I think that most of us have not yet understood that the world of Russia has once again, like a century ago, split in two, like an iceberg, and its two halves, the bigger and the smaller, are rapidly drifting apart. It’s just that the split happened less dramatically, without the crowding onto the last steamship, without the “we departed from Crimea amidst smoke and fire” [lines from a poem by White émigré Nikolai Turoverov]. The split has been dragged out in time, and the crack wasn’t so wide at the beginning. Some people are still hopping from one iceberg to the other.
“Endless War”
And yet—that’s it. There are two Russias again. Many people—in both halves—cannot or are afraid to recognize this. It’s time to stop hopping, otherwise you’ll leap to one side and won’t be able to hop back again.
Hopes for the swift fall of the rotten regime (also just like one hundred years ago) have been disappointed. It’s plenty rotten but rot, as everyone knows, spreads.
Last time it took seventy years to root it out. This time it probably won’t take as much time; time moves more quickly in the twenty-first century, but you still have to unpack the suitcases and settle in for a long wait.
“Anticipation of White Nights”
What will happen with the ‘little’ Russia, scattered across different countries, is pretty clear. [Russians] who are younger or more active or more professionally cosmopolitan will assimilate with varying degrees of success. [Russians] who are older and professionally tied to the language and culture will sadly sing “while the light has not gone out, while the candle burns” [a line from a famous Mashina vremeni song] and will support that little flame as long as they have the life and strength for it. This work of theirs is not pointless or in vain, because in ‘big’ Russia there are still a great many people for whom that light will be precious and necessary.
In the mother country—goddamn déjà-vu—things will soon be utterly unbearable. In the longstanding two-hundred-year struggle between the Asiatic state and European culture the Horde has triumphed once again, now zealously working to asiatize the culture. (There is nothing malign about Asia and its culture, which of all people I, a specialist in Asian studies, should know; I am talking about political Asia, in which the state is everything and the individual is nothing.)
The culture of the mother country will be censored, hollowed out, thrust onto all fours and taught to wag its tail. We’ve seen it, we remember. Later, of course, a counterculture will take shape, [yielding] virtuosos of Aesopian language and furtive rude gestures. We remember that too: we had plenty of it. The emigres will coo condescendingly over any vivid manifestations of censored culture—like Nabokov did over Okudzhava. Those in Russia will secretly pass around tamizdat editions. And publish in the West using pseudonyms.
How dreadful and boring this all is, ladies and gentlemen. Russia’s national anthem: “We sowed and sowed the grain, we will stomp and stomp the grain” [lines from a Russian folk song].
For some the price will be their profession, for others poverty or emigration. The most noble will give up their freedom. And even their lives. The higher quality the person, the greater the cost.
And it is all worth it. This is what I’ve been thinking and why I wrote this text, not at all because I wanted to drive you into even greater despondency.
More so than all of us together, each of us individually is facing a big test. We can’t flunk.
Stop referring to “Asia” and “the Horde.” Why insult millions of people in the world and in Russia itself? You are not helping the “little” Russia” in any way.
I see that Akunin has again written something about Asia (where “the state is everything and the individual is nothing”) defeating European values in one particular country.
The point is that Russian intellectuals are, historically, not so fond of anything as repeating German vulgarities. And “Asian” metaphors are the favorites of Germans, and there is no degree of blatant idiocy at which they would stop.
For example, Adenauer explicitly claimed that the “Asian steppes” begin east of the Elbe. (He considered Prussia to be Asian, and so Bismarck’s triumph was an Asian conquest of Germany. Adenauer added the steppe by association.)
No matter how many decades have passed, the pre-war German spirit cannot be taken out of the Russian pamphleteer, and the fear of appearing ridiculous is as alien to them as it was to their mentors.
Quite correct thoughts in general, but there is one big catch.
How does Akunin (Chkhartishvili) differ from those Sieg Heiling in Russia when he starts using “Asia” in such a context, in such a comparison, even with a caveat? Maybe someone will say that I am wrong to try and compare him with the Sieg Heilers. Let me put it another way, then. How does a very good writer differ from those who are called white supremacists in the west?
I recently listened to a very interesting lecture on racism. The lecturer made a rather loose, but interesting ranking, singling out the racism of Soviet people as a separate species.
For some reason, some Europeans, when speaking about Asianness, “forget” about the Inquisition, concentration camps, and many other terrible events in history. Or are these also manifestations of Asianness?
We should also not forget that the current world order is also largely a product of European civilization with all its pros and cons.
One last thing, about why I decided to react in this way to Akunin’s statement, which are quite congenial to my own thoughts. It seems to me that a respected public figure should always think about the consequences of their words and deeds.
[…]
Source: Asya Rudina, “‘The world has split in two:’ the Runet discusses Akunin’s post about the two Russias,” Radio Svoboda, 1 April 2024. Translated by the Fabulous AM and the Russian Reader. The reactions, above, to Akunin’s outburst were not typical. Most of the best-selling author’s fans echoed his sentiments. The photos, above, by our friends V and M, were taken today at an exhibition currently on view in the former swimming pool and catacombs in the so-called Petrikirche on Nevsky Prospekt in downtown Petersburg. They suggest, I think, that the reality on the ground in “big Russia” (and “little Russia” as well) is slightly more complicated than Akunin would have us believe.||| TRR
KING CITY, Calif. — A group of men in masks opened fire at an outdoor party in central California, killing four people and injuring three others Sunday evening, police said.
Police responded to a reported shooting around 6 p.m. in King City and found three men with gunshot wounds who were pronounced dead in a front yard, the King City Police Department said in a statement.
Four other people sustained gunshot wounds, including a woman who died after being transported to Mee Memorial Hospital in King City, about 106 miles (170 kilometers) south of San Jose.
The three injured men were transported to Natividad Hospital in Salinas, police said.
Several people were at the party outside a residence when three men with dark masks and clothes got out of a silver car and fired at the group. The suspects, who were not immediately identified, then fled the scene in the car.
The investigation is ongoing, police said.
On Monday French lawmakers will vote on whether to enshrine in the country’s constitution a “guarantee” of women’s “freedom” to have an abortion. They will meet at a joint session of the lower and upper houses of parliament in Versailles, a rarely convened body known as the Congress. A constitutional revision requires three-fifths of the votes.
Such cross-party support is widely expected. Last Wednesday the French senate, which is controlled by the opposition centre-right, voted overwhelmingly in favour of the bill. The revision also enjoys backing from the governing centre and the opposition left. Emmanuel Macron, the president, wants women’s freedom to have an abortion to be made “irreversible”. French politicians of all stripes have worried about the potential for a future rolling-back of such guarantees—especially since America’s [sic] Supreme Court overturned the ruling that protected abortion rights there in 2022.
Sources: Spanishdict.com daily newsletter, 4 March 2024; Monterey Herald, 4 March 2024; Time, 4 March 2024; The Economist daily newsletter, 4 March 2024; the YouTube channels of The Insider (“Navalny’s Last Rally”) and Novaya Gazeta (“The Most Emotional Statements of People Who Came to Say Goodbye to Alexei Navalny”), with thanks to Tiina Pasanen; Andrei Bok (Facebook), 2 March 2024; Duolingo; random internet stock image.
In the wake of Alexei Navalny’s murder by the Russian fascist state, his message to the Russian people, at the end of the award-winning documentary film Navalny, has been quoted ten thousand times and turned into a meme on social media, to wit:
“If they decide to kill me, we are incredibly strong,” he said, addressing Russian citizens. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.”
[…]
“You’re not allowed to give up,” Navalny said in the Daniel Rohr film, adding that “we need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes.”
Based on what I’ve witnessed firsthand and secondhand over the past twenty-five years, Navalny’s assessment of Russian society’s incredible strength was wishful thinking on his part. Or, to put it more charitably, it was an incredibly hopeful political project.
To my mind, this Facebook post by longtime TRR contributor Sergey Abashin gets closer to truth about the state of affairs in Russian society, although it’s emphatically not a political project. Nor will it be righteously memed to death by Russia and the world’s well-meaning liberal masses.
