Alexander Skobov: What It Means to Be Anti-War and Anti-Fascist

The complete text of Alexander Skobov’s speech during closing arguments at his trial today (18 March 2025). Video: SOTAvision

Those who have been following my trial will certainly have noticed that the position of my lawyers and my position are not quite the same. We have emphasized different things, and we have slightly different objectives. My lawyers have sought to draw attention to a problem that is identified in the reports of international organizations as the abuse of anti-terrorist legislation to restrict the freedom of expression, the freedom of speech.

This problem does exist, and in some quite decent countries, particularly the European countries. The European approach to this problem has differed from the American one. The United States of America has the First Amendment of the Constitution, which expressly prohibits any limitations on freedom of speech. In the wake of the severe trauma wrought by the Second World War, the European countries took a somewhat different path. They introduced measures to restrict the dissemination of ethnic hatred, ethnic superiority, and ethnic inferiority — all the ideas associated with Nazism. A whole system of restricting freedom of speech has arisen out of this. Europe has sought a reasonable balance between freedom of speech and its restriction.

I do not regard this experiment as successful. Freedom of speech either exists or it doesn’t exist. Any restrictions on it will always lead to abuse, no matter how well intentioned. The very idea of prohibiting people from condoning anything or anyone is flawed in principle. It means forbidding people from thinking and feeling. Lawyers have the inalienable right to seek to condone their client any way they can, but so does any human being.

Only this whole story has nothing to do with us. There is no abuse of anti-terrorist legislation in Putin’s Nazi Russia. There is legislation explicitly aimed at quashing all expression of disagreement with the authorities. Under this legislation, a theatrical production about the horrible fate of women who were tricked by ISIS fighters into joining their war as their wives is deemed “condoning terrorism.” Those complicit in the guilty verdict against Yevgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriichuk have no souls, they are undead, but the law itself is worded in such a way that it can be interpreted this way. Can we speak the language of law with a state which has adopted a law like this and deploys it in this way? Of course we cannot.

My case is fundamentally different from the case against Berkovich and Petriichuk, as well as from the numerous cases against people who limited themselves to voicing moral condemnation of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. My case is not about freedom of speech, its limitations, and the abuses of these limitations. My case is about the right of a citizen in a country waging an unjust war of aggression to utterly and completely take the side of the victims of the aggression. It is about the right and duty of a citizen in a country waging such a war.

This right is covered by the category of natural law because it cannot, in principle, be regulated by legal norms. All warring states regard going over to the side of their armed enemy as treason. And the aggressor never recognizes himself as the aggressor and calls the robbery and plunder in which they engage “self-defense.” Can we prove legally to the aggressor that they are the aggressor? Of course not.

But Putin’s Nazi dictatorship is an aggressor of a special kind. Having legislatively declared a war a “non-war,” it regards all armed opposition to its aggression as “terrorism.” It does not recognize the existence of a legitimate armed opponent at all. The obligatory reports of the Russian high command persistently refer to the Ukrainian army as “militants.” Does this have anything to do with law? Of course not. But war, in principle, is not compatible with law. By its very nature, the law is a constraint on violence, while war is violence without restraint. When the guns talk, the law is silent.

My case has to do with my involvement in the armed resistance to Russian aggression, even if only as a propagandist. The goal of all my public statements has been to achieve a radical expansion of military assistance to Ukraine, up to and including the direct involvement of the armed forces of NATO countries in combat operations against the Russian army. For the sake of this goal I refused to emigrate and deliberately went to prison. What I say carries more weight and resounds more loudly when I say it here.

Borrowing the wording of the so-called Criminal Code of the so-called Russian Federation, all these actions constitute assistance to a unfriendly foreign power in generating threats to the national security of the Russian Federation, as described in the current Criminal Code’s article on high treason. Why was I not charged with violating this article, nor with violating the many other political articles in the current Criminal Code, charges which should have been brought against me for my publications? The most important of my publications were never included in the indictment, although I had the opportunity to make sure that the investigation was acquainted with them. In addition, the investigation was aware that I had made personal donations to purchase lethal weapons for the Ukrainian army and publicly encouraged others to follow my example. This is the kind of thing for which the authorities now automatically charge people with high treason.

Why didn’t they do it? I think that they didn’t do it not only due to the overloaded repressive apparatus, human laziness, and the typical aversion of Russian authorities to legal norms in general, including their own legal norms. They are our legal norms, they would say. We do what we want with them, we enforce them when and if we want to enforce them. We call the shots.

But there is another reason. Even among the people who have morally condemned the Russian aggression and risked going to prison for it, there are not many who have dared to take the side of the victims of the aggression. The dictatorship is afraid that there will be more such people, and it is afraid of “bad” examples. So it has had a stake in not amplifying my voice too much and not mentioning the specifics of my case, which I have just mentioned. I have tried to focus the public’s attention on these selfsame peculiarities.

Unlike my lawyers, I really have not tried to prove to the aggressor that they are an aggressor who has violated all internationally recognized legal norms. It makes as much sense as discussing human rights with Hitler’s regime or with Stalin’s similar regime. By the way, maybe the judge can recall which article of the Criminal Code criminalizes equating Stalin’s regime with Hitler’s.

But my lawyers and I are unanimous that my case cannot be considered outside the context of the ongoing war. It is a part of this war. And my lawyers’ attempts to speak the language of law with the aggressor’s authorities only illustrate once more that when the guns do the talking, the law is silent.

Free speech is not the issue in my case. In this war, speech is also a weapon that also kills. The Ukrainians write my name on the shells annihilating Putin’s lowlife who have invaded their land. Death to the Russian fascist invaders, death to Putin, the new Hitler, a murderer and scoundrel! Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes! I rest my case.

Source: Darya Kostromina (Facebook), 18 March 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Prosecutors have requested an 18-year prison sentence for Russian dissident Alexander Skobov, whose trial on charges of justifying terrorism over a social media post he wrote about the Ukrainian bombing of the Crimean Bridge is coming to an end in St. Petersburg, independent news outlet Bumaga reported on Tuesday.

Requesting Skobov be given a six-year sentence for justifying terrorism, as well as a 12-year sentence for “involvement with a terrorist community”, prosecutors also asked the court to ban Skobov from administering websites or Telegram channels for four years and to fine him 400,000 rubles (€4,500). Having openly criticised the regime of Vladimir Putin and opposed both Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Skobov was arrested in April over a social media post he wrote about the Ukrainian bombing of the Crimean Bridge, which connects Russia to the annexed peninsula.

