Six snapshots of what the Russian Reader was reading on May 27 in years past.
2024
“It’s Showtime”: Open Space Moscow vs. SERB. Open Space is a project that supports grassroots activists. It has two sites, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, with co-working spaces, a human rights center, and a psychological center. The Moscow site is at odds with the pro-government movement SERB, known for its provocations against the opposition. Republic correspondent Nikita Zolotarev is often at Open Space, sometimes as a volunteer. That was how he found himself at the Moscow co-working space last Saturday, where he was detained along with other visitors on the basis of a complaint filed by the “Serbs,” who were assisting the police, and then spent several hours at the Basmannoye police precinct. Here is how it went down.
2022
“To Become White in the Eyes of Whites”: Astrakhan Kazakhs and the War in Ukraine. According to official statistics, ethnic Kazakhs [so-called Astrakhan Kazakhs] make up 16% of population of the Astrakhan Region. At the same time, 80% of the region’s residents who have been killed in the war in Ukraine and whose deaths have been publicly acknowledged by relatives or the authorities, are members of this particular ethnic group. Idel.Realii talked to several Astrakhan residents to understand why this is the case and what reaction it causes in the local community.
2020
Facebook Is Not Your Friend. “This message violates our community standards on spam” was the message from Facebook informing Petersburg news website MR7.ru that the world’s mightiest social network was blocking the public’s access to the website’s articles on the city’s battle with the coronavirus—and the battle of Petersburg doctors and other healthcare workers with a corrupt, mendacious regime.
2018
The Policemen’s Ball. At €2.50, the official licensed sticker album of the 2018 World Cup is a steal. Russian officials also plan to steal the civil rights of their own citizens during the month-long tournament.
2017
Don’t Recite “Hamlet” in Public, or, The Moscow Police Always Get Their Man. Police detained a child reading poetry aloud on Moscow’s Vozdvizhenka Street. Takie Dela was informed about the incident by the website OVD Info’s person on duty.
2016
Daria Serenko’s Quiet Picket. Quiet Picket, a recent initiative by Daria Serenko, teeters on the verge of artistic intervention and protest action. Every day, Serenko boards public transport (often, the subway) bearing a new placard inscribed with an extensive message. Its purpose is to invite people to engage in a discussion. Serenko thus explores the space of communication itself: the distance between placard and recipient, and how potential interlocutors navigate the distance. So far she has produced fifty-four placards, gone through six markers, and directly communicated with ninety-three people. Marina Simakova spoke with Serenko about the background of the action and its effects.
You can read my translation of Daria Serenko’s essay “The Angel of History Goes to the Front” in the new issue of e-flux Journal. ||||| trr