Today is the day when [Boris] Nemtsov, a politician who united everyone, was despicably murdered for dissenting. And today is the day when Oleg Orlov, a man of impeccable integrity, was “awarded” two and a half years in prison for dissenting. I hate myself for being powerless. I hate society for being submissive. I hate the authorities for their fascism.
Illustration by Danny Berkovskii for Mediazona. Source: New Tab
Aided by a team of volunteers, journalists at Mediazona and the BBC’s Russian Service have identified 41,731 Russian soldiers killed in the war in Ukraine using open sources. This number includes employees of the Wagner mercenary group, but it does not include those who fought on Russia’s side in military units fielded by the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics,” the BBC noted in an article published on Friday, 12 January.
According to the article, more than 1,100 Russian military personnel killed in the war were under 20 years of age. Since the State Duma approved amendments to the relevant laws, in April 2023, thus permitting 18-year-old high school graduates to sign military service contracts, 48 Russians born in 2004 and five born in 2005 (who were thus “barely 18 years old” when they enlisted) have perished in the war.
As of 11 January, 2,377 airborne troops, 913 marines, 537 members of the Russian National Guard’s special forces, 450 members of the GRU’s special forces, 206 military pilots, and 77 FSB and FSO officers have been killed in combat operations.
The BBC points out that the number of casualties among those who voluntarily signed a contract to serve in the Russian armed forces has increased in recent months. Thus, volunteers, prisoners, and private mercenary company “recruits” now account for 37 percent of all confirmed losses 0n the Russian side. Another 12 percent of the identified casualties were draftees (of whom 5,005 died in Ukraine and 62 in Russia).
According to Ukrainian intelligence, the Russian forces in Ukraine currently consist of 462,000 military and 35,000 National Guard troops, responsible for the functioning of the occupation regime. This number of troops allows the Russians to carry out rotation — to withdraw units and subdivisions and bring them to the front line.
When looking for a new advertising/PR agency in Ukraine in autumn 2023, PepsiCo made it a condition for a potential partner to exclude any mention of the war, or support for Ukraine and its army in future communications, according to a brief seen by B4Ukraine.
“NO: mention of war, hostilities, aggression, military personnel (from Brand side), Armed Forces of Ukraine. NO: support Ukraine and the army. NO: negative connotation, creating a feeling of ‘unsafe,’” states the “Pepsi restrictions” section of the brief.
The B4Ukraine Coalition contacted Pepsi offices in Ukraine and the US to ask for comment on this article but at the time of publication had not received any response.
In the meantime, the October 17 message on PepsiCo’s Instagram page announced that “PepsiCo volunteers distributed food kits to 1,200 families in the city of Borodyanka, whose homes were destroyed.” The message does not specify who exactly brutally destroyed the homes of these people.
Perhaps because PepsiCo’s Russia net profit increased by 333% to $525 million last year and the company paid about $115 million in taxes to the Kremlin? Treating such contributions as support for the economy of the aggressor state, Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) in September included PepsiCo in the list of international sponsors of war.
PepsiCo produces soft drinks, juices, chips, snacks, dairy products and other food products under the main brands Chester’s, Chipsy, Lay’s, Mirinda, Pasta Roni, Pepsi, Propel, Sandora, 7Up, Simba, Snack a Jacks, Sonric’s, Tropicana, etc.
The company has 19 factories, about 20,000 employees, 40,000 agricultural workers, and 600 open vacancies in Russia, according to the NACP.
The company announced the cessation of advertising activities and the production of some beverages in Russia in March 2022, while still allowing other products, such as infant formula and baby food to be sold, in order, as PepsiCo put it, “stay true to the humanitarian aspect of its business.” Yet in fact, the company continues the production and distribution of chips, snacks, and soft drinks. According to Bloomberg, PepsiCo’s revenue rose 16% in Russia and profits quadrupled, and the soda maker said operations in Russia accounted for 5% of consolidated net revenue for 2022, up from 4% a year earlier.
Now the iconic Pepsi cola is sold under the Evervess-Cola brand, although regular Pepsi Cola is still easy easily purchasable in Russian supermarkets due to the so-called parallel imports, when goods are imported without the manufacturer’s permission.
At the beginning of September last year, PepsiCo came under fire over its Russian business when the firm’s products were dropped by the Finnish parliament and Scandinavian Airlines’ operator SAS, and already on September 21, ironically, [a] Russian missile damaged a PepsiCo plant near Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.
A global [c]oalition of civil society organizations, B4Ukraine, is calling on PepsiCo to exit Russia ASAP and for the US government to issue a business advisory, warning US businesses of the growing legal, reputational, and financial risks of doing business under military control in Russia.
The war has markedly changed the Russian economy. Moscow has had to adjust its policy to fund its armed conflict against Kyiv, maintaining its military apparatus and police force, and integrating the territories it has annexed from Ukraine. These priorities have necessitated significant spending commitments that collectively threaten Russia’s economic stability. The Kremlin will spend six percent of GDP (more than eight percent when combined with spending on national security) on the war in 2024. This is more than the 3.8 percent of GDP that the United States spent during the Iraq war, although it falls short of the prodigious sums the Soviet Union allocated during the years of stagnation and its invasion of Afghanistan (18 percent of GDP).
Military spending has even eclipsed social spending—currently less than five percent of GDP—for the first time in Russia’s post-Soviet history. This pivot toward a militarized economy threatens social and developmental needs. The four annexed regions of Ukraine have already received the equivalent of $18 billion, and in 2024 almost $5 billion is expected to be transferred from the federal budget to regional budgets. No other regions in Russia receive this level of investment, which only increases interregional inequality. Rather than restore dilapidated housing in Russia, the Kremlin prefers to spend money on building houses and roads in annexed territories, to replace the houses and roads that Russian troops destroyed during their brutal invasion.
Russian industry has been transformed, with defense sectors now overshadowing civilian industries. The defense sector’s enterprises are now operating at a fever pitch and, as a consequence, any surge in demand is likely to force prices to rise because of the sector’s inability to increase supply. The military sector is receiving a disproportionately high amount of government spending, and it is also siphoning off labor from the civilian workforce, leading to an abnormally low unemployment rate of 2.9 percent. Before the war, Russia’s unemployment rate typically stood at aroundfour to five percent. The military and public sectors now employ 850,000 more people than in late 2022–23. The invasion of Ukraine also prompted about 500,000 Russians to emigrate in 2022, driving shortages of qualified specialists and blue-collar workers.
Meanwhile, living standards have risen across Russia, and the percentage of Russians living below the poverty line has dropped to 9.8 percent, the lowest since 1992. Naturally, there are regional variations, and areas that have sent a significant number of their men to fight in Ukraine—including Altai Krai, the Altai Republic, Buryatia, Chechnya, and Dagestan—have witnessed the fastest income growth in low-income groups. This relative increase in prosperity can be expected to continue as Moscow disburses funds to the families of the deceased and wounded.
Overall, the Kremlin wishes to maintain an illusion of normality and even increasing prosperity for its citizens. The distortions in the labor market have pushed up salaries in military industry, as well as in civilian manufacturing, because of the need to compete to attract workers from well-paying military plants. Moscow is, meanwhile, making high payments to soldiers and people mobilized to fight in Ukraine, which are driving consumption. At the same time, thanks to a supply of cheap credit, the government is handing out subsidized mortgages, that are, for the moment, shielding families from economic reality.
Elsewhere there are signs that the invasion of Ukraine may have disrupted the Russian economy more severely than the frothy party scene suggests. The Olivier salad, a mayonnaise-drenched confection of root vegetables, sausage and boiled eggs, is a staple at every table during the holidays. This winter the price of eggs suddenly rocketed (no one is quite sure why, but it may have been because farms were short of labour since so many workers have been conscripted or left the country). In some regions people cannot afford a box of six eggs and have to buy them individually. One pensioner even raised this with Putin during the president’s annual end-of-year call-in with the public. Putin promised to look into it.
In the two years that have passed since the start of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, residents of Ukraine have become less likely to use the Russian language, according to a press release on the outcome of research done by the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in cooperation with the University of Bath and the Technical University of Munich, which was published on Wednesday, 10 January.