Skobov had previously said that the destruction of the bridge was “extremely important from a military-political standpoint” and called a failed Ukrainian attempt to destroy it a “shame”. He had also been fined for his links to the pro-democracy Free Russia Forum, an organisation deemed “undesirable” and thus effectively outlawed in Russia. The Free Russia Forum condemned his detention, calling it “arbitrary”, and demanding his immediate release.

Now 68, Skobov is a well known Soviet-era dissident who was part of the New Leftists opposition movement in the late 1970s. He was forced to spend two three-year stints in a psychiatric hospital, a common fate for political dissidents at the time, for publishing the anti-government magazine Perspectives and for participating in protest actions.

Having been deemed a “foreign agent” by the authorities, Skobov nevertheless refused to leave Russia, despite pleas from his family to leave. While in pretrial detention, Skobov’s health in general, and eyesight in particular, have deteriorated rapidly.

Source: “Prosecutors request 18-year prison sentence for Russian dissident’s social media post,” Novaya Gazeta Europe, 18 March 2018

Desperate for Your Love

Montserrat Caballé Festival

7 p.m., 28 March 2025, Oktyabrsky Concert Hall

Duration: 2 hours

Performers: MONTSERRAT MARTÍ CABALLE (soprano), OSCAR ENCINAS (tenor), LUCÍA GARCÍA (soprano), CARLOS COSÍAS (tenor), OLGA PUDOVA

A Russian premiere!

THE MONSERRAT CABALLÉ FESTIVAL

On 28 March 2025, the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall will host a magnificent musical celebration, the first Monserrat Caballé Festival, dedicated to the great Spanish opera singer.

Specially for this event, renowned artists from Spain — relatives, friends, and students of the legendary opera diva — will come to Russia for one evening only! For their one and only performance they have chosen the beautiful St. Petersburg, our country’s musical capital, and the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall, where a distinct atmosphere always reigns.

Monserrat Caballé, whose name has come to symbolize impeccable vocals and subtle artistry, has left an indelible mark on world culture. Having performed over 100 opera roles and almost 1,000 different musical works, she has forever remained in the hearts of not only connoisseurs of exquisite classical music but also fans of musicals and fans of pop rock for performances like the title song from the album Barcelona, the international mega hit she recorded with Queen lead signer Freddie Mercury. Monserrat adored Russia and often visited our country to give concerts. The Caballé family thus decided to hold the first music festival named after her in our country.

The Monserrat Caballé Festival is meant to preserve the superstar’s historical legacy and introduce the public to today’s talents, the most popular performers continuing the Spanish school of opera’s rich traditions.

Among the performers are the great singer’s daughter, MONTSERRAT MARTÍ CABALLÉ (soprano), and the famous Spanish voices OSCAR ENCINAS (tenor), LUCÍA GARCÍA (soprano), and CARLOS COSÍAS (tenor). OLGA PUDOVA, a guest soloist at the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theaters, a phenomenal coloratura soprano who has already conquered Europe’s principal opera stages, is a special guest from Russia.

The artists will be accompanied by OLGA PUDOVA, well known to Russian and international audiences, and the famous conductor MIKHAIL GOLIKOV, People’s Artist of Kabardino-Balkaria. Creative teams from St. Petersburg and Moscow will also be involved in the concert.

The Monserrat Caballe Festival is not only a tribute to the legendary singer but also a grand exuberant celebration, aimed at a wide range of spectators and embracing all generations and the most varied musical tastes.

Don’t miss the opportunity to gift yourself an unforgettable evening full of vivid emotions, beautiful melodies and Spanish passion!

Source: Bileter.ru. Translated by the Russian Reader

On 20 October 2012, during her tour in Russia, Caballé suffered a stroke in Yekaterinburg and was quickly transferred to the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona.

Source: “Montserrat Caballé” (Wikipedia)

In his Literary Life, [Joseph] Brodsky’s friend Lev Loseff explained the background of “A Halt in the Desert,” a poem about the destruction of a beautiful old building: “One night Brodsky watched the first stages in the razing of the Greek Orthodox church from the apartment of his friends, two sisters from a Tatar family,” and called the poem “a meditation on the symbolic significance of what has just happened: Russia has broken with its Christian and Hellenistic cultural heritage.” Brodsky writes:

So few Greeks live in Leningrad today
that we have razed a Greek church, to make space
for a new concert hall, built in today’s
grim and unhappy style. . . .
it is sad that from this distance now
we see, not the familiar onion domes,
but a grotesquely flattened silhouette.

The deliberately created “fresh ruins” and “open altar wounds” recall the recent wartime devastations. The biblical allusion in “Thou who doest sow” suggests the threat of retribution in Hosea 8:7, “they have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Brodsky concludes by hopelessly asking:

What lies ahead? Does a new epoch wait
for us? And if it does, what duty do we owe?–
What sacrifices must we make for it?

Loseff claimed that Brodsky condemns “the collective guilt of a nation that produced this regime, that refused to accept the historical alternative, the heritage of Greece and Greek democracy.” But the Russians did not refuse to accept the heritage of Greece. They were not consulted and had no choice. An atheistic Communist system had been imposed on them by deadly force after the Revolution of 1917 and brutally maintained by all successive regimes. It was now the poet’s responsibility to preserve this culture.

Source: Jeffrey Meyers, “Brodsky’s Travels: From Leningrad to Venice,” Fortnightly Review, 8 November 2020

Darya Apahonchich: The Accusative Case

Hi, everyone! The Russian Federation put me on the wanted list today. Why? Because first I taught Russian to foreign students and because of that I became a “foreign agent,” and then, apparently, because I didn’t fulfill the requirements of the law on “foreign agents”: I drew anti-war comics on [“foreign agent”] report forms to the Justice Ministry.

Oh well.

Source: Darya Apahonchich (Facebook), 7 February 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

(A chapter from a forthcoming book)

To Accuse

(A story in the guise of a Russian language lesson)

“The accusative case is the object case: it answers the questions whom and what. For example, whom do we love? What do we love? A friend, mom, a city. Whom do we hate? What do we hate? The weather, the rain, the snow.”

I point out the window. A disgusting Petersburg sleet is coming down outside, and the class laughs. We often joke about the the city’s atrocious weather. All my students hail from warm countries: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan. Adults between the ages of twenty and fifty, they are people who are commonly called migrant workers. Tired, in black jackets, they apologize verbosely. They know Russian slang because they learn it on the street, at the market, and at work, but they don’t know what a noun is, because they have had little schooling even in their native languages and have been working since they were children.

“Remember we were talking about the dative case, the case of the addressee? To whom do we give something? To whom do we say something? To a sister, to a friend.’

(Here I want to make an aside about the verticality and horizontality of Russian grammatical cases, but I stop myself because I realize it’s superfluous, although I find the explanation felicitous: the dative case is horizontal, while the accusative case is hierarchical and vertical.)

