Mr. Nobody and His Critics

Nobody About Nothing

Russian films don’t win Oscars every time out, so I finally made up my mind to watch the movie Mr. Nobody Against Putin. It turned out that the film wasn’t about a school, the war, Russia, or Putin—it’s Pavel Talankin’s film about himself. The film begins with him and ends with him. He’s in almost every scene in between. And it goes on like that for ninety minutes.

I don’t know if you can call a film a documentary when the vast majority of its scenes are staged. I suppose you can, but the Academy’s members know best. I’m not a film critic, and my opinions are purely those of an amateur. I’m a mere viewer.

I was amazed by how tacky the self-promotion was. I mean, it is just off the charts. Here comes the protagonist, taking what he calls a “super risk”: he tapes the letter X on the school’s windows over the letter Z. He claims that the X is a symbol of protection for Ukrainian refugees. (?) And here he is, secretly but on camera, ripping the Russian flag from the school’s roof, as witnessed by a cameraman* and Talankin himself. And there he is getting a haircut—a charming, intimate detail, certainly vital for understanding the current state of affairs Russia’s regions. When the toilets in the school’s bathroom flashed on screen, I feared that Talankin would be in the starring role there too, but that didn’t happen, thank God.

It’s funny that Talankin has arranged the books in his home by the color of their spines, and it’s even funnier that, while looking every bit the diehard undergrounder and following the orders of a mysterious overseas handler, he messes around with hard drives that must be smuggled out of the country. We’re living in the twenty-first century, so what prevents Talankin from uploading at least a few gigabytes of video footage to the cloud or transferring it via FTP, instead of lugging the hardware through customs? But I get it: that would not be cinematic, and the documentary would have suffered.

Whether the documentary suffered because Talankin filmed children and adults without informing them of his objective is a question for the Academy’s members. Perhaps this is acceptable in the American cinema, but journalists are obliged to honestly tell interviewees on whose behalf they are interviewing them and to what end.

I’m not arguing with the fact that Talankin’s film won an Oscar. If Barack Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize for the color of his skin, and Bob Dylan got a Nobel Prize in Literature for his songs, then why shouldn’t Pavel Talankin get an Oscar for a docudrama about Pavel Talankin? It’s all good.

Something else makes my blood boil. It’s not even the profanity that is liberally sprinkled throughout the film. That’s just how the characters express their folksiness. I get that. What makes my blood boil is the extraordinary ease with which Talankin switches from serving the regime as a propagandist to a new job on a new project. Before he was hired to make the film, he faithfully played the despicable role of a Putin propagandist, organizing and filming pseudo-patriotic productions on orders from his superiors. He sends reports to the Ministry of Education. He reshoots when the first take doesn’t turn out. He corrects the teacher who repeatedly fails to pronounce the word “denazification”—and again, he does take after take. Everything has to look perfect. That’s the job. He gets paid for it.

It would be fine if Talakin didn’t get it, like the moronic history teacher who garners so much screen time in the film. But no, Talankin gets it all. He films what he himself calls “show lessons.” He admits that he works in propaganda: “It wears me out.” While filming a pro-war car rally he laments, “I have to play by their rules.” Why does he have to play by their rules? Is there no other way for him to make a living? He cannot fail to realize that he’s just as much an obedient cog in the propaganda machine as the history teacher. Only Talankin’s caliber is smaller, and his threads are thinner. He doesn’t explain why he has to play by their rules. But it’s obvious anyway, and there’s a universal explanation for it: honest work pays less and demands a heavier workload. The entire propaganda machine in an authoritarian regime is based on this. There’s always a way out if you want out.

But then something clicked, Talankin’s fortunes changed, and now all the video footage he had painstakingly compiled was put to a new use. Up until that point, he had worked in the field of pro-government propaganda; now he would work to expose it. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Everything must be put to use, not a single frame should be wasted.

People sometimes do suddenly acknowledge the harmfulness of their work and make a complete U-turn. Such things do happen, thank God. But if they do it sincerely, and not for opportunistic reasons, their conscience torments them over their past deeds; they suffer, and they seek to atone for the past through their new endeavors. They don’t gloss over the mistakes they have made in life. Such people are instantly recognizable: they do not flaunt their rewards, they take no delight in newfound fame, and they often pay a heavy price for the new path they have gone down. Talankin’s is a different case entirely. His is merely an elegant segue from one cushy job to another. In that sense, we can certainly congratulate Mr. Nobody on his success.

* Podrabinek’s is the only review of Mr. Nobody Against Putin which I’ve read that mentions the mysterious second cameraman (who is clearly a consummate professional), although they were apparently on location in Karabash for months on end. In the film’s credits, they are identified only as “Anonymous,” but their palpable presence is not otherwise mentioned or explained, not even in the film itself. ||||| TRR

Source: Alexander Podrabinek (Facebook), 18 March 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader

MR.NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN?

Many years ago, as a graduate student at UMICH in Ann Arbor, I took two semesters on Nabokov with the late Omri Ronen – one of the most extraordinary intellectual experiences I had there, and that’s saying something.

We spent a great deal of time on Lolita, especially its dialogue with Dostoevsky’s “cult of feelings,” and on Humbert Humbert as a “romantic” yet profoundly unreliable narrator. Ronen often emphasized that while it is natural to sympathize with a narrator who claims to be in love, Nabokov refuses to do the reader’s ethical work for them. Humbert Humbert is a criminal who destroys Lolita’s life – something she herself makes clear by the end (“He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.”) The reader’s task is not to be disarmed by his rhetoric, but to remain morally alert and to imagine the experience of his victim.

Watching Mr. Nobody Against Putin and reading its reception, I could not help but think just how thoroughly this lesson seems to be missed by those celebrating the film and its narrator, who is every bit part and parcel of the phenomenon he set out to document.