Language plays a leading role in the identity of post-Soviet Ukraine, the authors of the study say. Many Ukrainians are fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian. And yet, only a few years ago, 50 to 60 percent of the country’s residents called Ukrainian their principal language of communication. After the Maidan protests in late 2013, sparked by then-Ukrainian President [Viktor] Yanukovych’s refusal to sign an association agreement with the EU, and Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea in 2014, more Ukrainians abandoned Russian.
[…]
The researchers explore this trend in a study published in the journal Communications Psychology. Using artificial intelligence and statistical analysis, they examined more than four million messages posted by 63,000 Ukrainian users on the social network X (formerly Twitter) between January 2020 and October 2022.
According to the study’s authors, users began switching from Russian to Ukrainian even before the large-scale Russian invasion, but this trend increased dramatically after the war began. In their opinion, this change in user behavior was a political reaction to events. Users wanted to distance themselves from both support for the war and Russia as such, so they started using Ukrainian en masse.
The full-scale war in Ukraine, which began almost two years ago, has led to increased violence in Russia itself. Military personnel with PTSD and criminals recruited into combat return from the front and maim and kill people in civilian life. Sometimes conversations about the war even end in violence. Mediazona and New Tab have uncovered over thirty criminal convictions for assaults and murders that occurred during quarrels about the “special military operation.” (The courts use the official wording for the war as mandated by the authorities.)
In Berdsk, Novosibirsk Region, draftee Khuler Mongush stabbed Nikolai Berezutsky, a passerby. The latter had asked Mongush why he was going to Ukraine. Saying that he was going there “to defend the Motherland,” the mobilized man attacked Berezutsky. Mongush was sentenced to eight years in prison for murder.
In the Irkutsk Region, farmer Maxim Khalapkhanov was drinking with an acquaintance, who began ridiculing the state of the Russian army during the war. Khalapkhanov eventually got angry and killed the acquaintance with a knife, whose handle was decorated in the colors of the Russian flag, and drew the letter Z on his stomach with a fireplace poker. Khalapkhanov was sentenced to seven years in a high-security penal colony.
Anton Rakov, a resident of Orenburg, was drinking with a new acquaintance. They began arguing about the war. Rakov did not like what his interlocutor was saying and killed him. While his victim breathed his final breaths, Rakov recorded a video with the dying man in the background, shouting, “This is what will happen to anyone who disagrees with me!”
Viktor Konnov of Zlatoust beat up a friend who said something nice about Ukraine, while Ivanovo resident Mikhail Vitruk received two and a half years in a penal colony for beating up his girlfriend, who allegedly called him a “Nazi” while they were watching the news.
In 2020, Mikhail Taskin attempted to shoot three people over a parking space and was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony, whence he was freed by the Wagner Group. Taskin spent several months in combat, where he lost a leg, eventually returning to his native village of Nerchinskiy Zavod in the Transbaikal Territory. In August 2023, he got into a fight at a local cafe. Taskin mocked the waitresses and promised to “hump all of them.” The incident ended in a brawl, and the police detained five people, but not Taskin was not among them. His sister and the local authorities argued that the disabled man had been assaulted by “opponents of the war.” But the news website Regnum discovered that two of the detainees were certainly not against the war because they had been involved in patriotic campaigns in the region.
It is not only drinking buddies and casual acquaintances who quarrel and fight over the war. Mediazona and New Tab turned up no less than seven court rulings in cases where the defendants and the victims were members of the same family. Vladimir Tofel from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky killed his nephew during an argument about the war. Yuri Makarkin stabbed his son, while Anna Cheremnova, a resident of the Altai Territory, stabbed her husband.
The experts asked for comment by Mediazona and New Tab argue that these are signs of a deep split within society, and the policy of the authorities does not help society to overcome this fissure. On the contrary, the hysterical rhetoric of propaganda only heightens the degree of intolerance, and people are increasingly willing to maim and kill each other.
Once upon a time, apologizing on camera was a Chechen and Belarusian practice. Since the outbreak of full-scale war, the Russian authorities have also adopted this method of putting pressure on dissenters, especially in music and pop culture. Here are some examples from the last year.
Quote: “We have to be role models, but ones with the right values. I urge all performers to be responsible. The moment has come to change everything for the better, and I want to have an impact on this.”
Did it help: Yes, Mizulina gave the rapper another chance: he had his a picture taken with her and deleted some of his songs from streaming services. The security forces stopped disrupting his concerts.
Quote: “I spent time in prison. More precisely, I spent five days under arrest in a pretrial detention center. On this occasion, I have to shore up my opinion about the complaints about the pots.* I was wrong: I should not wish harm to my army, because the army is inseparable from the people. And I am an inseparable part of this people.”
Did it help: yes, apparently. Roman Khudyakov (which is the rapper’s real name) has stopped making public appearances, however.
*[In a video recorded on 23 March 2022, Loqiemean is shown baking meat in clay pots and saying that he would like those who bombed an apartment building in Odessa to be cooked in clay pots. On 1 May , Yekaterina Mizulina posted this video on her Telegram channel, captioning it as follows: “But we definitely do not need such concerts in Russia. Let him perform at home in his kitchen.”]
Quote: “I was mistakenly obsessed with false information [voice-over: “Why were you brought here?”] I had a misfire in understanding what was happening.”
Did it help: no. Charlotte has been charged on four criminal counts, including “disseminating fake news about the Russian army” and “discrediting the Russian army.” He’s now under arrest in a pretrial detention center.
Charlotte, “Posh or Not” (2019): “When I see a person, I look into their eyes It doesn’t matter what you look like It’s important what you’re talking about When I don’t see a person, I look up at the sky It doesn’t matter what I look like It’s important what I’m talking about”
For what: for an “almost naked” party, at which the guests were dressed scantily; Vacìo even came wearing only a sock over his penis.
Quotes:
Vacìo: “I want to say that I don’t support LGBT people in any way and didn’t want to make any propaganda about it. I condemn LGBT supporters. I apologize for offending the feelings of other people and for being involved in such a terrible video at such a difficult time for our country.”
Philipp Kirkorov: “I went through the wrong door. Yes, I knew about the event, had received an invitation, promised to come and came, but I didn’t know about the nature of the events that would take place behind that door. And so I left.”
Ksenia Sobchak: “I can tell you for sure for myself, my friends, I definitely did not want to offend anyone. If someone is offended by my appearance, I apologize for it.”
Did it help: We don’t know yet. It seems that the backlash against Ivleeva and her guests is still underway.
MOSCOW, Dec 28 (Reuters) – A rapper who attended a celebrity party with only a sock to hide his modesty has been jailed for 15 days, sponsors of some of Russia’s best known entertainers have torn up their contracts, and President Vladimir Putin is reported to be unamused.
An “almost naked” party at a Moscow nightclub held at a time when Russia is engaged in a war with Ukraine and the authorities are pushing an increasingly conservative social agenda, has provoked an unusually swift and powerful backlash.
A video clip of Putin’s spokesperson listening to an explanation from one of the stars who attended has been circulating online. Baza, a news outlet known for its security services contacts, has reported that troops fighting in Ukraine were among the first to complain after seeing the footage and that photographs of the event reached an unimpressed Putin.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, on Wednesday asked reporters to forgive him for not publicly commenting on the burgeoning scandal, saying: “Let you and I be the only ones in the country who aren’t discussing this topic.”
Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that the event had “stained” those who took part, but that they now had a chance to work on themselves, according to the Ura.ru news outlet.
The fierce backlash from the authorities, pro-Kremlin lawmakers and bloggers, state media, and Orthodox Church groups has been dominating the headlines for days, displacing stories about rising egg prices and allowing people to let off steam by railing against the show-business elite instead.
The party, in Moscow’s Mutabor nightclub, was organised by blogger Anastasia (Nastya) Ivleeva and attended by well-known singers in their underwear or wearing skimpy costumes who have been staples on state TV entertainment programmes for years.
DOUBLE APOLOGY
Ivleeva, who has since become one of Russia’s most recognised names, is seen in one clip showing off an emerald-studded chain around her backside worth 23 million roubles ($251,000) at a time when some Russians are struggling to get by.