I say this to my students, but my dean is sitting at the back of the classroom, listening attentively, and next to him sits an FSB officer whom my rector dragged into my class. The FSB officer is also listening attentively. It’s hard to say whether I hate anything in my life more than this situation and those two.

“Unlike the dative case — the case of the second subject in an exchange, where I talk to someone, for example, to a person or to a friend (the person is involved in the exchange: they hear and understand me) — the accusative case indicates the object of an action: I eat a pizza, I read a book.”

A few days earlier, my rector had telephoned me and asked me to ask one of my students to come in, ostensibly for a test. I asked him why this was necessary, if the woman had already taken the entrance exam. He said that an FSB officer would come to my lesson, because the student was person of interest to him, but that she should not know the FSB officer would be there.

I said that it was not part of my job description, that I never lie and would never lie to a student. I also told the rector that my class was a class, not an FSB office, and that I was opposed to anyone being spied on in my class, to which the rector replied that he had the right to come to my class with whomever he saw fit and that he would telephone the student himself.

‘What endings can we use in the accusative case? For masculine nouns, we use the zero ending if it is an object (a what?), for example, ‘I know this film’, ‘I read the text’, or -a/-ia if it is a person (a whom?), for example, ‘I know the [male] teacher’ [uchitelia], ‘I see the [male] student’ [studenta]. For feminine nouns, the ending is always -u, for example, ‘I see the book [knigu], ‘I see the [female] student [studentku].

I don’t see the student in class. I haven’t seen her all week since that phone call and I don’t know what to do. Should I call her and tell her that the dean wants to talk to her and that the FSB is interested in her? If I called her on my mobile phone, then the FSB would be interested in me. All week I have been trudging round the city: it’s autumn, November, the weather is disgusting, my feet are wet, I’m working ten hours a day, I don’t see my children, I don’t see the sun. How come I took it all on myself, this job, this workload? Why do I have to bear it alone? Who’s to blame? I guess it’s my fault. But I can’t afford not to work even on my birthday. And then there’s this student. God, what am I going to say to her? Flee the country? Maybe they’ll just ask her questions. It’s not like they’re going to bring a paddy wagon to the university to arrest her…

“What? Yes, there’s no difference between objects and persons: sister [sestru], girlfriend [podrugu], teacher [uchitel’nitsu], street [ulitsu], hand [ruku].

Why are the two of us — two women in a patriarchy — again getting screwed over for everything? Men have invented the patriarchy, that drug for their delicate egos which comes with wars, exploitation, violence, and control. It messes with your head and then blames you for everything being wrong.

“Yes, that’s right. Oyatullo, please come up with sentences using the verbs ‘read,’ ‘write,’ and ‘see’ with nouns in the accusative case.”

When I came to work today, the dean and the FSB guy were already in the classroom. While I was still thinking what to do, everything had already happened, so I started the lesson. Why aren’t future language teachers warned that their profession will involve this? There was pogrom at my last job, a year ago. They came from the FSB, from the migration service. They blocked the doors from the inside, tore my folders with the students’ documents inside, yelled at me and at the students, and those courses were shut down. Then a year passed, and I found a new job: the cultural capital of Russia, beautiful St. Petersburg, Liteiny Prospekt, the Yusupov mansion, stucco, gold, chandeliers, cold, dust, red carpets, students in their jackets and hats. It was sad but mentally manageable. It seemed like things would be decent now, but no, the cops have shown up here too. Now things are just as they should be, the whole nine yards.

“Okay, great! Now let’s do some exercises from the textbook.”

The thing I hate, the vertical in the back row, is slowly segueing into a diagonal. The FSB guy is sitting next to the radiator. You can tell by his flushed mousey face that he’s spent a lot of time outside today and now, in this warm room, he’s gone limp and snuggled up against the wall.

“Page 218, exercise 8, Munisa, please!”

I’ve been working here for a few months now. I have been telling the students about grammar, and they have been telling me about nationalism. They’ve told me about a lot of things — for instance, about the cop who confiscated one’s student’s sack of apples when he realized she didn’t have the money to pay him a bribe; about how they hid in cement bags; about how the neighborhood beat cop visits them once a month to collect 3,000 rubles from each their flats, just because he can; about how landlords refuse to let flats to them; about what people say to them on the street.

“Okay, now let’s turn the page.”

The FSB guy at the back desk is asleep, while the dean sits with his eyes half closed. I think that’s probably what the peak of your career looks like: when you have an FSB officer asleep in your class. Or, depending on how you look at it, maybe it’s the bottom of your career. I also think that it would be good if he kept sleeping like that. Sleeping Beauty slept for a hundred years, so there are historical precedents. That would suit me just fine. I try to keep my voice down.

“Let’s use these same verbs now in the future tense and at the same time we’ll practice the perfect and imperfect aspects of the verb.”

On the wall of my shabby office, just opposite the blackboard, the phrase “Dasha is a rube” was written in black, but then corrected to “Dasha is a nube” in green.

The student for whom the ambush at the back desk was arranged enters the classroom. She is older than me, thin, and wears a hijab, and she has come with her grown-up son. I quickly think that this is better, that it is good she is not alone. The dean briskly rushes up and tells me and my students to move to another classroom and finish our lesson there.

We leave with our books and notebooks. We walk along the red carpet, past a portrait of the patriarch in a golden frame, past a poster against corruption (I remember how once a student tried to bribe me right under this poster), past some oil landscape paintings, past stands with pictures of the father the rector, his son the assistant rector, and his mother the dean. Then we pass the security guard who calls my students “blacks.”

How shameful.

“Okay, let’s finish this page.”

I stopped by the classroom after class. The student and her son were already leaving, and they looked very upset. I never found out what had happened there or what the FSB had wanted with her, and I never saw her again.

This job of mine ended a few months later because of the [2018] FIFA World Cup. Private universities were prohibiting from offering “pre-university” courses. Formally, this was done to reduce the number of students from Central Asia, but in fact it was done so that there would be fewer migrant workers from Central Asia in Russia’s capital cities during the World Cup, because the superpower Russia hinges not only on power but also on provincialism. What would foreigners from the first world see when they came to Russia? Other foreigners, but from the third world?

My lousy work schedule ended a little later, when I was able to find a normal job, that is, several jobs. A little later still, my quasi-marriage ended, because I couldn’t fool myself anymore, and later still my life in St. Petersburg ended in political persecution and emigration.

And only a prolonged feeling of guilt remained with me in the wake of it all: about how I should have behaved, where that woman is now, and whether she is doing well.