The film centers overwhelmingly on Pavel Talankin’s feeeeeelings, granting them disproportionate narrative space, something not uncommon in Russian films about Russia. His attachment to Karabash and its people, to the textures of Russian life (the ugly Soviet prefab panel blocks that have gained a somewhat romantic vibe among the younger Russians, the harsh winters, etc.) is rendered with great sympathy. So too is the school environment. But Talankin’s commitment to “loving” the bleak, the outwardly ugly, and the brutal is not just an aesthetic quirk — it’s a moral stance. What is strikingly absent in all of it is Ukraine and its people, which is only briefly mentioned as a destination, not a society under attack. Russian children are not just being indoctrinated to volunteer, to be mobilized, and to die, they are being prepared to kill and that is what they do in Ukraine — something, which is not even once mentioned.

There is also an obvious schism between the reality Talankin documents and the way he interprets it. In his account, he appears to be the only figure with agency — the only one capable of making meaningful choices — while everyone else is stripped of agency and reduced to a passive recipient of propaganda. Even the sinister history teacher, the school’s most zealous and vicious propagandist, is described as “brainwashed.” But if that is the case, who, exactly, is doing the brainwashing? These are the very people who inculcate cynicism, cowardice, and doublethink in their students, they are actors in this process, not victims, and they do have moral choices, just like everybody else. (It is also worth noting that the community is neither visibly poor nor destitute — undercutting the familiar explanation that people volunteer to kill because poverty leaves them no choice.)

Again, this is not just an aesthetic imbalance, but also a moral one, with the focus remaining on “our” suffering, “our” losses, “our” children, not what we and these children have done to others. As a result — just as Omri Ronen warned his sophomore Nabokov students — the aggressor is sentimentalized, and his perspective eclipses that of his victims.

P.S. I also watched Ksenia Sobchak’s documentary about so-called “black widows” — women who marry Russian soldiers, often under dubious circumstances (with grooms heavily intoxicated), and later claim substantial compensation after their deaths. In contrast to Pavel Talankin’s film, it’s really hard to sympathize with any of the people on the screen. Sobchak’s role within the Kremlin’s propaganda ecosystem is well documented; what is worth briefly noting here is how thoroughly this story (and Russian “society” at large) is framed as a story about women: as caregivers, opportunists, con-artists, bereaved wives, or negligent, alcoholic mothers and grandmothers who affect the fates of men, entirely at their disposal.

Men, by contrast, are consistently infantilized, cast as troublemakers, drifters, habitual drinkers, and absent fathers with no clear purpose in life. But invariably “nice”: women say (posthumously) that they are sorry for them (again, barely a reference to what these men did to Ukrainians). In this framing, war supplies these men what their civilian lives lack: purpose, agency, a “heroic”, manly identity, a sense of belonging, and a handsome income – leaving behind, in the end, something for the women to remember them by.

Source: Ksenia Krimer (Facebook), 18 March 2026. Thanks to Alexandr Wolodarskij for the heads-up.

Hello! This week we cover how Oscar-winning documentary, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, went down inside Russia, and why it’s caused a stir among both the Kremlin’s backers and its critics.

Russians fight over Mr. Nobody

Earlier this month, Russia won the Best Documentary Oscar for the first time in more than 80 years. Well, sort of. The statuette went to Mr. Nobody Against Putin, a Danish-Czech production directed by Pavel Talankin, a young teacher from a small town in the Urals, who documented pro-war propaganda inside Russia’s school system. Western critics were enthusiastic about its take on the militarization of schools amid the invasion of Ukraine. Russian officials and propaganda outlets were, unsurprisingly, not so keen on the film. But interestingly, even some anti-war campaigners have criticized the movie, accusing Talankin of making a shallow diatribe that did not advance our understanding of Russia’s wartime propaganda machine.

The documentary tells the story of educator and school videographer Talankin and his school in Karabash, a small industrial town of about 10,000 people in the Urals region of Chelyabinsk. Talankin, now 35, was a highly respected teacher in his hometown. In 2018, he won the regional “Leader of the 21st Century” competition, his students won an award at a local festival for a movie shot under his direction, and in 2021 the town’s mayor praised a virtual model of Karabash that Talankin’s students had created in Minecraft.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Talankin was assigned to film propaganda lessons in which children were taught Kremlin talking points about the war’s supposedly noble aims, and the unfairness of the West towards Russia. Talankin and US documentary filmmaker David Borenstein got in touch via an online advert in Russia seeking people whose lives had been changed by the invasion. The videographer offered to use the footage he was obtaining as part of a joint documentary. Talankin carried on working and then eventually smuggled hard drives containing two-and-a-half years of footage out of Russia.

The clips from the propaganda lessons — called “Conversations about Important Things” in Russia — were the centerpiece of the film. In one scene, a teacher, reading a propaganda script, struggles to pronounce the words “denazification” and “demilitarization”, two of the official reasons the Kremlin gave for its war. In another, a history teacher (the film’s main antagonist) tells children how in the near future France and Britain will soon face economic collapse as people there are already starving due to sanctions on Russia. Another scene shows mercenaries from the now defunct private Wagner militia advising children how to throw grenades.

What Talankin showed from one school in a provincial town is the same as what’s happening in thousands throughout Russia. After the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the state embraced mass propaganda in education. Lessons with war veterans were already commonplace, as were issuing Kremlin-approved justifications for the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the seizure of Ukrainian territory. Watching the film, it’s easy to imagine how the exact same “Conversations about Important Things” are happening right across Russia on a daily basis from Moscow to Vladivostok.

The award was [a] surprise, with US film The Perfect Neighbor going into the Oscars as the favourite. According to renowned Ukrainian producer Alexander Rodnyansky, Mr. Nobody Against Putin won out for its portrayal of a “dumbing down mechanism” that could be applied in multiple countries.