She has since issued two public apology videos for the event which spanned Dec. 20–21.
In the second tearful apology, released on Wednesday, Ivleeva said she regretted her actions and deserved everything she got but hoped she could be given “a second chance.”
Nastya Ivleeva’s second social media apology for the “almost naked” party, posted on Wednesday
Her name has since disappeared as one of the public faces of major Russian mobile phone operator MTS, the tax authorities have opened an investigation that carries a potential five-year jail term, and a Moscow court has accepted a lawsuit from a group of individuals demanding she pay out 1 billion roubles ($10.9 million) for “moral suffering.”
If successful, they want the money to go to a state fund that supports Ukraine war veterans.
“To hold such events at a time when our guys are dying in the (Ukrainian) special military operation and many children are losing their fathers is cynical,” said Yekaterina Mizulina, director of Russia’s League for a Safe Internet, a body founded with the authorities’ support.
“Our soldiers on the front line are definitely not fighting for this.”
Many of the party’s famous participants have recorded apologies, including journalist Ksenia Sobchak whose late father Anatoly was once Putin’s friend and boss.
SOCIAL CONSERVATISM
The scandal comes at a time when Putin, who is expected to comfortably win another six-year term at a March election, has doubled down on social conservatism, urging families to have eight or more children, and after Russia’s Supreme Court ruled that LGBT activists should be designated as “extremists.”
Nikolai Vasilyev, a rapper known as Vacio who attended wearing only a sock to cover his penis, was jailed by a Moscow court for 15 days and fined 200,000 roubles ($2,182) for propaganda of “non-traditional sexual relations.”
Other more famous names have had concerts and lucrative state TV airtime cancelled, contracts with sponsors revoked, and, in at least one case, are reportedly being cut out of a new film.
The scandal has angered those who support Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Standing outside the Bolshoi Theatre on Thursday, Nadezhda, one Moscow resident, told Reuters she was outraged and thought those who took part should be punished and not shown on TV anymore.
“If you’re partying at least don’t film it,” she said. “At such a difficult time (for Russia), they should at least be ashamed. Aren’t they ashamed before those who are fighting for us?”
Alexander, another Muscovite, said those who attended had not broken any law and were free to do as they pleased at what was a private event.
But one woman who said her nephew had lost both legs in combat wrote in a post to the League for a Safe Internet that the stars should pay for prosthetic legs for her relative and others to make amends.
“That would be a better apology,” the unidentified woman wrote.
The situation around the “naked party in Moscow,” in the course of which the Russian patriotic crowd has canceled many quite pro-regime figures, quite tellingly illustrates the degradation of Russian society. Previously, there were two realities: the reality of official propaganda, and a parallel reality in which there was “contemporary art,” “kinky parties,” and “Knife magazine.” In exchange for symbolic loyalty to the regime, one could gain comparative individual freedom.
Now that time has come to an end. There will be no individual freedom even for the chosen ones. The only freedom that remains for Russians is the freedom to vote for Putin and the freedom to apologize to Kadyrov.
There is something incredibly funny about the fact that Russian culture, after all its sobbing about imaginary [culture] “cancellation” [on the part of the west], has finally joyfully taken the plunge and canceled itself.
Popular opinion polls show that the majority of Russians support the military action in Ukraine. Researchers, however, continue to argue that society’s support for the war is much lower than these figures suggest. In their new study “Perception of the conflict with Ukraine among Russians: testing the spiral of silence hypothesis,” V.B. Zvonovsky and A.V. Khodykin, drawing on Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s “spiral of silence” model, argue that many opponents of the war are not willing to voice their opinion, believing that it is unpopular and fearing social disapproval.
Noelle-Neumann argues that before people with a “limited interest in politics” decide to voice their opinion on a politically significant matter, they assess the risk of being condemned by others. The spiral of silence “twists” as follows: people who are afraid of being isolated due to the unpopularity of their opinion refrain from voicing it → this opinion is thus heard less and less often in society → people thus increasingly think that their own opinion is not popular → they are thus even less likely to be willing to voicing it.
Zvonovsky and Khodykin discovered that the spiral of silence actually does have a great impact on discussion of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Russian society. They were able to verify this by doing a nationwide telephone survey (N = 1977) using Noelle-Neumann’s “train test.” The “train test” measures the willingness of “adherents of a particular stance on a socially significant matter to openly voice it by discussing it on a train with a random fellow passenger.” Supporters of the more popular stance, in their opinion, are more likely to openly voice it, believing that they are “in a stronger camp and less at risk of being judged by others.” Sometimes, their opponents are also encouraged to side with the “stronger” position.
Applying the “train test” to the Russian context showed that the topic of the war is highly sensitive both to its supporters and opponents, and that the spiral of silence affects both sides of the discussion. However, its impact on opponents of the war has proved to be much stronger than on its supporters. Thus, people who oppose the special military operation in Ukraine are less willing to discuss the Russian-Ukrainian conflict with those who support it.
Another important finding made by the researchers is the fact that a person’s willingness to speak out about the war is influenced most by the distribution of opinions about it in their immediate circle of acquaintances. So, the more people in the orbit of respondents who had shared a similar opinion with them, the more the respondents were willing to discuss the war, and vice versa. It can be assumed that the need to maintain social ties is stronger for Russians than the need to defend and disseminate their political views, as we noted in our analytical report “The war near and far.” Zvonovsky and Khodykin suggest another explanation, however: the “bad experience” of political discussions, which often end in conflict and frustration, also has an impact, since the opinions of interlocutors are not changed, and the desire to talk about the war with one’s political opponents thus simply disappears.
The last interesting finding of the authors about which we want to tell you is the following. If the environment of the respondents is divided approximately equally (~50% “for” the war and ~50% “against”), then the probability that those oppose the special military operation will discuss it does not decrease—unlike supporters of the war, who are much less likely under the same circumstances to discuss the military operation with strangers of opposite views. Thus, the opponents of the military conflict “have learned to resist the spiral of silence better than their opponents.” This means that if the distribution of opinions in Russia changes, “opponents of the military conflict will have greater opportunities than [their] opponents to promote their own narrative about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.”
IOWA CITY, Iowa — Anti-Donald Trump Republicans know they are in the middle of a critical moment to stop the former president’s political comeback. But for some, the steep cost of voicing resistance to Trump often renders them silent.
“If you go against Trump, like — you’re over,” said Kyle Clare, 20, a member of the University of Iowa’s College Republicans.
“I don’t talk about Donald Trump a lot because I’m afraid of the backlash,” said Jody Sears, 66, a registered Republican from Grimes, Iowa.
“If you would say something negative about Trump, we had one person that would just go bang for your throat,” said Barbra Spencer, 83, a former Trump voter describing her experience living in senior apartments in Spillville, Iowa.
Trump still enjoys broad popularity in the Republican Party, and that’s driving his polling leads among Republicans in Iowa, New Hampshire and every other state ahead of the 2024 primaries. But he has also used that popularity to enforce unity. And the same impulse that has led Republican officeholders to avoid criticizing Trump because of potential threats to their safety and their jobs is also holding back rank-and-file voters from opposing the former president in public with the full strength of their personal convictions.
NBC News spoke to more than a half-dozen Iowa voters turned off by Trump — but some were anxious about talking on the record out of fear of being shunned by friends or family. One Iowan said they plan on saying they caucused for Trump when asked by members of their community but will actually caucus for Vivek Ramaswamy.
That adds up to signs going unplaced on front lawns, conversations with friends and family about other candidates avoided — and fewer opportunities for opposition to Trump to take hold in different Republican communities.
NBC News first spoke with Clare in a University of Iowa auditorium Aug. 23, the night of the first GOP presidential debate. Fellow College Republicans were reacting to the debate and voicing steadfast support for the GOP candidate who wasn’t on the stage: Trump.
Clare chose to wait until the end of the night, after the rest of his classmates left the auditorium, to share his thoughts.
“I’m just so scared of doing this right now,” he said, fighting back tears. “I want to be able to have my opinions on our politicians, and I want to be able to speak freely about them and people still understand I’m a conservative.”