Source: Darya Apahonchich (Facebook), 5 August 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Dear friends, thank you for the words of support. Yesterday, I realized that, although I had know that sooner or later I might be put on [Russia’s] wanted list, I wasn’t ready for it.

I probably used to joke about it, and I still do. For example, there are my children: their parents are wanted because one of them insulted the feelings of religious believers, while the other taught foreign students and submitted incorrect reports to the Justice Ministry.

But this grotesque discrepancy between the gravity of the “crimes” and the sanctions masks what I see as a modern Russian form of mock execution. Remember how Chernyshevsky was put through this? He had a signboard bearing the words “state criminal” hung on his chest, and his sword was broken above his head.

In addition to that, he was sent into exile, banned from publishing books and living in the capital cities, placed under constant surveillance, and so on.

It’s a pity I don’t have a sword to break.

You know, when it happens to you, the feelings which arise are complicated. If it were only about my relations with the authorities, it would be easier. But it automatically implies that I cannot go back to Russia, and although I had not planned on doing this in the near future, yesterday I realized that it hurts me a lot.

I was on the bus when I got the call from Varya.

“I have to tell you so you don’t find out about this on the new,” she says to me.

“So, what happened?”

“You’ve been put on the wanted list. Are you okay?

(I’m not okay: I’m crying. I forgot I could cry like that.)

“Dasha, where are you now?”

“I’m on the bus, Varya. I missed my bus and the driver of another bus has let me ride for free.”

“He let you on because you could explain everything so well in German?”

“No, because he found out I was Russian. He said he was Serbian and loved Russia.”

(Varya laughs.)

“You tell him that his beloved Russia has put you on the wanted list.”

“Varechka, I still don’t have a ticket and I have to get to my destination, so I won’t tell him about this.”

As I rode in the bus, I thought that I should write down this conversation and that I too, like my Serbian driver, love Russia. I love Kamchatka, Siberia, and St. Petersburg — all three of my homelands, and I miss the people dear to me and the places dear to me, the people and places which nourished me and brought me up, teaching me to be freedom-loving and independent.

So I am sorry that thing are like this, that my country does not want to see me but puts me on the wanted list as if it wanted to see me. I would like our friendship to be mutual.

Source: Darya Apahonchich (Facebook), 8 February 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Who Wants to Be a Ruble Millionaire?

“A first-year salary of 5,000,000 rubles [approx. 48,000 euros]. A one-time [signing bonus] of 2,500,000 rubles. Monthly pay starting at 210,000 rubles [approx. 2,000 euros] in the special military operation zone. THE HERO CITY HAS ITS OWN HEROES. 16 Republican Street, Saint Petersburg, +7 931-326-8943.”

The signing bonus for volunteering for combat duty has been raised to 2.5 million rubles in Petersburg

The amount was increased by 400,000 rubles. Previously, those wishing to go to the front were paid a lump sum of 2.1 million rubles. On the poster, which was published in the Red Guards District administration’s chat group, the amount that can now be earned for a year of service in the war zone is listed as 5,000,000 rubles.

Judging by the information on the Smolny’s [Petersburg city hall’s] website, the signing bonus was increased three days ago, at the expense of the city budget. Rotunda was told the same thing at the military service recruiting center in the Central District.

Source: Rotunda (Telegram), 20 January 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Nizhny Novgorod: sales assistant-cashier

Low-price chain store seeks a sales assistant-cashier.

Responsibilities: serving customers at the cash register; restocking products in the sales area; maintaining order and cleanliness. The candidate should be energetic, trainable, and ready for intensive work.

On-the-books employment. Schedule: two days on, two days off. Salary: 56,000 rubles [a month, i.e., approx. 540 euros a month].

The employer pays for training and a medical examination, offers corporate discounts at all stores in the chain, provides material assistance in difficult situations, and arranges for gifts for children.

Source: Natalya Suvorova, “Ten vacancies for no-experience jobs with a wage of up to eighty thousand rubles per month,” Rabota.ru, 20 January 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

[…]

In 2025, Russian authorities are continuing to increase payments for contract soldiers participating in the war in Ukraine.

From January, men who sign a military contract in the Samara region will receive a one-time payout of up to 4 million rubles ($38,900) — the highest of any region in the country.

In addition to these one-time payouts, which vary by region, military personnel also receive a monthly salary of at least 210,000 rubles ($2,000). In the event of a soldier’s death, their family is entitled to a “funeral allowance,” which can amount to up to 5 million rubles ($48,600), according to a presidential decree.

The substantial payouts to contract soldiers are part of the authorities’ efforts to turn the military into the country’s new elite, says historian Dmitry Dubrovsky.

“One of the key outcomes of the ongoing war is the attempt to construct a ‘Putin Elite 2.0’ to replace the original elite that emerged in the early 2000s, built on oil and gas revenues,” Dubrobsky said. “This process began as early as 2014, when the ‘heroes of the Russian Spring’ gradually started integrating into Putin’s regime. However, it became fully evident with the onset of the full-scale aggression [against Ukraine].”

In addition to million-ruble payouts, the state also provides military personnel with subsidized mortgages and free university education for their children, including at prestigious institutions such as Moscow State University and the Higher School of Economics.

Nearly 15,000 soldiers who fought in Ukraine, as well as their children, were admitted to Russian universities under this program in 2024 — almost double the number from 2023. And increasingly, Ukraine war veterans are being appointed to political roles, though not on a wide scale.

“The privileges of military personnel are evident in the growing practice of integrating ‘veterans’ into various political projects and regional administrations, often as deputy governors,” says historian Dubrovsky. “Overall, the families of military personnel see themselves as part of a superior class, a perception eagerly reinforced by Putin’s propaganda.”

[…]

Source: Angelina Trefilova, “‘I’m a Real-Life Katyusha’: As Russia Hikes Payments for Soldiers, Their Wives Flaunt Newfound Affluence,” Moscow Times, 16 January 2025

Alexander Skobov: Closing Statement at Trial

Alexander Skobov’s closing statement at trial:

I was brought up in the Soviet Union to believe that when a malicious, cruel aggressor attacks civilians, you have to take up arms and go do battle with him, and that if you cannot bear arms, you help the people who are doing battle and call on others to do the same.

All my work as a political commentator has been about calling on people to go do battle with the aggressor which has attacked Ukraine, to assist Ukraine with weapons and ammunition.

No one had attacked or threatened Russia.

It was Putin’s Nazi regime which attacked Ukraine, only because of the megalomania of the regime’s ringleaders, because of their inhuman thirst for power over all they survey.

Murdering hundreds of thousands of people is their way of bolstering their self-esteem. They are degenerates, scum, and Nazi riffraff.

