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.
Dmitry Kuzmin in 2019. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
“It is probably too late for the world, but for the individual man there always remains a chance.” This formulation from Joseph Brodsky’s Nobel Prize speech grew out of the two-hundred-year Russian liberal tradition of tiny, good deeds accomplished in the maw of Leviathan, and over the past two years it has inspired many. Each refugee rescued from the occupied Ukrainian territories via the Rubikus volunteer network is the best evidence of this inspiration. But we of course know that this is not true. There is not always a chance to save the individual. And the death of Alexei Navalny has reminded us of this with irrefutable clarity. Although with no greater clarity than the death a few days earlier of three children, burned alive with their parents at their home in Kharkiv as a result of a Russian rocket strike.
But empathy is only ever individual: in your head you may be on the side of all the Ukrainians and all the political prisoners, but your heart responds to concrete stories, names, and faces. And the media reality of today brings them to us. By following a couple of links, you can look into the eyes of every victim of a rocket attack. You can read the last text messages sent by Ukrainian women to their loved ones killed in this war. You can see the frontline dugout where the phenomenal poet Maksym Kryvtsov, the hope of Ukraine’s rising literary generation, slept alongside his tabby cat—just a few days before they were both killed there.
It’s a little more complicated with the victims on the other side of the frontlines, the ones whom the Kremlin regime is trying to exterminate on its own soil. Navalny’s singularity and even exceptionalism lies in the fact that even in a prison camp literally at the ends of the earth he was still able to turn his story into a gripping, if agonizing, show. Others do not have this opportunity. Where is Nikita Uvarov, the teenager sentenced to five years for talking with his friends about anarchism and for constructing an FSB building in Minecraft and planning to blow it up? Where are Salekh Magamadov and Ismail Isayev, the Chechen youths who dared to start a chat group for atheists and received eight- and six-year prison sentences, respectively? Or this thing that didn’t even get picked up in the news: where is the “transgender LGBT activist and OVD Info volunteer” who sent money to the Ukrainian army? Their name is unknown but their prison sentence, they say, is twelve years. And this is not to mention Belarus, which has practically disappeared from the Russian news, and where one of the main opposition figures, Maria Kolesnikova, is in prison and has not been heard from for over a year. Navalny, who even from the Yamal Peninsula was able to maintain Russian society’s focus and interest, was also doing this for all the above-named individuals and many more unnamed ones, even if it didn’t actually help them at all. Along with Navalny’s murder, the topic of internal crackdowns, the domestic frontline in the Putinist walking dead’s war against all the living, will inevitably exit the field of daily scrutiny. It is entirely likely that this was indeed the motivation for finishing off a reprisal that had lasted for years, and now we can expect an abrupt post-election uptick in those selfsame crackdowns.
In theory, there are people working on the other side. But they are, in typical fashion, incapable of drawing attention to themselves—and they intentionally avoid it. The prosecutors advocating for the prosecution, the judges issuing the sentences, the prison wardens carrying out their dirty work (even if we don’t take straight-up murder into account)—they all have names and faces, but no one worries about them: it seems that only the extremely scrupulous Gabriel Superfin remembered today who is nominally responsible for the tragedy on the Yamal Peninsula. After all, every rocket dropped onto Ukrainian targets was designed by someone, assembled, shipped by someone, and someone pressed the button. You can fantasize about how each of these people will eventually pay for their involvement, but we know from historical experience that at best their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will feel ashamed of them. In the stand-off between individuals and the system it is immaterial who personally represents the system. In the recent story of the rock group Bi-2’s lucky liberation from imprisonment in Thailand it was openly discussed how the Russian consul was pulling the strings in the devilish machinations—but where is this consul, who has seen him? He is probably an inventive paper-pusher—a “first-rate pupil,” in Yevgeny Schwartz’s words—but he is not meant to have any personal qualities.