However, despite winning the most prestigious documentary prize on offer, there are many who are openly critical of the film — and they are by no means limited to supporters of the war and Putin’s regime. Several recurring complaints crop up. They include that Borenstein compiled the movie “for export” — targeting foreign audiences and festival juries — and that its success closed the door for any chance of a more powerful study of what is happening in Russian schools. In Russia, everybody knows about propaganda in educational institutions (for example, we wrote about it here) and, to them, this film does not offer anything new or go deeper than what has been widely reported. Doubters also say the film suffers from artificiality — especially in Talankin’s monologues. Some scenes, such as the tearing down of a Russian flag or the posting of the “Z” symbol backing the invasion in school windows — seemed staged to many critics.

Respected fact-checker Ilya Ber published a detailed analysis with several complaints that was widely shared on Russian-language Facebook groups. The claim that UNESCO described heavily polluted Karabash as the “dirtiest town on Earth” is not backed up by any documents and is simply an urban myth circulated in the Russian press. The film portrays children being checked with metal detectors as a symbol of a military dictatorship when, in fact, it’s standard procedure in Russian schools ahead of final exams and has nothing to do with the war. Finally, Ber questioned the underlying narrative that Talankin was in danger. He worked in a school where everyone knew his views, nobody denounced him and after the Oscars, pirated copies of the movie are widely available on VK, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook that is closely watched and de facto controlled by the authorities.

The filming of children without parental consent for use in the documentary is another sore point — and the one that Russia has officially latched on to. From an ethical point of view, all subjects should provide documented consent to take part in filming, and minors cannot be filmed without the permission of their parents or guardians. This is precisely the argument the Russian authorities are using and the Presidential Human Rights Council filed a complaint with the Oscars organizers alleging violation of children’s rights.

On the other hand, Talankin was not filming secretly. Children and parents knew they were being filmed for both the local education ministry and for his own projects. “It’s funny that all these years he would come around, film us, and say we would be on the BBC. We laughed at him like he was an idiot. And now he’s going to the Oscars. I don’t think he really believed it himself,” said one graduate of the school, speaking before the awards ceremony. “I knew they were filming me because we often had conversations on camera and it was some kind of lifestyle thing. I didn’t see anything wrong with it,” said another.

Of course, the film has many fans. Movie critic Ekaterina Barabash (who fled Russia while under house arrest for criticism of the authorities) noted that it was well made and gave a unique view inside the regime. Fellow critic Anton Dolin wrote that nobody had ever depicted the workings of propaganda with such chilling clarity. Political analyst Alexander Baunov felt that the fact Talankin filmed in the town where he was born, raised and had been living and working made his testimony especially valuable.

In Karabash, they prefer not to mention the film. According to Talankin himself, “a year ago, when the film came out, FSB officers came to the school and said: ‘This man wasn’t here, this film never existed. You don’t comment on the film, you don’t talk to this man,’”. He said that he’s considered a traitor in the town — a view shared by some propaganda outfits (1,2).

Most national pro-government media outlets have simply ignored the film, which was Russia’s first documentary Oscar for more than 80 years (in 1943 the award went to Moscow Strikes Back). Russian online movie service Kinopoisk, operated by IT giant Yandex, chose not to translate the film’s title into Russian in its live coverage of the Oscars ceremony.

Why the world should care

Despite all the criticism, Talankin managed to show Western audiences something that they had not seen before: exactly how brainwashing works in Russian schools. To Russian viewers, this was no surprise. Reports of propaganda lessons still frequently appear on school social media pages and in news roundups.

Source: Denis Kasyanchuk, “Everybody Against Mr Nobody,” The Bell, 24 March 2026. Translated by Andy Potts. The Bell‘s always informative and sometimes thought-provoking biweekly newsletters used to be free and were delivered to my inbox in whole. Last year, though, they went behind an extravagantly expensive paywall ($189 for a yearly subscription), and I have ignored them. But I was already prepping this omnibus post when a sneak preview of this week’s first newsletter popped into my email, and I couldn’t resist spending one dollar on a one-month trial subscription (which will revert to $18.90 monthly at trial’s end).

The Russian Reader will never be paywalled over, although it does bleed money like a sieve and is in need of your financial support. I have exactly one active donor, NK, who has faithfully and encouragingly sent me twenty dollars every month for the last three years. Why should they keep doing all the heavy lifting on their own? ||||| TRR

El lector ruso: Darle la espalda a la propaganda (Valeria Zotova)

Darle la espalda a la propaganda

¿Cómo es la vida cotidiana en un campo de prisioneros? Significa, sobre todo, trabajar, actividad repetitiva y agotadora. Significa dormir un sueño intermitente, ya que, a veces, las inspecciones son cada dos horas. Y significa pasar tiempo con personas a las que no te acercarías por tu propio deseo. Los guardias se aseguran de agobiar a los presos para que no tengan nada propio, para que no tengan tiempo para pensar en nada, para que estén completamente subordinados a quienes mandan. El objetivo de la “reeducación” en los campos de prisioneros es el mismo: doblegar la voluntad de los prisioneros, convertirlos en obedientes máquinas que obedezcan todas las órdenes de sus superiores.

Esto se cumple sobre todo con los presos políticos, quienes piensan con independencia y tienen sus propios principios. La misión principal de los guardias es conseguir la sumisión voluntaria, dichosa y proactiva de los presos políticos. Pero los guardias rara vez tienen éxito en esta misión.

Con Valeria Zotova, presa política de la Colonia Penal n.º 3 de Kostromá, han fracasado estrepitosamente. Los guardias insistentemente le han ofrecido una vía de redención: cooperar con las autoridades y participar en la vida cívica. Zotova la ha rechazado.