Clare criticized Trump, particularly for his actions Jan. 6, 2021, saying, “The end of his administration was un-American.” He also said Trump’s supporters are in denial about losing the 2020 election.
“They don’t want to believe he lost the election. It’s hard to swallow. Losing is hard to swallow. But it’s important that when we lose, we recognize that we lost and we think, ‘What can we do better next time to win over Americans?’” Clare said.
Clare was right to expect backlash from speaking out on Trump. After NBC News published the interview with him on a “Meet The Press” social media account, hateful and homophobic comments poured in. Clare said later that a student came up to him at a university event, shoved a phone in his face with the video on it, and asked him why he’s “scared of Trump and not scared of getting AIDS from having gay sex.”
“Say something they disagree with, and they go after your sexuality,” said Clare, who added that he doesn’t regret doing the interview with NBC News. Many of the comments questioned if Clare — who holds a leadership role at the University of Iowa’s College Republican organization, interned for a Republican on Capitol Hill, and is heavily involved in the Johnson County, Iowa, GOP — was truly a Republican.
“I think it shouldn’t be a bad thing for me to say I am conservative and that I think there are other options, and I don’t think that this person is good for our country,” Clare said. But he’s worried those opinions will stunt his own long-term political ambitions.
“If people as powerful and as prominent as members of Congress can be taken down because of their criticisms of one man, what’s stopping that from happening to me?” Clare noted, referring to the Republicans ousted from Congress after voting to impeach Trump.
Trump’s criticism forced several senators and House members into retirement or primary defeat during his first years in office. Later, of the 10 House Republicans who voted to bring impeachment charges against Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, four retired before facing voters in 2022 and another four lost their next primaries. Only two remain in the House.
In the Senate, three of the seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump have since retired or resigned, and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah is retiring next year.
Romney recounted to biographer McKay Coppins that Republican members of Congress confided to him they wanted Trump impeached and convicted but would vote against the charges because they were worried about threats to their families.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of the Republicans who lost a 2022 primary after voting to impeach Trump, detailed similar conversations in her new memoir.
Cheney wrote about one colleague that she “absolutely understood his fear” about what would happen if he voted to impeach Trump. But, she continued, “I also thought, ‘Perhaps you need to be in another job.’”
‘It was easier to be quiet about it’
Rank-and-file voters are less prominent and thus less likely to be harassed or threatened, but some of the same worries and experiences remain. Sears, the Republican from Grimes, Iowa, feels Trump doesn’t reflect her values. But that’s an opinion she kept to herself until recently, because of the fear of being cast off by family and friends.
“Family and people I work with are Trump supporters,” said Sears, describing her hesitancy to speak out about her beliefs.
“I think Trump supporters tried to coerce or bully people into also being Trump supporters. And so it was easier to be quiet about it,” she said.
Spencer, a retiree now living in a nursing home in Decorah, Iowa, says Trump supporters at her previous retirement community created a toxic environment that stopped her and her friends from voicing opinions.
“We were afraid of arguments,” she said. “When you live with that many old people, sometimes they have very strange but very firm thoughts and you better think the way they do,” she said, explaining her silence.
Clare, Sears and Spencer are not the only people who feel this way.
And as Cheney and Romney’s stories demonstrate, social ostracization isn’t limited to just voters who speak out against Trump. Former Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Republican who represented a slice of Virginia from 2019 to 2021, says his mother texted him, “I’m sorry you were ever elected,” after he came out against Trump.
“It was so soul-crushing to have a family member choose Donald Trump over you,” Riggleman continued. He said evangelical Trump supporters in his life saw Trump as being blessed by God. “I was going directly against religious beliefs. And that’s a losing battle.”
It’s now been almost six months since a member of Congress endorsed a non-Trump candidate in the 2024 GOP primary, according to NBC News’ endorsement tracking.
The trend has popped up elsewhere on the 2024 campaign trail, too. When Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds endorsed Ron DeSantis in November, the Florida governor mentioned in an interview with NBC News that he “had people come to me and say they endorsed [Trump] because of the threats and everything like that” during the campaign.
Trump quickly went after Reynolds after news of her DeSantis endorsement broke, posting on social media that it would “be the end of her political career.”
‘Vortex of controversy and vilification’
Charlie Sykes was a conservative radio show host in Wisconsin for more than 20 years before Trump burst onto the political scene. Sykes was skeptical and critical of Trump, eventually confronting him in a heated interview about insults Trump hurled at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s wife in 2016. But for Sykes, it began to become clear that there was no room anymore for anti-Trump conservatives on talk radio.
“The audience of conservative talk radio began to think that loyalty was required. They wanted conservative media to be a safe space for them,” Sykes said, describing how his role became untenable.
After leaving radio, Sykes didn’t let up on his Trump criticism, which he says got him booted from a think tank and led him to lose friends and become a self-described political orphan. He says his criticism was met with bullying — and he understands why people who don’t work in the public eye might be hesitant to voice their true feelings about Trump.
“I do understand why people in their normal lives don’t want to be caught up in this vortex of controversy and vilification — why they would step back from all of this,” Sykes said.
Another longtime Wisconsin Republican recently detailed one of the results of that pressure.
Former House Speaker Paul Ryan recently spoke on video at an event for Teneo, a global consulting firm where he serves as vice-chair. Ryan said the impulse to avoid getting on the wrong side of angry Trump supporters pushed former colleagues to vote against impeachment even though they wanted Trump gone — and now he thinks there are many who regret those votes.
“They figured, ‘I’m not gonna take this heat and I’m going to vote against this impeachment because he’s gone anyway,’” Ryan said. “But what’s happened is that he’s been resurrected.”
Yekaterina Duntsova, who wants to run for president, said the Kremlin should end the conflict in Ukraine, free political prisoners and undertake major reform to halt the slide towards a new era of “barbed wire” division between Russia and the West.
Nearly 32 years since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union stoked hopes that Russia would blossom into an open democracy, Duntsova, 40, said she was afraid as she spoke to Reuters in Moscow.
In opinion polls, Russians voice support for the Putin regime’s action in Ukraine. And yet, many Russia would like the war to end, and the dynamics of recruiting “contract” soldiers does not demonstrate that a large number of people are ready to rise up “to fight the West in Ukraine.” What are the real sentiments of Russians? What do they think about the war and how do they justify it?
Lev Gudkov, deputy director, research director, Levada Center, “The war and collective identity,” (online)
Andrei Kolesnikov, senior researcher at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, “A semi-mobilized society in a hybrid totalitarian regime” (online)
Svetlana Erpyleva, Humboldt Fellow, Research Center for Eastern European Studies at the University of Bremen; researcher, Public Sociology Lab and the Centre for Independent Sociological Research, “Accepting the inevitable: how Russians justify the war in Ukraine”
Source. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader
Viktor Filinkov, convicted in the Petersburg portion of the high-profile Network Case, turned twenty-nine in early November. It was his third birthday in the penal colony, and for the first time he was not given any special “gift” there. Previously, surprises had been waiting for him that were even hard to imagine—for example, a new uniform with a piece of razor inside it. Filinkov has been imprisoned for six years total. During this time, he has seen a lot, including being threatened with dispatch to a war zone, but he quickly put a stop to such “jokes.” Now he is housed in the high-security wing along with other “repeat offenders.” And he constantly files suits against the penal colony. We talked to his girlfriend and public defender Yevgenia Kulakova, who loves him with all her heart and helps defend his rights behind bars.
Source. Excerpt translated by the Russian Reader, who looks forward to the day when he can see his friend and heroine Jenya Kulakova again and meet his hero Viktor Filinkov in person.
Putin noted that visitors from Tajikistan can stay in Russia for an extended period—fifteen days—without registering with the immigration authorities. They can also apply for a work permit that is valid for up to three years.
In addition, Putin announced the expansion of the quota for university students and postgraduates from Tajikistan—from 900 to 1,000 individuals.
The head of the Russian Federation added that the state would allocate 200 million rubles annually from this year for purchasing textbooks for Russian-speaking schools in Tajikistan.
