
Leman was accused of racism on one of these pages.
“The racist and Russophobe Guzel Leman, who calls for stopping calling Russian [rossiiskie] films russkie [‘ethnic Russian”] complains in her chat about being bullied by ‘racists.’ In unison, the chat’s multi-ethnic participants brand the victims Russian fascists. What a lark,” someone wrote on the Telegram channel Russkoe budushchee [“The ethnic Russian future”].
The channel published several indecent posts about Leman.
“The Ethnic Russian Future. Reposted from Fantastic Plastic Machine. Here some little lady demands that ‘Kinopoisk’ no longer call ethnic Russian films ethnic Russian. Because that would be discrimination. Moreover, half of her channel is devoted to his, and she also calls on her subscribers to turn up the heat on ‘Kinopoisk’ and force them to rename the relevant section. I don’t even want to mention that the girl is named Guzel. It goes without saying that she’s not named Katya or Masha.”
Leman explained her idea about renaming the section on the Kinopoisk website.
“A few weeks ago I got sick and started looking for something to watch. I hadn’t paid attention to it before, but then I saw that there is a section of movies listed as ‘[Ethnic] Russian’ and ‘Soviet.’ There is no ‘Russian’ [rossiiskii] section. I contacted Kinopoisk, and we started discussing it. I explained that there are notions of belonging to a country and belonging to an ethnic group, and that such things should be kept separate. We talked about paronyms, and what the criterion russkii [“ethnic Russian”] is, and I consulted with linguists,” Guzel told Fontanka.ru.
She added that, as an example, she had cited a film, listed on Kinopoisk, that had been shot in Yakutia at Sakhafilm Studio.
“Everyone in the film crew were from different ethnic groups. It can’t be an ‘[ethnic] Russian’ film,” she said.
Now Leman has closed the messages and her pages on social networks, and yet insults have still managed to pop up in the comments on her Instagram blog. Posts about her have been published on the Telegram channel Karaulny [“Watchman”], which has over 100,000 subscribers, as well as on community pages and in hat rooms that call themselves nationalist and generate content for tens of thousands of followers.
Thanks to Darya Apahonchich for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader. For contrasting views of the present-day geopolitical implications of the adjectives russkii and rossiiskii, read these recent essays on the subject by Pål Kolstø and Marlene Laruelle.
The Russian Reader 