Recientemente, el club del campo de prisioneros proyectó una película de propaganda rusa titulada “Callsign: Passenger”. En Wikipedia se describe así el filme: “La película está ambientada en 2015. El protagonista es Nikolai Ryabinin, un escritor moscovita de moda y fiestero despreocupado. Su hermano, voluntario en la guerra en el Donbás, ha desaparecido. Nikolai va en busca de su hermano y se une a una unidad separatista, el Batallón Aurora, en el que su hermano sirvió anteriormente. Allí, recibe el irónico apodo de “Pasajero” (Passenger) y, bajo el liderazgo del comandante (callsign: Trigger), repiensa su propia vida y se une a los separatistas”.

Esta pieza de propaganda carente de imaginación está basada en una novela de Alexander Prokhanov, El asesinato de las ciudades. Es, por supuesto, basura barata, tanto como el propio escritor, pero los convictos están obligados a beber este cóctel cinematográfico hasta la última gota. Todos son arreados al club. Zotova se niega a ir. En última instancia es su derecho decidir si ve la película o no. ¡Pero qué importan los derechos cuando se trata del patriotismo ruso! Zotova es llevada a la fuerza al auditorio. Observen nuestro arte: ¡miren el talento de los cineastas que lo crearon, los actores que lo protagonizaron! Pero Lera Zotova le da la espalda a la pantalla y no ve la película.

Darle la espalda a la propaganda es simple, simple pero peligroso. La presión sobre Valeria continúa sin cesar. El acoso ha sido incesante. Los guardias llamaron a una amiga de Zotova y le espetaron: «Libertad o Zotova, tú eliges». Han intentado crear un vacío en torno a la presa política, privándola de todo contacto con sus allegados. La joven tiene veintiún años, pero ha sido acosada como una criminal avezada. Porque, según las autoridades penitenciarias, debería ser como todos los demás: obediente, involucrada en la vida cívica del campo de prisioneros, en obras de teatro, cumpliendo con las cuotas de producción y no arrogante para con sus superiores.

Fuente: Alexander Podrabinek (Facebook), 24 de agosto del 2025. Gracias a VA por ponernos al tanto. Traducido al inglés por The Russian Reader y al español por Hugo Palomino

Turning Her Back on Propaganda: Valeria Zotova

Turning Her Back on Propaganda
What does daily life consist of in a prison camp? It consists of work, of course, work which is dull and exhausting. It consists of sleep, which is fitful, as sometimes there are inspections every two hours. And it consists of spending time with people whom you didn’t choose to spend time with. The wardens make sure to burden convicts so that they have nothing that is theirs alone, so that they have no time to think about anything, so that they are entirely subordinate to the powers that be. The goal of prison camp “re-education” is the same: breaking the will of the prisoners, turning them into obedient robots who obey all the orders of their superiors.

This is especially true for political prisoners—people who think independently and have their own principles. The overarching mission of the wardens is to attain voluntary submission, joyful and proactive submission, from political prisoners. But the wardens rarely succeed in this mission.

They have utterly failed with Valeria Zotova, a political prisoner at Kostroma Penal Colony No. 3. The wardens have insistently offered her a path to redemption, that is, cooperating with the authorities and taking part in “civic life.” Zotova has turned it down.

Recently, the prison camp’s club showed a movie, a Russian propaganda film titled Callsign: Passenger. Here is what Wikipedia says about the movie: “The movie is set in 2015. The movie’s main character is Nikolai Ryabinin, a trendy Moscow writer and carefree party animal. His brother volunteered for the war in Donbass and has gone missing. Nikolai goes looking for his brother and joins a separatist unit, the Aurora Battalion, in which his brother previously served. There, he gets the ironic nickname “Passenger” and under the leadership of the commander (callsign: Trigger) reevaluates his own life and comes to support the separatists.”

It’s an unimaginative piece of propaganda based on Alexander Prokhanov’s novel The Murder of Cities. It’s cheap trash, of course, like the writer himself, but the convicts are obliged to drink this cinematic concoction down to the dregs. All of them are herded into the club. Zotova refuses to go. Ultimately, it’s her right to watch the movie or not. But what do rights matter when it comes to Russian patriotism! Zotova is forcibly escorted into the auditorium. Watch our high art: look what talented filmmakers made it, what actors starred in it! But Lera Zotova turns her back on the screen and looks the other way.

Turning one’s back on propaganda is simple—simple but dangerous. The pressure on Valeria continues unabated. The harassment has been endless. The wardens summoned a friend of Zotova’s and stipulated to either: “Either freedom or Zotova—you choose.” They have been trying to create a vacuum around the political prisoner, depriving her of contact with those who are close to her in any way. The young woman is twenty-one years old, but she has been bullied like a hardened criminal. Because, as prison authorities envision it, she should be like everyone else: obedient, involved in the prison camp’s civic life, acting in plays, fulfilling the production quotas, and not smarting off to her superiors.

Source: Alexander Podrabinek (Facebook), 24 August 2025. Thanks to VA for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

Alexander Podrabinek: Opposition Politicians Must Live in Russia to Do Their Jobs

The recent prisoner swap has suddenly and quite vividly clarified the emotions and motives of the militant segment of the Russian emigration. Those who did photography in the old days will remember how you would dip a blank sheet of photographic paper into developer and gradually an image would appear on it. At first, the image would be vague, just outlines, but then it would become clearer and clearer, until finally you would pull it out from under the red lamp and hold it up to the white light: wow, you could see everything clearly!

I will avoid beeing politically correct and say everything I think. Emigrants from the so-called liberal crowd went abroad because they were afraid of going to prison in Russia. It’s an understandable fear—a valid reason, one might even say. The issue of personal security, their personal well-being and that of their families, was more important to them than Russian freedom and democracy, about which they spoke with such pathos and fervor at protest rallies, in the independent press, and on the internet. They did not have the guts, and such things happen. There is nothing laudable about it, but nothing catastrophic either. No one obliges them to sacrifice themselves, and they themselves were willing to be heroes on the podiums, but not in a real showdown with the repressive regime. All right, so they left: it’s no great loss. In any case, it is better to leave in time than to spill your guts later during an investigation.