The guilt of Putin’s Nazi dictatorship in plotting, unleashing, and waging a war of aggression is obvious and does not need to be proven. We also do not need to prove our right to offer armed resistance to this aggression on the battlefield and in the aggressor’s rear. It would be laughable to expect this right to be acknowledged by a regime which tosses people in prison for morally condemning its aggression out loud. All legal means of protesting Putinist Russia’s aggression have been eliminated.

My calls to resist the aggressor’s regime with armed force have caused me to be charged with terrorism.* I won’t deign to argue with the aggressor’s officials even if they claim my actions constitute pedophilia. Russia’s courts have long ago shown themselves to be appendages of the Nazi tyranny and seeking justice from them is pointless. I will never stand up before these people, who are the lackeys of murderers and scoundrels.

I see no point in arguing with puppets of the dictatorship about how conscientiously they execute their own laws. In any case, these laws are the laws of a totalitarian state and their aim is to stifle dissent. I do not recognize these laws and I will not obey them.

I also have no intention of appealing any rulings made by or actions taken by representatives of the Nazi regime.

The Putinist dictatorship may murder me, but it cannot force me to stop fighting against it. Wherever I find myself, I will keep calling on honest Russians to join the Ukrainian Armed Forces. I will keep calling for airstrikes on military facilities deep in Russian territory. I will keep calling on the civilized world to inflict a strategic defeat on Nazi Russia. I will keep trying to prove that the new Hitler’s regime must be routed militarily.

Putin is the new Hitler, a vampire driven insane by impunity and drunk on blood. I shall never grow tired of saying, “Crush the viper!”

Death to the murder, tyrant and scoundrel Putin!

Death to the Russian fascist invaders!

Glory to Ukraine!

[Grani.Ru:] Thanks to Alexander Valeryevich’s dedicated wife Olga Shcheglova (pictured above). Thanks to SotaVision for filming at the Petersburg military court (Skobov is participating in the trial via video link from Syktyvkar). Thanks to those who didn’t unsubscribe from Grani.Ru after it closed. It’s as if Skobov timed his brave deed to coincide with the final moral collapse of numerous media brands. And yet he will be heard by a handful of his contemporaries. But he has already gone down in history.

* Skobov has been charged with “publicly calling for terrorism,” “publicly condoning terrorism or promoting terrorism using the mass media, including the internet” and “organizing a terrorist community and participating in it.” If Skobov is convicted on these charges, he faces a maximum penalty of ten to fifteen years in prison and fines of up to one million rubles (approx. 9,500 euros) — TRR.

Source: Grani.Ru (Facebook), 15 January 2025. Translated by Thomas Campbell (aka the Russian Reader)

Konstantin Vaginov: Goat Song (Book Presentation)

6:00 pm–7:30 pm, Friday, February 7, 2025 • Deutsches Haus, 420 W 116th St., New York, NY 10027 + Google Map

Please join the Harriman Institute for a presentation of the book “Konstantin Vaginov. Goat Song” (NYRB, 2025) with presentations by Edwin Frank, Ainsley Morse, Geoff Gebula, and Polina Barskova. Moderated by Mark Lipovetsky.

Konstantin Vaginov was an early and exemplary figure of Soviet modernist writing in all its agonized and glorious contradictions. Born into an educated middle-class family at the turn of the century, Vaginov came of age with the Bolshevik revolution. His novels of the late 1920s and early 1930s are daringly experimental and tragically nostalgic, mourning the irrevocable loss of pre-revolutionary intellectual culture with mercilessly ironic prose. Hopelessly adrift in the brave new Soviet world, Vaginov’s protagonists attempt to conjure the recent and distant past by stockpiling old books and songs, vulgar baubles and bad jokes, newspaper clippings, coins, and graffiti.

This volume contains two novels. The first, Goat Song, is an ironically literal translation of the Greek word “tragedy” (tragodia—goat song). It features thinly veiled portraits of Vaginov’s contemporaries, the luminaries and leftovers of the once-flourishing Petersburg, Petrograd, and Leningrad arts community, as they flounder and self-destruct in their new bracingly materialist circumstances. Echoing Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and Bely, Goat Song is both a classic Petersburg city text and its swan song: “Now there is no Petersburg. There is Leningrad; but Leningrad has nothing to do with us—the author is a coffin-maker by trade, not a cradle expert.”

The second novel, Works and Days of Wistlin, follows the nonchalant novelist Wistlin as he unscrupulously mines the lives of his friends and fellow citizens for literary material. Like the flea-market trinkets hunted by Goat Song’s marginal figures, Wistlin’s eccentric and frivolous victims are yesterday’s relics and nobody’s concern. His exploitation of human material is a wry commentary on the concurrent efforts to industrialize and collectivize the Soviet economy, at a horrific human cost.

Registration REQUIRED by 4 pm on February 6, 2025 in order to attend this event.

Source: Harriman Institute (Columbia University)

Drones over Aprashka

As Ukrainian drones attacked the surrounding Leningrad Region this past weekend, life went on, seemingly unaltered, at downtown Petersburg’s notorious, glorious Apraksin Market aka Aprashka. Thanks to anatrrra for kind permission to reprint their stunning photo reportage from the market.

Continue reading →

Antiwar Pianist Polina Osetinskaya Canceled in Russia’s Cultural Capital

Polina Osetinskaya. Photo courtesy of YouTube channel “Yuzefovich” (via MR7.ru)

Christmastime Encounters with Polina Osetinskaya, a festival which was to be held on January 5, 6 and 8 at the Petersburg pub Fontanka 69, has been canceled, as reported January 5 on the pub’s Telegram channel.

“Due to circumstances beyond our or Polina Osetinskaya’s control, the festival will not take place,” the organizers said. The pianist had planned to perform pieces by Bach, Debussy, and Desyatnikov.

In its social media post, Fontanka 69 also said that the festival had been conceived by its director Denis Rubin as a way of financially supporting Osetinskaya. “Live performances are the main source of Polina’s livelihood,” emphasized the organizers.

The pub’s post also says that the tickets purchased for the festival could be returned and refunded on the ticket seller’s website. “We would be grateful if you would be willing to hold on to your tickets and support the artist in this way,” the authors of the post emphasized, however.

This is not the first time Osetinskaya’s concerts have been canceled in St. Petersburg. In September 2022, the pianist was not able to perform on stage at the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. Instead, Eugene Izotov played a concert organized by the Employment Promotion Fund.

Osetinskaya spoke out against the special [military] operation on social media on 24 February 2022. Later, as a trustee of the Oxygen Foundation, she signed an appeal by Russian NGOs to stop the SMO.