Various regions of Russia have recently imposed restrictions on migrant labor. There have also been proposals to introduce such bans everywhere for visitors from countries where the Russian language is not recognized at the state level. In Tajikistan, Russian is enshrined in the constitution as the language of interethnic communication.
Due to the unstable financial situation, migrant workers have been leaving Russia. Up to a third of Tajik and Uzbek nationals may leave the country.
As of February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the beginning of what he dubbed the “special military operation” and the Russian Armed Forces invaded Ukrainian territory. What the Russian authorities assumed would be a swift operation soon became a drawn-out, full-fledged war. Many events occurred over the course of the first year of war, keeping Russians in suspense, forcing them to detach themselves from the situation, giving them hope, and then driving them to despair. When we conducted our first interviews in spring 2022, many thought the war would not last long.
Since then, it has become clear that the war will be with us for a while. The daily life of Russian citizens has been invaded time and again by dramatic events. The Russian retreat from the occupied territories, the annexation of new regions, the bombing of Kiev, the first Crimean Bridge explosion, and the “partial mobilization”— to name just a few. Have these events changed the average Russian’s view of the war, and if so, how? How did residents of the Russian Federation perceive the “special military operation” more than half a year later? These questions are the focus of the report you see before you.
There are several research teams monitoring changes in Russian perceptions of the war through opinion polls (for example, Russian Field and Chronicles). The work they are doing is very important. However, like any research method, surveys have their drawbacks—there are some things they simply will not show. For example, surveys do not always allow us to understand a respondent’s attitude towards sensitive or hot-button topics, as sometimes people have a tendency to hide their true views. But more importantly, for Russians largely removed from the political process, perceptions of such politically-charged issues as the “special military operation,” war, and military conflict do not fit neatly into the standardized set of coherent positions that a survey is capable of capturing. These perceptions may be complex and contradictory, and in this case, in-depth interviews and long conversations with people allow us to better understand the idiosyncrasies of each viewpoint. To our knowledge, we are the only team that systematically monitors Russian perceptions of the war using qualitative (interview) rather than quantitative (survey) methods.
We released our first analytical report in September 2022. You can read it here (in Russian) and here (in English). In it, we presented the results of our qualitative study through interviews conducted over several months after the start of the war, in March, April, and May 2022. Our interviewees held a variety of opinions on the military conflict—there were those who supported the hostilities in one way or another (war supporters), those who condemned military aggression (war opposers), and those who tried to avoid giving any explicit assessment of the situation (undecided). We compared these three groups of respondents with each other: how they perceive the armed conflict, what emotions they associate with it, and how they consume information, assess the victims of the conflict, discuss the situation with loved ones, reflect on the consequences of the war, and so on. We have also published the results of this research in analytical media outlets, a few examples of which can be found here, here, and here, as well as in scientific journals, such as those found here (in Russian) and here.
The paper you are currently reading is the second analytical report we have published and a continuation of this research. It is based on qualitative sociological interviews with Russian citizens conducted in fall 2022, from 7 to 9 months after the outbreak of the war. We wanted to determine how Russian perceptions of the war had changed during this period. This time, we excluded subjects who consistently opposed the war from the sample and decided to focus our study on the specifics of perceptions held by Russian citizens who did not have an unambiguous anti-war stance.
In audio intercepts from the front lines in Ukraine, Russian soldiers speak in shorthand of 200s to mean dead, 300s to mean wounded. The urge to flee has become common enough that they also talk of 500s — people who refuse to fight.
As the war grinds into its second winter, a growing number of Russian soldiers want out, as suggested in secret recordings obtained by The Associated Press of Russian soldiers calling home from the battlefields of the Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine.
The calls offer a rare glimpse of the war as it looked through Russian eyes — a point of view that seldom makes its way into Western media, largely because Russia has made it a crime to speak honestly about the conflict in Ukraine. They also show clearly how the war has progressed, from the professional soldiers who initially powered Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion to men from all walks of life compelled to serve in grueling conditions.
“There’s no f—— ‘dying the death of the brave’ here,” one soldier told his brother from the front in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. “You just die like a f—— earthworm.”
The prospect of another wave of mobilization lingers, even as Moscow has been trying to lure people into signing contracts with the military. Russia’s annual autumn conscription draft kicked off in October, pulling in some 130,000 fresh young men. Though Moscow says conscripts won’t be sent to Ukraine, after a year of service they automatically become reservists — prime candidates for mobilization.
Twenty months ago, after Vladimir Putin had launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many high-ranking Russians believed that the end was near. The economy faced disaster, as they saw it, and the Putin regime was on the brink of collapse.
Today, the mood has changed dramatically. Business leaders, officials and ordinary people tell me that the economy has stabilized, defying the Western sanctions that were once expected to have a devastating effect. Putin’s regime, they say, looks more stable than at any other time in the past two years.
Restaurants in Moscow are packed. “The restaurant market is growing, not only in Moscow, but throughout Russia, facilitated by the development of domestic tourism,” said a top Russian restaurateur. “And the quality of food is also changing for the better. Sure, panic struck the industry in early 2022, but it quickly passed.”
Due to Helsinki’s decision to temporarily close the border with Russia, Finnish resident Yevgeny doesn’t know when he will be able to see his father again. He and other Russian-speaking residents of Finland are trying to get through to the authorities to convince them to open at least one border crossing.
Source. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader
Unprecedented dragnets for conscripts have been taking place in Moscow. The capital’s military enlistment offices have launched a large-scale “single-day” conscription campaign, dispatching people with serious illnesses and visitors from other regions to the army. The Russian conscripts have not yet been sent to Ukraine for full-scaled combat. But the number of lawsuits against draft commissions has tripled compared to 2022 and is approaching a thousand cases. The BBC tells how conscription is taking place in the Russian capital, which lawyers describe as lawlessness.
Maria Andreeva, whose husband has been fighting in Ukraine for more than a year, is also waging a battle in Moscow: to get him home.
She is not alone.
A growing movement of Russian women is demanding the return from the front of their husbands, sons and brothers who were mobilised after a decree by President Vladimir Putin in September last year.
Initially, the movement pledged loyalty to what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” (SVO) but what they regard as the perfunctory response they have received is hardening some of their opinions.
The Udege language is so phonetically rich that linguists have devised several Cyrillic-based alphabets for it in an attempt to capture this wealth. Udege has both an inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronoun (“we”), and the terms describing spatial relationships have parallel meanings in the home and beyond its confines. The language of the Udege people reflects their idea of the equality of time and space, and the starting point for the speaker is either a river or a hearth. Linguist Elena Perekhvalskaya acquaints us with the Udege language.
Source. Excerpt translated by the Russian Reader, who was told the other day by a prominent Udege civil rights activist that the number of native speakers of Udege is now eleven.
In reality, as the testimony of numerous witnesses shows, the armed conflicts between the Russian state and the subjugated peoples of Siberia demonstrate that Russian colonization differs little from European colonialism in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The only apparent difference was how the colonizers treated the people they conquered. While the Spanish Conquistadors committed large-scale massacres in their pursuit of gold, the Siberian Cossacks were more interested in extracting lucrative tributes from locals. These tributes, paid in the form of furs collected by the legendary hunters of the conquered peoples, became a major source of wealth for the tsars. The legend that indigenous peoples were such expert hunters they could “shoot a squirrel in the eye” persists to this day.
Irina Gurskaya, a human rights activist and volunteer, arrived in Cologne from Penza a year ago. More precisely, she did not come willingly but fled to Germany on a humanitarian visa. At the age of sixty, the pensioner had to leave her home, fearing for her life. The reason for Irina’s intimidation and harassment by the security forces in Penza was that she had helped Mariupol residents taken to Penza to return to their homeland or leave for safe countries.
We don’t know whether there will be a stalemate on the battlefield moving into 2024, or more dramatic changes in the frontline like we saw in May and November 2022. It remains to be seen whether a more ambitious mobilization campaign will be attempted after the presidential elections in March 2024. It would face the same problems as those I have described here. Utter lack of capacity and resources among the commissariat, informal institutionalized ways of avoiding or undoing the will of the centre to recruit. Massive labour shortages which make industry hostile. A counter-productive administrative system of coercive command. Active and passive agency of the vast majority to avoid the draft. There are various indirect signs that the authorities collectively fear the results of having to implement further mobilization.