I think most of those who have left Russia feel fine, but a certain segment of the emigration, the most militant and vocal, experiences emotional discomfort. They sense their own political inferiority, especially amidst what has happened in Russia to those who stayed, to those who have been resisting and are now in prison. To prove to themselves and others their insightfulness and to confirm the correctness of their choice to emigrate, they portray those who have remained in Russia as naive fools who don’t understand life. The very existence of political prisoners irritates them. They believe that people have been imprisoned by mistake or because they overestimated themselves. But they themselves didn’t overestimate!

Alexei Navalny’s decision to stay in Russia cut them to the quick. A month before his death, Navalny wrote in a letter from prison camp: “I have my country and my beliefs. I don’t want to give up either my country or my beliefs. I can betray neither the first nor the second. If your beliefs are worth something, you must be ready to stand up for them. And if necessary, to make sacrifices.”

The bombastic Ekaterina Schulmann just doesn’t get it. “The context of events is such that the first thought that comes to mind upon hearing the news is how he could have failed to leave [Russia] after the first [guilty] verdict, and almost the only emotion is amazement at this fact.” She is amazed: isn’t personal well-being the most important thing?

Dmitry Gudkov, a politician who is quite nimble in all respects, was even more definite at the time. “Almost all public figures, including well-known opposition figures, have been allowed to leave. But in case they didn’t get the signal, they go to jail. So if you don’t want to go to jail, you don’t have to wait for mercy from the Investigative Committee—there are flights to Tbilisi and other beautiful cities. At the slightest hint of danger, save yourself. The decision to take care of your life is always the right one.”

Gudkov and Schulmann are simple people, and they write about the benefits of cowardice in a straightforward, uncomplicated manner. But some others feel uncomfortable in such situations. They don’t like to feel as if they are fugitives saving they own skin—they need decent arguments. They want to remain on top, preferably at the heights they commanded in Russia, where everyone listened to them.

And what arguments are these? The most murderous one is that Russia is a lost country and the whole nation supports the fascist regime. As if there were not hundreds of political prisoners in camps and prisons who have chosen resistance rather than escape. As if there had not been rallies and marches throughout Russia, attended by many thousands of people, when such events could still be organized. As if the authorities didn’t have to falsify election results to avoid revealing Putin’s paltry electoral support.

Anna Rose writes about her Russian acquaintances, but it reads as if she is writing about Russians in general: “My Russian acquaintances didn’t show any sympathy for the real victims of aggression. The fact that in Ukraine, due to Russia’s fault and with their own tacit consent, people were being killed every day, that not only only cities were destroyed but also the basis for civic life in a sovereign country, seemed to them a backdrop, not the essence of what was going on.” What to do with such a worthless people? Clearly, run away from them and denounce them in the crudest possible language. And God forbid anyone should think that you are one of them yourself.

Journalist Victoria Ivleva took it a step further by attacking Vladimir Kara-Murza, Ilya Yashin, and Andrei Pivovarov on her Facebook page for talking too little and saying the wrong things about Ukraine at their press conference. “I would very much like to hear a single word of repentance from you, not stories about how Putin is to blame while the nation is wonderful and fresh. Who elected Putin time after time, was it not the nation? The war started by our Motherland has left us all with only one right—to get down on our knees.”

A well-off emigrant, Ivleva expects words of repentance from recent political prisoners who were imprisoned for their anti-war stance! Ivleva herself has nothing to do with it, she has nothing to repent for. It is they, the Russians, who should all fall on their knees as one, while those who left in time are not to blame for anything. But if we are talking about sincere repentance, shouldn’t Ivleva repent for the Soviet Union’s war against Afghanistan? That war was no less bloody than the current one, and Ivleva was then a civic-minded Soviet student and a successful journalist who was published in the Communist Youth Union’s newspaper. She didn’t protest. She didn’t get down on her knees. If we call everyone to repent for the sins of the regime, shouldn’t we turn to ourselves?

No, of course, only the people are to blame, the people who, according to Ivleva, have elected Putin time and time again. That is, the presidential elections, in her opinion, have been fair and transparent time and again: the president was elected by the people, the president is legitimate, and, therefore, the evidence of the people’s worthlessness is clear. And let’s forget about how the ballot rigging has been exposed and pretend that it didn’t happen.

The great thing about collective responsibility is that personal responsibility dissolves into universal responsibility. If everyone is to blame, then no one is to blame. It is a very convenient position. In a debate on Facebook, Konstantin Borovoy denounces the freed political prisoners: “Asking the West to lift sanctions when the regime has gone berserk and the citizens are supporting it is stupid and mean.” To say nothing of playing fast and loose with the facts (they were not talking about lifting sanctions, but about targeting them correctly), claiming that the citizenry supports the brutal regime is a sin against the truth. Some people support it and some don’t. No one knows the exact percentage, but it is certain that millions of people in Russia do not support this regime. Why should we talk about the unity of the party and the people and thus echo Putin’s propaganda? And if we are to blame everyone, shouldn’t we start with ourselves? Borovoy was a member of parliament during the crucial years and had much more sway in politics than the average man on the street. If something has gone wrong in our country, maybe we should think about our place in these processes? Or is everyone else to blame?

The premise of national guilt is not enough for successful self-affirmation. The liberated political prisoners are hysterically pointed to the plight of Ukraine and its prisoners of war in Russia, as if anyone would argue with this. But this generates the illusion that only the political emigrants are concerned about it, while no one in Russia understands any of it and no one in Russia sympathizes with Ukraine. The opinion that there are also Russian problems that require a political solution is jealously disputed: no, today there is only one problem—the war in Ukraine.