Source: “Pianist Polina Osetinskaya’s Christmas Concerts in Petersburg Cancelled,” MR7.ru, 5 January 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Polina Osetinskaya performs the first two movements of Leonid Desyatnikov’s Reminiscences of the Theater (1985)
at 142 Throckmorton Theatre, Mill Valley, California, 4 June 2006

“I Can’t Stifle My Feelings”: Petersburg Translator Elena Abramova Faces Criminal Charges over Two Antiwar Pickets

A court in St. Petersburg has begun hearing the case against translator Elena Abramova, who has been charged with repeatedly “discrediting” the Russian army because she engaged in public protests brandishing placards that called for the release of Alexei Navalny and all other political prisoners, and an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Because of the criminal case against her, Abramova is no longer permanently employed, although she has stayed in Russia.

Elena Abramova was born and raised in Magadan. Her parents met as students at a teachers institute. Her mom worked as an insurance agent, and her dad, Arnold Yeryomenko, was a Russian language and literature teacher. In the late 1980s, Yeryomenko was imprisoned for two and a half years over his manuscript “October Vanquished,” which detailed “his thoughts on the regime, the Soviet government, and the Soviet legacy.” The family does not have the text of the manuscript: although Abramova’s mother asked the FSB for a copy, she was told that the document had been lost.

“I don’t know for sure whether Dad planned to publish his manuscript officially, or if he was hoping [to publish it] in samizdat. But he definitely talked about it, and someone in his entourage was aware of its contents. That someone was probably an informant, which is how the KGB found out about the manuscript. Informers probably think they are doing something useful in this way, so they inform on people,” Abramova says.

Yeryomenko spoke at protest rallies and led a pro-democracy movement in Magadan, which “held meetings with supporters, but was not involved in electoral politics.” He was asked to run for office but declined.

“I don’t think Dad had any political ambitions. Power never appealed to him. He had his job, which he enjoyed, he spent time with his family, and he read a lot — we had a very extensive library. In short, he had other interests,” says Abramova. “My father’s principled position was that the individual human being had supreme worth. There should be no pressure [on the individual], no compulsion to [hold particular] views or [adhere to] any particular ideology. He always advocated for de-ideologizing society, for the possibility to freely voice one’s thoughts, to speak out freely, to freely participate in peaceful political campaigns. This is what we lack now.”

Yeryomenko’s political activism peaked in the mid-1980s, after he was released from prison, and waned in the 1990s.

“My family welcomed the fall of the Soviet Union,” says Abramova. “I had to wear a Young Pioneer tie for a year, and I remember how we constantly made up excuses to avoid wearing it: that it was supposedly in the laundry, or something else was the matter. When it was all over, I remember the feeling of relief that now I wouldn’t have to do it: there was something contrived about it. I thought that now we would be able to live in peace, without these tokens of the Soviet regime. It seems to me that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when that short period of freedom dawned, many people just relaxed. It was such a contrast with the past that everyone wanted to get on with their own lives finally, to enjoy the advantages that became available after the regime changed.”

Abramova says that her own views, on the one hand, come from her family, although she was not particularly interested in politics before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Her father died in 2008, and five years later she left her job at a large gold mining company and moved to St. Petersburg, where she got a job as a translator. She was buried in her own cares, including working and raising a child.

“I lived my life. Now I look back and recall that my interest in politics emerged not so long ago, and it was provoked by the outbreak of hostilities to a large extent. Before that, I was aware of certain events, of course, and I had opinions on certain issues. I was simply shocked when I heard that [the war in Ukraine] had beguin. At that moment, I was not up to speed at all, I didn’t folloow in detail what was going on. When I saw [the President’s televised] address [announcing the war], I didn’t even realize what was happening. I couldn’t believe that such a thing was even possible, and it took me several days to just to get my head around it. I read news feeds like crazy and watched YouTube. It was a complete surprise, I didn’t think it would happen. The catastrophe is that people are being killed every day,” Abramova says.

Abramova held her first protest picket in late 2022. At the time, she was not only reading news about the hostilities in Ukraine but also following the political trials [in Russia].

“Ilya Yashin was sentenced on December 9. I decided that I had to protest publicly. Although it would be a purely symbolic gesture, I had to do it because I was ashamed. I was ashamed that my country had been plunged into such chaos and darkness. I didn’t know when it would end, and it was clear that this solo picket wouldn’t change anything, but it was a public statement I had to make, which I had to make against all the odds, despite the restrictions. I was a bit scared: I had no prior experience of solo pickets. I had gone to rallies in support of Navalny, and after [Boris] Nemtsov was murdered. But I had not been to the protest rallies that were held at the very outset [of the war]. I was not subscribed to any [social media] communities and didn’t know where they were held, who had made arrangements with whom, or where to go. But this time I decided that I had to go out,” says Abramova.

Abramova’s first picket lasted for only five minutes, although the site — the square outside the Mariinsky Palace — was not very crowded.

“[I stood for] five minutes, maybe a little longer. I soon noticed law enforcement officers approaching me — slowly, demonstratively slowly, as it seemed to me. They detained me quite politely, they weren’t rude. But there was one man in civilian clothes, in a tracksuit, who was also at the police station later, and he asked the most questions. While I was standing there, I saw someone from the opposite side of the street taking a picture of me. Some people walked by and said “thank you” — it was a young couple, I think. Others pretended not to notice. My placard that time out read “No War.” A couple of months later, in February [2023], a court hearing took place, at which I was fined 30,000 rubles [approx. 380 euros at the time],” Abramova recalls.

Abramova was sentenced to another fine for taking part in a protest rally against the military mobilization, and in late April 2023 she held another solo picket outside Gostiny Dvor. She was able to stand there for a few seconds before she was detained. She held her third picket on [June 4], the birthday of politician Alexei Navalny.

“I took up my position on the Field of Mars, were there were no police officers at all. Later, I went to Gostiny Dvor, where I was detained immediately. An arrest sheet was drawn up for the second picket, but the case did not go to court. After I left the station, they telephoned me and asked me to come in for ‘additional testimony.’ They probably realized this was already my second arrest. But it was not listed in the arrest sheet, and so I declined to go in. After my third picket I was taken to the same station, and this time the police pulled my rap sheet and opened a criminal case against me,” says Abramova.

Several men in balaclavas, an investigator, and Center “E” officers (officers from the Interior Ministry’s “anti-extremism” unit) soon came to search Abramova’s home.

“I said I had to get dressed, and they said I literally had five seconds to do it. I began to get dressed, but they were banging on the [front] door and practically breaking it down. My child was asleep, so I woke him up, told him not to worry, and explained there was going to be a search. When they were already inside the apartment they behaved themselves, but they confiscated my phone and didn’t even let me call work to warn them I wouldn’t be coming,” says Abramova.