The botched first mobilization created an atmosphere of bitterness, fear and hostility to the state’s conduct regarding the war. It would be a mistake to say that mobilization in 2022 broke the social contract between state and people, because there was none to begin with. If the war continues, Russian society will become ‘insurgent’. Not literally, but figuratively, people will become more actively resistant to recruitment to the meatgrinder. No monetary offers, nor spreadsheet autocracy will be effective.
Despite decades under Putin’s rule, it is too simplistic to assert that authoritarianism in Russia has eliminated activism, especially in relation to everyday life. Instead, we must build an awareness of diverse efforts to mobilize citizens to better understand how activism is shaped by and, in turn, shapes the regime.
Varieties of Russian Activism focuses on a broad range of collective actions addressing issues from labor organizing to housing renovation, religion, electoral politics, minority language rights, and urban planning. Contributors draw attention to significant forms of grassroots politics that have not received sufficient attention in scholarship or that deserve fresh examination. The volume shows that Russians find novel ways to redress everyday problems and demand new services. Together, these essays interrogate what kinds of practices can be defined as activism in a fast-changing, politically volatile society.
An engaging collection, Varieties of Russian Activism unites leading scholars in the common aim of approaching the embeddedness of civic activism in the conditions of everyday life, connectedness, and rising society-state expectations.
The Bolshoy Kinel River flows among the forests of the Orenburg Region. Its name derives from the Bulgar word kin, meaning “wide.” When the ancient Bulgars first encountered it, they saw a wide, full-flowing river and decided to settle there. But nowadays the river is gradually disappearing: the banks have shoaled, the bottom is silted up, and the springs that feed it are clogged. And yet, the Bolshoy Kinel is only source of water for several towns. Its tributaries are also drying up. In 2021, the Turkhanovka River, which flows through the entire length of the city of Buguruslan, completely disappeared. It was a tragedy for the townspeople. The local residents joined together and together cleared the river of debris—and the water returned. It transpired that there are many people living in the town who feel a great love for their land. I spoke with them. And, as I gathered their stories, I saw how everyone’s small deeds, like rivulets, combine into one big, important cause—just as the Turkhanovka River flows into the Bolshoy Kinel, the Bolshoy Kinel into the Samara, the Samara into the Volga, and the Volga into the Caspian Sea.
Source. Excerpt translated by the Russian Reader. Photo by Darya Aslanyan for Takie Dela
There’s an idea about how children learn to read that’s held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It’s an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn’t true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.
Both sides of the author’s family were remarkable. His maternal grandfather, Alfred Wiener, was a prominent German Jew who created the most extensive archives documenting the Holocaust; Alfred’s wife and daughters were deported to a concentration camp. The author’s paternal grandmother was transported to a gulag in Siberia. A tale of survival, eloquently told.
A lyrical excavation of trauma and healing in the midst of early motherhood – the debut work of an endlessly inventive poet whose work ‘fizzes with energy, physicality, and the levitating openness of song’.
It was snowing heavily when Yulia walked across the only open border between Ukraine and Russia last month, carrying her two cats and dragging a large suitcase behind her.
She had left her village on the edge of Russian-occupied Melitopol, a city in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, more than 24 hours earlier, paying a Russian ‘carrier’ with a minivan around $250 (nearly £200) to take her to the border-crossing in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region.
Walking across the two-kilometre no-man’s land was the final step in a long journey that is not without risk. Just two weeks earlier, a Russian volunteer who was transporting Ukrainians to the Sumy checkpoint was detained and tortured by Russian security personnel.
It was Yulia’s second attempt at the crossing. The first time, in early autumn, she was turned back at the border because she did not have a Russian passport and her name was flagged in a Russian state database as she had been questioned by the security services twice: once for tearing down Russian propaganda posters and then for arguing with a neighbour about life during the Soviet Union.
If you’d like to see any of the Russian-language articles excerpted here translated in full and published on this website, make a donation in any amount to me via PayPal, indicating which article you’d like me to translate, and I’ll make it happen. ||| TRR
1992 — Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the University of Tartu.
Specialist in the history of Russian literature of the XX century. He was the editor of Session (1998), the chief editor of the New Russian Book magazines (1999–2002) and Critical Mass (2002–2007), the editor-in-chief of the OpenSpace.ru section (2008–2012). Since 2012 — Chief Editor of the Literature Department of the Colta.ru website. Member of the literary academy of the Big Book Award, College of nominees of the Joseph Brodsky Memorial Scholarship Fund. Since 2016 — Chief Editor of the Open University.
The inescapable truth is that Israel cannot extinguish Palestinian resistance by violence, any more than the Palestinians can win an Algerian-style liberation war: Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are stuck with each other, unless Israel, the far stronger party, drives the Palestinians into exile for good. The only thing that can save the people of Israel and Palestine, and prevent another Nakba – a real possibility, while another Holocaust remains a traumatic hallucination – is a political solution that recognises both as equal citizens, and allows them to live in peace and freedom, whether in a single democratic state, two states, or a federation. So long as this solution is avoided, a continuing degradation, and an even greater catastrophe, are all but guaranteed.
In the spring of 1956, eight years into the Nakba, a group of Palestinian fedayeen crossed the ploughed ditch which was all that separated Gaza from the state of Israel. On one side of the ditch were 300,000 Palestinians, 200,000 of them refugees expelled from the surrounding area; on the other were a handful of new Israeli settlements. The Palestinian fighters attempted to enter the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, killing Roi Rotberg, a security officer. They took his body back with them to Gaza, but returned it after the UN intervened. Moshe Dayan, then Israel’s chief of the general staff, happened to be in the settlement for a wedding and asked to give the eulogy at Rotberg’s funeral the following evening. Speaking of the men who killed Rotberg he asked: ‘Why should we complain of their hatred for us? Eight years they sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and saw in front of their eyes how we turned the lands and the villages in which they and their forefathers once dwelled into our homeland.’ It was a recognition of what Palestinians had lost that contemporary Israeli politicians can no longer afford to express. But Dayan wasn’t advocating the right of return: he ended his speech by arguing that Israelis had to prepare themselves for a permanent and bitter war, which would have a major role for what Israel called ‘frontier settlements’.
Israeli leaders, spurred by a furious public, have taken the massacres of 7 October as licence to unleash havoc on the Palestinians. ‘The emphasis is on damage, not precision,’ explained one IDF official. At the time of writing, more than four thousand civilians in Gaza have been reported killed, including entire families wiped out by indiscriminate Israeli air strikes. On 13 October, the Israeli army ordered almost half the population, around 1.1 million people, to evacuate northern Gaza. Most have fled to southern cities such as Khan Younis and Rafah, but these are also under bombardment. Tents have been erected wherever space can be found, evoking memories of the first refugee camps built after the Nakba. The fear is that Israel intends not only to seize large portions of Gaza, but that it will try to force Palestinians into the Sinai desert. Gallant’s promise of a ‘new security reality’ only seemed to confirm this. Egypt has said publicly that it will not accept refugees from Gaza, but the proposal continues to circulate in diplomatic discussions under the pretext of providing a ‘humanitarian corridor’ for Palestinians – as though it were preferable to facilitate population transfer than to ask Israel for a ceasefire.
The violence is not limited to Gaza. In the West Bank, which is under an IDF-imposed lockdown, Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed more than eighty Palestinians in the last fortnight. Families have fled their homes. Moeen Dmeidi, the mayor of Huwara, which was the target of a massive settler attack in February, has spoken of ‘an unbelievable situation of collective punishment’. Palestinian citizens of Israel have been arrested and threatened for expressing their political views, even for ‘liking’ social media posts of verses from the Quran. On 20 October, Israel’s police commissioner, Yaakov Shabtai, ordered a sweeping ban on protests against Operation Iron Swords, saying: ‘Anyone who wants to identify with Gaza is welcome. I will put them on buses that will send them there.’ Politicians and pundits, already emboldened, make genocidal comments with impunity.