Yes, it is true that the war is the most important issue for Ukraine. But for Russia it is not the most important issue. It may be the most painful, but it is not the main one. For Russia, the primary problem is the authoritarian regime, a dictatorship which at a single person’s whim can start a war, murder dissidents, take away all freedoms, and threaten the entire world. The war in Ukraine is a consequence of Russia’s primary problem and this is what the liberated political prisoners were talking about. The fundamental solution to the issues of war and peace depends on the nature of the regime, not on military successes or defeats. Russia’s policy towards other states depends on the kind of regime it has. This is obvious.

Kara-Murza’s and Yashin’s desire to engage primarily in Russian politics and address the interests of Russia’s democratic future is understandable and rational. A democratic Russia will have no need of enemies on its borders or anywhere in Africa. It will return all annexed territories, pay reparations, and atone for and eventually redeem its guilt before Ukraine and the other countries it has attacked.

Opposition politicians must be in Russia to make this all happen. It won’t work otherwise. It’s understandable that this elicits a rabid reaction from political emigrants who label cowardice prudence and prefer glamorously clamoring in emigration to risking resistance in Russia. In my opinion, Kara-Murza explained it all quite clearly to them in an interview which he gave in March of this year while still in prison.

“A politician cannot work remotely. It is not a matter of practical efficacy; for a public figure, it is a question of ethics and responsibility to their fellow citizens. If you are calling on people to oppose an authoritarian regime, you cannot do this from a safe distance—you must share the risks with your community.”

Source: Alexander Podrabinek (Facebook), 6 August 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Mr. Podrabinek is a well-known dissident, journalist, human rights activist, and former political prisoner.

Alexander Podrabinek: Murder in Tyumen

“Russian counter-terrorism police say they prevented an imminent Islamic State attack in the Siberian city of Tyumen, as two armed terror suspects were eliminated in an intense raid with heavy gunfire and explosions. The militants, who were holed up in a private home, refused to lay down their arms and opened fire at the law enforcement on Friday. ‘They were neutralized during a gunfight,’ the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC) said. There were no casualties among civilians and security personnel as a result of the exchange of fire. The terrorists were planning an attack in [a] public place in the city and the decision to launch an operation was made swiftly, the NAC said. Numerous unconfirmed videos on social media appeared to show the nighttime operation in full swing, with heavy gunfire, a building on fire, and a score of police cars and military vehicles amassed in the streets.” Published on April 12, 2019, by user AS2017

Murder in Tyumen
Alexander Podrabinek
Grani.ru
April 14, 2019

The killing of two suspected terrorists in Tyumen has been spun as a showcase counter-terrorist operation. It went off without a hitch, that is, you do not count the spontaneous undertaking by curious locals who attempted to livestream it on the internet. On the other hand, Tyumen Regional Governor Alexander Moor had lots of nasty things to say about local video bloggers, commentators, and social media users.

On Friday, security forces cordoned off the area around Amur Street in Tyumen. They claimed two Islamic State terrorists had holed themselves up in a private house in the street. The cordoned-off area was declared a counter-terrorist operation zone, and approximately one hundred local residents were forcibly evacuated from the area. I think it superfluous to ask whether the suspected terrorists noticed the evacuation or not. If the terrorists had been real terrorists and the operation itself risky, not a staged textbook operation, the security forces would have tried to use the element of surprise. But no, all possible eyewitnesses were first removed from nearby houses, and only then did the security force go after the “terrorists.”

tyumen “Counter-terrorism operation” in Tyumen. Photo by Maxim Slutsky. Courtesy of TASS

The two people who had been designated terrorists were killed, of course. Half of their one-storey wooden house was burnt to the ground. This makes sense: the fire destroyed inconvenient evidence. The Russian Investigative Committee reported that two machine guns, two explosive devices, and religious pamphlets were found in the house, along with twenty-first-century weaponry in the shape of electronic devices. In short, they predictably found the usual kit of the modern “terrorist.”

Surprisingly, the fire did not damage the damning evidence. The explosive devices did not explode, the religious pamphlets were not reduced to ashes, the smartphones did not melt. If we recall that in many other cases the Russian security forces planted weapons and narcotics on “suspects,” nothing surprising happened. The “clues” the investigators need will be entered into physical evidence, while the stuff it does not need will not be registered anywhere.

We might learn the identities of the dead men in the coming days. Someone must have known them, and someone will tell us about them. The security forces identify them as “terrorists,” but the charges filed are not for terrorism, but conspiracy to murder and attempted murder of a law enforcement officer. This is odd, as is the fact that the FSB carried out the counter-terrorist operation, while the Investigative Committee has headed the investigation.

The Investigative Committee and FSB claim the “terrorists” were Islamic State members who were planning massacres in public places. They have not made any details of the case public, much less the overall circumstances. We are asked to take their word on it, although after the “bags of sugar” in Ryazan, Alexander Litvinenko’s murder, the attempted assassination of the Skripals, and many other exploits, the security forces cannot imagine the public will trust them.

The Tyumen “terrorists” have been accused of conspiracy to commit a crime (Russian Federal Criminal Code Article 30), but they were unable to commit any crimes because their lives were taken. Along with their lives, they were deprived of the chance to defend themselves and attempt to prove their innocence in court.

Is it possible they were real terrorists and eliminating them was necessary to ensure the safety of others? Of course, it is possible. On the other hand, are we not aware of numerous instances when the security forces provoked crimes only to kill the “suspects” while covering their tracks—their own tracks more than the tracks of the “criminals”? I have in mind not only the crimes of the NKVD but also the events of the past two decades, especially in Dagestan and the rest of the North Caucasus?