During the investigation, it came to light that the criminal case against Abramova had been launched illegally. Since she is a voting member of an election commission, a criminal case can only be initiated through a special procedure, which had been violated. Formally, then, the case against Abramova was launched twice: first in the summer of 2023, and again in May 2024.

The criminal case against Abramova is currently being heard in court. According to Russian law, for two antiwar pickets she faces a huge fine, forced labor, or up to five years in a penal colony. Abramova attends the court hearings and has no intention of leaving Russia.

“I don’t see any use for myself abroad. I had difficulties finding work in St. Petersburg, especially after the criminal case was opened and I was fired, back in September of last year. I missed a day of work because of the search, and I was immediately asked to turn in my resignation. It was a commercial firm, and the management was probably afraid of scrutiny from law enforcement. But still, I can’t imagine what I would do if I weren’t in Russia. I think that there may come a time when people will need to be here, but the people who need to be here won’t be here. And then, even if I leave, I can’t stifle my feelings. I also feel my share of the guilt for what is happening — for my indifference and lack of involvement. And the pain over the fact that my country unleashed a war against a neighboring country would still remain. I would still have to live with it. Changing locations wouldn’t affect this much,” says Abramova.

Source: “‘I can’t stifle my feelings’: criminal charges for two antiwar pickets,” Radio Svoboda, 1 January 2024 (originally published by Okno). Translated by Thomas Campbell

Thе New Year Spirit

Faithful to its avant-garde nature, Noise Cabaret premieres the immersive series Dialogues, based on the philosophical works of Plato, on December 25. Alexander Khudyakov turns ancient Greek philosophy into a lively, witty and provocative dialogue with the audience.

Along with his partner Ivan Wahlberg, Khudyakov, who not only acts in the project but directs it, will guide the audience through the labyrinths of Plato’s thought. What is justice? Where is the line between existence and non-existence? What is the true nature of love? These and many other fundamental philosophical questions will serve as starting points for reflection and debate.

Dialogues is a series of interactive performances in which each viewer is involved in a philosophical discussion consisting of adapted texts by Plato and actorly improvisation, meaning that the way the performance goes depends on the audience’s involvement. Each new performance is a separate chapter dealing with a specific philosophical problem, so you can join the series at any stage. The first episode deals with the concept of justice.

Noise Cabaret plans to invite Petersburg celebrities to enrich the conversation with the audience with their own opinions and views.

Khudyakov shared the idea behind the project.

“We wanted to do a story related to people talking in a bar. But just people talking to each other is not interesting. There has to be a big focus. When I studied Plato, I was interested in several aspects of his philosophy. It would have been wrong to limit ourselves to a single topic. So the idea to make a series arose: take Plato, read him, and discuss the themes he raises in the Socratic dialogues.

“We plan to produce a new episode every two or three months. There’s no pretense here that we’re serious scholars of Plato’s philosophy: it’s more of an excuse to talk to people about difficult topics, to air the Dialogues and reflect on them. And a bar is a place where you can talk about all sorts of things, including philosophy.”

Source: Fontanka.ru, 23 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

Russians spent almost 6 billion rubles on Ozempic generics in 2024

Semaglutide-based drugs are commonly used for weight loss

In the first ten months of 2024, Russians spent 5.9 billion rubles [approx. 52 billion euros] on over one million packs of generic versions of the drug Ozempic (semaglutide), according to DSM Group, as reported by Vedomosti.

Among the most popular generics are Geropharm’s Semavic and Promomed’s Quincenta. The original drug Ozempic stopped [sic] official supplies to Russia in December 2023, opening the market to domestic analogues.

2024 was a record year for drugs in this category. By comparison, in 2023, Russians spent only 297 million rubles on Ozempic, buying 20 thousand packs. In 2022, they spent 1.9 billion rubles (256 thousand packs); in 2021, 758 million rubles; and in 2020, 76 million rubles.

Semaglutide-based drugs are used to treat diabetes but have recently been gaining popularity as weight loss drugs, which has also contributed to their sales growth in Russia.

Source: ASTV.ru, 21 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader

St. Petersburg will open a new metro station this week, Governor Alexander Beglov announced Thursday, marking the former Tsarist capital’s first new metro station in five years.

The Gorny Institute metro station, located on Vasilievsky Island, will extend the fourth (or “orange”) line westward. It will begin operations at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, with its vestibule open for both entry and exit, Beglov said.

“The opening of Gorny Institute is a milestone,” the governor wrote on Telegram, noting that the city had overcome “significant challenges” during the station’s construction.

Beglov thanked President Vladimir Putin, metro builders, engineers and residents of St. Petersburg for their patience and support, calling the station’s completion the “first results” of sustained efforts to advance the city’s metro system.

The station’s opening comes after years of delays. Initially scheduled for completion in 2015, its opening was postponed to 2018 and later to 2022. Construction efforts were further overshadowed by a fatal scaffolding collapse in June 2020 that killed one worker and injured another.

Gorny Institute is the first station to open since 2019, when three others — Prospect Slavy, Dunayskaya, and Shushary — were inaugurated.

St. Petersburg’s metro is currently made up of five lines and 72 stations. However, it has expanded slowly over the years, in stark contrast to Moscow’s burgeoning metro system, which this year opened eight new stations.

Source: Moscow Times, 26 December 2024

[…]

In trying to grasp the tonality of the film [Anora], I am reminded of a line from Francis Bacon: “You can be optimistic and totally without hope.” The situation the characters find themselves in, being at the mercy of the rich, is totally without hope. The “hopeful” version of the script would be one in which Vanya does stand up to his parents and runs off with Ani, even at the price of losing his wealth—this is the film’s narrative lure. Or maybe another where the ruthless capitalist mother gains a grudging respect for her tough daughter-in-law, like in the last season of Fargo. But despite its grim closure, the impression the film gives is far from dreary or pessimistic. The hopeless optimism of Baker’s cinema lies in the sheer life that seems to almost burst out of the filmic frame, and, especially, his deep care for his characters, even Vanya.

Source: Aaron Schuster, “The Ethical Dignity of Anora,” e-flux Notes, 20 November 2024

In the fall of 2023, with the goal of understanding what is really happening with Russian society during wartime, the Public Sociology Laboratory team went on ethnographic research trips to three Russian regions—Sverdlovsk, Krasnodar and Buryatia. Over the course of a month, PS Lab researchers observed how people talk about the war and how it affects daily life in cities and villages. In addition, they recorded sociological interviews with local residents. PS Lab has compiled three detailed ethnographic observation diaries (more than 100,000 words apiece) and conducted 75 in-depth interviews. Overall, it has managed to collect truly unique data that provides an idea of what people say and think about the war in everyday situations, and not only when answering researchers’ questions.