The dropping of warning leaflets was not done out of humanitarian concerns: for the British it was strategic, since causing excessive casualties was understood as a source of ongoing resentment and thus further trouble. It isn’t hard to see the parallels with modern military strategy. The same techniques are still, in essence, used by many modern militaries, often in the very same areas where they were originally developed. The continuous bombing of Iraq and the imposition of the no-fly zone between the first and second Gulf wars was a modification of the doctrine, and the leafleting of Iraqi cities such as Fallujah was absolutely in line with it. The ‘war on terror’ saw the return of air patrols and targeted strikes preceded by warnings to the remote valleys of Waziristan, once the redoubt of Mirza Ali Khan. Across the Islamic world, from North Africa to Pakistan, leafleting followed by bombing has been a regular feature of Western policy, the leaflets sometimes serving as a pseudo-legal device to open up free-fire zones where anyone remaining after the warning has expired is considered a legitimate target: their deaths are their own fault.
Dasha Navalnaya is the daughter of Alexey Navalny, the politician and leader of the Russian opposition to Vladimir Putin. Sharing the story of her father’s poisoning, persecution and current imprisonment, she details what it was like growing up under the watchful eye of government surveillance as her father led a decade-long investigation into the corruption of Putin’s regime — and shows why paying attention to what happens in Russia matters to everyone, everywhere.
There’s been some discussion lately on what proportion of russians actually believe russian propaganda. The presumption is that a low number gives hope for the end of the regime. There’s a lot of problems with that logic. Firstly, domestic russian propaganda is very often very open about the crimes russia is committing as an imperial aggressor. So it’s nonsensical to talk only about whether russians recognise lies. What matters is the extent to which they share this imperialist mindset and chauvinistic attitudes. It doesn’t matter whether you can recognise lies if you still think of Ukrainians as your little brother speaking a funny dialect of russian who needs to be pulled back into line. The key question is what proportion understand Ukraine is an independent nation – all the way to Crimea – and has a right to exist and do sovereign things like choose its own security alliances. It’s definitely not 85%. Not even close. When it comes to russia’s lies – like the lie it’s fighting nazis – I’d estimate the proportion of russians who understand this to be a lie at roughly 100%. On some level, to some extent, literally everyone knows this is a lie. Consider this. Have you ever heard anyone ever express any confusion as to why wagner, founded by a neo-nazi, had a leading role in ‘denazification’. It was never hidden. And it does not make any sense if you believe the lie. But no one really believes russia is fighting nazis. This would be a very, very long thread if I went through all the examples of where no one ever expresses confusion when russia openly does and says things that are completely contradictory to much of its own propaganda. No one is confused because everyone knows russia lies. But that does not translate to not supporting the regime. Lying is an endemic feature of russian society. People accept lying as easily as they lie themselves because, in this case, they know the lies are necessary to advance the imperial agenda. When Navalny’s people speak to Western audiences, they play on the assumption that western values are universal in russia and that russians are yearning for a liberal democracy yet only being held back by lies told to them. This is nonsense. Think of russia like a sports team. When diehard fans see their players fake an injury to get a free kick, the fans will shout outrage to the referee in favour of their team’s free kick with no care whether that is fair or not. Would you wade into that crowd of diehard fans to tell them “actually your side cheated” and think this would end their support for their favourite team? On some level, those fans know their side cheated, but what matters is that they just don’t care about the truth despite their feigned indignation. Similarly, convincing russians their country is an imperial aggressor committing genocide does not mean they’ll suddenly want to become a rules-based democracy that stays within its borders. They already know what they are. They support it. Note that russia’s key lies, like the denazification narrative, are used far more prominently towards international audiences in just the same way as fans shouting at a referee. In both cases, the lies are part of the game to them. But this is why international attitudes to Navalny are more positive the further away from russia you get. From afar, it’s easy to convince yourself that exposing russia’s lies will lead to the end of the regime and the start of some happy liberal era led by whoever rules next, even though so much of the russian opposition reflects these same imperial attitudes. What really matters is the end of the russian imperial mindset and its ability to conduct aggression with impunity. For that, the world must support a victory to Ukraine and a Special Tribunal for russia. Give us a TED Talk about that. More importantly, do it.
Vocals – Vera Egorova, Double Bass – Anton Krasikov, Guitar – Yuri Yurov, Drums – Ivan Laptev, Saxophone – Anton Seryogin
Description
The lights of the city in evening, the music, the vibe… under a Paris sky!
Stage Magic Agency invites everyone to be inspired by the romantic motifs of France in the light of the crystal chandeliers at the Palma Mansion on October 14. The evening’s programme includes treasures of French pop and chanson as performed by the extravagant Vera Egorova & The Big Buddy Band. We will make a genuine French voyage from Zaz’s contemporary hits to such symbols of the era as Edith Piaf and Yves Montand.
Vera Egorova & The Big Buddy Band are musical hooligans from St. Petersburg and the musical project of singer and actress Vera Egorova. The band has performed more than 500 concerts in Russia and abroad and taken prizes at various international competitions and festivals. Each of their performances is a ton of drive and an endless stream of emotions.
Well, bon voyage! See you at the Palma!
Concert programme: Zaz – Je veux Zaz – Paris sera toujours Paris Zaz – demain c’est toi Edith Piaf – Padam Padam Edith Piaf – La vie En Rose Joe Dassin – Les Champs Elysees Charles Aznavour – Oublie Loulou Paolo Conte – Via con me Yves Montand – Sous le ciel de Paris Patricia Kass – Mon mec a moi Julie London – Fly me to the moon Madeleine Peyroux – J’Ai Deux Amours Osvaldo Farres – Quizas
Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes
Source: Bileter.ru (via the website’s 5 October 2023 email newsletter). The “concert programme” is reproduced here as it appeared in the original.
I could detect almost no actual French in this so-called cover of a French song by the “musical hooligans from St. Petersburg,” making it a perfect illustration of the cargo cult character of “world culture” as imagined and appropriated by xenophobic Putin-era Russians. ||| TRR
Dozens of people, including a 6-year-old child, were killed in a Russian attack that hit a cafe during a wake service in a village in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine on October 5, according to Ukrainian officials. RFE/RL visited the village a few hours after the deadly attack.
— Why is the issue of colonialism nearly absent from the Russian opposition’s agenda?
— It’s an unpopular topic because it forces us to look for the root of our troubles not only in the Putin regime but in ourselves as well. It forces us to look at our behavior and change it, and that’s an unpleasant process. No one likes admitting they’re wrong. No one likes admitting that their behavior or they themselves are racist. No one likes admitting they’re a xenophobe or colonialist.
— What must we do to rid ourselves of the colonial and imperial mindset?
— First of all, we must understand that Russians have to do this work themselves. Because if someone else from the outside does the work to decolonize Russians, they won’t like it. We don’t have to agree with every position 100%, we can argue on some points.
Changing a mindset is not an instantaneous thing. Unfortunately, we just don’t have time, because if we are going to discuss for another twenty years whether it is possible or not to use slurs in reference to ethnic minorities, nothing can help us anymore. We will turn other people’s lives into hell, and our own, too. But, of course, Russian colonialism won’t let itself be deconstructed without putting up a fight.
— This begs the question about another pattern you described—complaints about Russophobia. Why do you think they are unfounded? And do you consider, for example, banning cars with Russian license plates from entering European countries to be Russophobia?
— Of course, this is a very unpleasant situation. Russian liberals support one of the most important narratives of the Putin regime and of Russian colonialism in general, which boils down to the claim that Russians are victimized. I don’t think that banning Russian cars from entering [the EU] is a manifestation of Russophobia. I think it is a manifestation of the reaction to [Russia’s] full-scale invasion [of Ukraine], which, by the way, is still ongoing. The reaction is going to affect people who themselves have not been involved in the invasion in any way. Moreover, people who are least guilty may suffer from it—for example, activists who have been fighting the Putin regime all their lives.
This will continue, because the citizens of the Russian Federation were unable to oppose what is happening in any way, and in the eyes of the world, most of them fueled this invasion economically, politically, and rhetorically. Precisely because we don’t resist, we have to pay for it somehow. For example, we are in no hurry to separate the criminals from those who have not committed crimes.