One of the most telling examples of this kind was the so-called Nord-Ost hostage crisis at the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow in 2002. While freeing the hostages, the security forces killed all thirty-six terrorists. Most of them were killed by being shot in the back of the head while lying unconscious, knocked out by the poisonous gas the special forces released in the theater’s auditorium. They thus got rid of the defendants and the need for a trial, a trial during which parts of the story that shed an unflattering light on the regime could have come out.

Heir of the old Soviet ways, the current regime has aspired to conduct all cases and campaigns against people who have opposed it under arms and people who have fought it with words and people who have been the accidental victims of deliberate provocations by the security services in secret. Reporters are not allowed into counter-terrorist operation zones, inconvenient eyewitnesses are rubbed out, defense attorneys are made to sign nondisclosure agreements, and court trials are held in closed chambers.

Consequently, we have no reliable means of judging whether a particular individual has committed a crime or not. We are well aware, however, that despotism and lawlessness are fond of silence but no friends of publicity. We have been through this before. So, every time a clandestine operation is carried out, every time “criminals” and witnesses are eliminated, and every time a trial is heard in closed chambers, we have every reason to suspect the security forces of provocation, dishonesty, and fraud.

Thanks to Nastia Nek for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

Alexander Podrabinek: We Are Different

Alexander Podrabinek in exile in Yakutia in 1979. Courtesy of Institute of Modern Russia

We Are Different
Alexander Podrabinek
Grani.ru
March 8, 2019

Nor are we in this together. I did not want to draw a dividing line between people and put them in different camps, but I have no choice: there are tough times on the way. If we are not lucky, things could go back to the way they were. You all will go back to your kitchens. Your tongues will be firmly in your cheeks again, and the jokes made by stage and TV performers will be cautious and carefully calibrated to register the authorized quantity of discontent. We will go back to our labor camps and prisons, our psychiatric hospitals and places of forced exile, to our intransigence and contempt for violence. By “we” I do not mean only those of us who have already spent time in those places. There will be new generations of stubborn, improvident, free-spirited Russians. We were different back then, and we are just as different now. Once upon a time, Solzhenitsyn quite accurately identified you as “smatterers.”*

You always knew what was permitted and what was forbidden. You had the Soviet individual’s sixth sense for knowing where the line ran. Few of you ever crossed the line, and the few who did left ordinary life behind forever, some going to the west, while others were sent east. When communism collapsed and freedom dawned, you immediately felt brave. You spoke loudly, angrily, and righteously. It was a sight to see. We were glad our ranks had swelled. We were glad we were stronger and could change our country.

The fresh breeze of change has subsided, however, and the familiar smell of Soviet rot is in the air. Censorship, political prisoners, extrajudicial killings, and wars of aggression have reemerged. Where are you now, masters of reincarnation? What side are you on? How many of you are still on our side? You now go regularly to the Kremlin to receive decorations, medals, state prizes, and honorary titles. You heed the demands of censorship and edit out anything that could cause Roskomnadzor to blow a fuse. You have a keenly honed sense of what can be said and what cannot be said, of what plays can be staged, movies made, and concerts held, and which it would be better not stage, make, and hold. You serve on a variety of presidential and ministerial councils. Pretending to be in opposition, you seek permission for your protests from the authorities, but as soon as the Kremlin calls, you rush there to explain yourselves and prove your personal indispensability.

As before, you sing the same old song about the value of small deeds, because you are afraid to be free. You were also afraid back then, when we were imprisoned. You carried the regime’s water in silence or grumbled under the watchful eye of art critics in plain clothes. You pretended to be fearless freethinkers and the movers and shakers behind imaginary reforms. On the stage, you cracked witty jokes approved by the censors. You published your censored stories and novels in the thick literary magazines. Commissioned by the State Committee for Cinema (Goskino), you made cheeky movies whose cheekiness was carefully calibrated. But you never crossed the line lest you lose your place on the gravy train.

You might wonder whom I am addressing. Who is the target of my reproaches and accusations? That is an easy question. Take an honest look at your past and your present. What did you do under socialism? What did you after it collapsed? Who made you bend your back in the old days? How straight do you stand up nowadays?

To be honest, the recent scandal involving humorist Mikhail Zhvanetsky compelled me to write this. Public outrage over the latest instance of a celebrity pandering to the Russian powers that be was countered by a chorus of defenders of spinal flexibility. How dare you? they asked. Who are you compared to him? He joked his whole life while you were silent. He is a genius, but you are nobodies. One defender dubbed the storm of criticism a “stink,” while another advised Zhvanetsky not to pay any mind to the “scum.” Yet another defender reminded everyone that Zhvanetsky was permitted to do what lesser people were forbidden.

It is amazing. Do you really regard yourselves as a magnificent, exceptional cultural elite? During the hardest times, you skillfully kowtowed to the Soviet regime. You were caricatured reflections of evil. You were witty, resourceful, and even gifted, but you were the regime’s shadow. You looked good amid a scorched desert where everyone was forbidden to do anything, but where you were allowed certain indulgences by royal decree. Is this what makes you so perpetually proud? Does it forgive you your past and future sins?

You are good at forgiving and vindicating yourselves. It is the meaning of your lives and the key to your survival. You have forgiven yourself for your cowardice during Soviet times, because the times were dangerous. You forgive yourself for selling out nowadays, because it is good for your wallet. You will always find a way to vindicate yourself. Proud, unperturbed, a noble air about you, you will walk the streets again.

Good luck at your old jobs!

* “The Smatterers” was the unhappy English coinage for the title and subject of Solzhenitsyn’s 1974 essay “Obrazovanshchina,” as published in the bilingual anthology From Under the Rubble.