The full text of the report is book-length and written in a book-style format: it consists of seven chapters, introduces many characters, and allows readers to be fully immersed in contemporary wartime Russia. The following summary, meanwhile, highlights the main analytical conclusions.

Russian society remains politically demobilized and deideologized. Despite the prevailing opinion that it is strictly militarized, we see that the war has become routine and therefore a disregarded part of reality. For example, compared to the first years of the war, the amount of prowar symbolism in public spaces has decreased in all three regions. The war has neither become a source of new ideas in the cultural life of cities or villages nor been integrated into familiar and already-established cultural formats. The war is not discussed in public places, including, with rare exceptions, local online communities.

In spontaneous conversations, Russians rarely discuss the overall goals and causes, criminality, or justifications of the war. They are concerned with the impact of the war on their everyday lives. When they talk about the war, they mostly talk about the same things they discussed before the war, for example, everyday difficulties, money, or ethics. Men more often discuss topics that are considered “masculine” in society, such as the technical side of the war, and women usually talk about “feminine” topics, such as how war destroys families.

Participation in various types of prowar volunteering and organized assistance for the military, which are often cited as an example of the mobilization and militarization of Russian society, is rarely motivated by people’s firm support for the “special operation.” It is usually associated with pressure from the administration, community moral norms (concerning mutual assistance), and/ora desire to help loved ones, rather than a wish to make victory for Russia more likely. Observation of volunteers’ activities show that while working, they do not discuss the war or politics, rather choosing topics that are personable and relatable to them: prices, pensions, families, and/or stories related to the volunteer centers.

Despite all these similarities, the war is perceived slightly differently in different regions. The peculiarities of each region’s view owe to factors like the number of military units and penal colonies from which prisoners are recruited, proximity to the combat zone, the prosperity of the region and the availability of decent jobs, the density of social ties, the circulation of news transmitted by friends on the front lines, etc. In other words, the differences in perceptions of the war are attributable mainly to the peculiarities of life in the regions before the invasion of Ukraine.

The conflict between opponents and supporters of the war is gradually subsiding, while the rift between those who stayed in Russia and those who left is growing. This is happening both because the shared experience of living through a difficult situation within the country is becoming more important for many Russians than any differences in viewpoint, and also because people are discussing the war less.

At the same time, the waning conflict between opponents and supporters of the war does not always mean more social cohesion. Since people are trying to live as if the war is nonexistent and the government does not talk about any losses or problems associated with the war, all negative consequences of the war are either normalized or pushed into the realm of “personal problems” that are not discussed with anyone and that everyone must deal with on their own.

Overall, many people do not feel able to influence political decisions. Therefore, they are increasingly distancing themselves from the war. They understand that they cannot change government policy, but they retain at least some control over their private lives—and therefore they are immersed in them. Over time, not only apolitical Russians but even sure opponents of the invasion experience this powerlessness and, as a result, some of them accept the new reality while continuing to condemn the war internally.

Consequently, many Russians are increasingly distrustful of political news from a broad range of sources. Instead, they put their trust in local media. Local problems and news seem much more important and relevant to them. Moreover, they feel that, unlike the war, local issues are at least sometimes within their ability to influence.

At the same time, the war is weighing people’s emotional state. Many of our interlocutors admit that they experience anxiety, tension, uncertainty, fear, even if these things are not usually spoken about openly. The departure of sons and husbands to war makes women “scream at the top of their lungs.” However, people rarely share such emotions with others, and if they do, they do so in groups with close friends.

Many Russians who are not interested in politics may justify or condemn the war depending on the communicative context.

They tend to non-emotionally justify the war through normalization (“there are always wars”) or rationalization (“it was necessary”) when asked about it directly in more formalized settings, such as research interviews.
They are more likely to criticize the war when prompted to think about how it negatively affects them as ordinary Russians. This criticism differs from that of war opponents. For opponents, the war is a moral crime against Ukraine, whereas for apolitical Russians, the war is seen as something that destroys Russian society and harms ordinary people. However, this criticism does not lead apolitical Russians to question the war’s necessity or inevitability, nor does it extend to criticizing the Russian government.
They tend to emotionally justify the war when confronted with traditional anti-war narratives. When Russia is accused of committing moral crimes against the Ukrainian people, they often take such accusations personally and attempt to defend their own dignity.

Some people have experienced a strengthened sense of national identity, and sometimes a demand for greater solidarity arises. It’s important to note that this increased sense of national identity does not lead Russians to adopt the official imperial brand of nationalism. Unlike the Kremlin, ordinary people live in a world of nation states, not in a world of imperial fantasies (according to which Ukraine is not a real state and Ukrainians are an inferior people).

A feeling of uncertainty is what truly unites Russians today. Despite the fact that people choose various strategies to cope with this feeling, it still significantly complicates the ability to plan one’s life and plunges Russians into pessimism.

Thus, on the one hand, the formerly extraordinary nature of the war is giving way to normalization: the war is gradually becoming something ordinary, another unremarkable part of the surrounding world. In a sense, many Russians resist both the Kremlin’s attempts to turn ordinary citizens into ideological supporters and the attempts of the anti-war liberal opposition to force society to actively experience guilt and fight. On the other hand, the war constantly reminds us of its existence, creating new threats, new anxieties, and new reasons for discontent in Russians.

Source: Public Sociology Laboratory (The Russia Program), December 2024

Dear readers!
Times are tough, and the key in this case is holding on in every sense.
No one says it’s easy.
But it’s not so hard either.
The other day I asked Vladimir Putin whether he expected anything more from himself in the outgoing year.
But I want to ask you: do you expect anything more from yourself in the coming year?
We need to expect things. We need to want things. It’s a way of holding on to ourselves. Of looking after ourselves. Of not losing ourselves. And even of finding ourselves.
A hard sign (“Ъ”) will never be a soft sign (“Ь”)!
Happy incoming New Year!
Let’s not be on the defensive!

Andrei Kolesnikov, Special Correspondent, Kommersant Publishing House

Source: Email from Kommersant, 31 December 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. The so-called hard sign, which the Bolsheviks dropped from the Russian Cyrillic alphabet in 1918, has been the logo of Kommersant since the newspaper’s relaunch in January 1990. Andrei Kolesnikov has been the newspaper’s special Kremlin correspondent — that is, its chief Putinversteher — for many years. Of course he’ll deny it all when push comes to shove and Putin goes, and he’ll point of course to the cynical, jocular (but ultimately loyal) way he’s written about the Russian dictator and war criminal all these years.