Translated by the Russian Reader

No Poet Is Illegal, No Poem Is Extremist

Poet Alexander Byvshev. Photo courtesy of OVD Info

New Criminal Charges Filed against Ex-Schoolteacher Alexander Byvshev
OVD Info
January 17, 2017

On January 17, 2017, police searched the house of ex-schoolteacher Alexander Byvshev in the village of Kromy, Oryol Region. During the search, law enforcement officers confiscated a computer and other information storage devices. After the search, the suspect was interrogated at the local office of the Russian Investigative Committee.

As Alexander Podrabinek wrote on his Facebook page, Byvshev has again been charged under Criminal Code Article 282 (inciting enmity or hostility, as well as humiliation of human dignity). The charges were filed in connection with Byvshev’s poem “On the Independence of Ukraine,” which was published in February 2015 in several Ukrainian periodicals. As Byvshev himself noted, the poem is a “polemical response” to Joseph Brodsky’s eponymous poem.

On July 13, 2015, the Kromy District Court found Byvshev guilty of inciting ethnic hatred (Criminal Code Article 282.1) and sentenced him to 300 hours of compulsory labor for writing poems supporting Ukraine. He was also forbidden to work as a schoolteacher for two years. In autumn 2014, after one of Byvshev’s poems was declared extremist, Rosfinmonitoring placed Byvshev on its list of terrorists and extremists, and his bank accounts were blocked.

Translated by the Russian Reader

The War as Holy Writ

Victory Day parade in Moscow, May 9, 2016

Communists Propose Equating Feelings of War Veterans with Feelings of Religious Believers
Grani.ru
May 8, 2016

A group of Communist Party MPs plans to submit a law bill to the State Duma that would criminalize insulting the feelings of war veterans and stipulate a punishment of up to three years of forced labor. As Gazeta.ru writes, if the draft law is adopted, Article 148 of the Criminal Code (violating the right to freedom of conscience and religion) would be amended.

The newly amended article, 148.1, is entitled “Insulting the feelings of Great Patriotic War [Second World War] veterans.” The Communists will send the bill to the government and the Supreme Court for review on May 10, immediately after the holidays.

There are three paragraphs in the new law. The first paragraph stipulates punishment for “public actions expressing clear disrespect for society and committed with the intent of insulting the feelings of Great Patriotic War veterans by deliberately distorting information about the Great Patriot War, or humiliating or belittling the heroism of the Armed Forces of the USSR.”

Violation of the law would be punishable by a fine of up to 300,000 rubles, or up to 240 hours of community service, or up to one year of forced labor.

The second paragraph stipulates criminal liability for “dismantling, moving, destroying or damaging Great Patriotic War monuments,” even if they are not listed as Great Patriotic War cultural heritage sites. In this case, a violation would be punishable by a fine of up to one million rubles, or up to 360 hours of community service, or up to one year of forced labor.

The maximum penalties are prescribed in paragraph three and cover the same actions, as listed above, if they are performed on May 9, or involve the abuse of office, or are committed by someone who has already been convicted of the same violation. In this case, the offender faces a fine of up to four million rubles, or up to 480 hours of community service, or up to three years of forced labor, and a ban on holding certain positions during the period in question.

Communist Sergei Obukhov, who is spearheading the initiative, coauthored the law on “insulting the feelings of religious believers,” adopted by the Duma in 2013 in the wake of the Pussy Riot trial.

In the explanatory note to the new law, Obukhov defends the need to protect the feelings of war veterans, drawing parallels with the adoption of law on insulting the feelings of religious believers. According to him, that law “does not extend to the belief in goodness and justice, the ideals for which the veterans of the Great Patriotic War fought.”

According to Obukhov, he and his colleagues have tried to draft the most non-repressive law possible, so the punishments stipulated do not include imprisonment. Obukhov calls the bill a “full-fledged legal mechanism for defending their truth about that terrible war as well as criminal protection of their honor and dignity.”

In November 2013, A Just Russia MP Oleg Mikheyev proposed punishing those who insulted the memory of the Great Patriotic War with up to seven years in prison or a fine of one million rubles. Mikheyev submitted a draft of amendments to the Criminal Code and Criminal Procedural Code to the State Duma.

Mikheyev proposed adding an article entitled “Insulting the memory of the Great Patriotic War” to the Criminal Code. The offense was described as follows: “Actions expressing clear disrespect for society and insulting the memory of the events, participants, veterans, and victims of the Great Patriotic War, and committed at the sites of Great Patriotic War monuments and the burial grounds of those involved in the Great Patriotic War.”

The draft law stipulated a fine of between 500,000 and one million rubles or the amount of the convicted offender’s income for a period of three to four years, or a prison term of up to seven years. Mikheyev explained this choice by analogy with Criminal Code Article 148 (insulting the feeling of religious believers), “insofar as both articles deal with the spiritual realm of human life, the realm of values.” As an example of “insulting the memory” of the war, he cited the articles of journalist Alexander Podrabinek.

In April 2014, Irina Yarovaya, head of the Duma’s security and anti-corruption committee, proposed criminalizing “desecration of days of Russian military glory and memorable dates” connected with the Great Patriotic War. The United Russia MP said the relevant amendments would be inserted into a draft law on “rehabilitating Nazism” during its second reading.

“We will propose equating liability for this crime with the liability for desecrating burial sites dedicated to the fight against fascism [sic] or victims of Nazism,” said Yarovaya.

Individuals accused of “desecrating days of military glory” were to face up to three years in prison, forced labor of up to five years, arrest for a period of three to six months, or five years in a penal colony.

Yarovaya said she had found a post on a social network containing a negative assessment of the May 9 holiday.

“I think such statements should be assessed not just morally or ethically, but from the viewpoint of criminal law,” Yarovaya said in this connection. “Because it is a deliberate crime aimed at desecrating the memory of the Great Patriotic War.”

Translated by the Russian Reader. Photo, above, courtesy of Oleg Yakovlev/RBC