Safe to say we won’t get anything out of Thailand: this country, so beloved by Russian tourists, where the king can kick his former wife out to a dilapidated shack, having first ordered his minions to destroy the shack’s toilet and to hang a sign over the waste pit saying, “I hope you are as comfortable here as in the palace,” should easily find common cause with a country where the president’s main opponent had his underpants smeared with poison. Yet a month earlier, for example, Russian national Yevgeny Gerasimenko was arrested at Russia’s request in Prague, at Vaclav Havel Airport (you can imagine what Havel would have said about this). It seems that no one had to lobby for this arrest, the system worked on its own: some Russian agency put in a request to Interpol, some international bureaucratic authority received the request, some Czech law enforcement officials carried out their routine duty. What does it matter that Gerasimenko’s application for political asylum was already being reviewed by the authorities of a different EU country: they were looking for him, the former manager of a computer school in Norilsk, a city built on the bones of political prisoners, allegedly for dangerous financial crimes… Wait, and of what crimes had Alexei Navalny been convicted, sent to a village built on the bones of political prisoners, and murdered there? Does no one remember anymore?
A long time ago there was a Soviet film about a group of teenagers who got lost in caves: they ran out of food and water, they lost their sense of time, all the underground passages led them again and again to a bunker built by the Germans in WWII, with the word Tod (“death”) written in huge letters on the wall. When they’re on their last legs one of the boys has the thought that Death, in fact, is fascist, that everything that’s bad for the Nazis has to be good, everything that the Nazis prohibit should be allowed—and he pulls the lever below the word. The wall collapses and they’re set free. And that’s what the story by Magsud Ibrahimbeyov, on which the film is based, is called: “Death to All That’s Good.”
You might think that something which was clear to Soviet teens has become unclear to many people in today’s democratic world: when you are up against an inhuman system, the whole system is inhumane. Its criminal sentences for discrediting the army and its legitimation of Nazism are legal to the same extent as its fines for traffic violations. Its special services aim to root out good and inculcate evil to exactly the same extent as its therapists who have developed “acceptance and responsibility” therapy for Russian LGBT people, or its preschool teachers who dress the little ones in camouflage and line them up to make the letter “Z.” There are no such scales that could determine which of the system’s nodes and mechanisms are more harmful or more guilty: the rabid steamroller that has decided to crush you moves all the more efficiently because its rollers, hydraulics, and electric starter are working in perfect unison.
This unison starts to fall apart when one single individual drops out of the system.
Among the various individual people scattered across the icy wasteland of Russia, for the past six months I’ve been steadily observing two perfectly ordinary schoolchildren (albeit in snatches since it’s not entirely up to me). They have no father, their wingnut mother unfailingly supports the authorities, and every week at their very average school on the outskirts of Moscow they get to listen to the “Important Conversations” lesson—a repulsive propagandist mishmash that make the Brezhnev-era political-information sessions of my youth look like ambrosia. You might think that the fate of these kids in the foreseeable future is predetermined. But here we have an interesting result. The older brother is studying Ukrainian on his own. The young one, who isn’t yet up to that task, is diligently drawing Ukrainian flags in all of his school notebooks. It seems that they haven’t even discussed this with each other.
I don’t know how to convey to these kids that they’re playing with fire. I am not sure it will be possible to save them if it comes to that. But I see in them what Daniil Kharms once promised: “Life has defeated death by means unknown to me.” And if Brodsky was wrong about the possibility of saving the individual person, then maybe he was wrong about the world as well. Although from today’s perspective how the world can be saved is entirely unclear.
I never met Alexei Navalny, although we have (or had) a number of mutual friends, as you’d expect. And while his death was not a surprise — this regime had tried to kill him before, but he survived, literally miraculously — it was still a shock when news of it came yesterday morning.
You may have heard AN referred to as “Russia’s Nelson Mandela.” Commentators here have also been invoking Martin Luther King and several other Americans (on a list to which I would add RFK) in an effort to give U.S. listeners/readers a sense of how this loss may affect several generations of Russians.
What those comparisons cannot convey is how much the shock and loss register on a personal level. I am sure that millions of Russians today feel as though they’ve lost a family member — for some immediate, for others more distant — but in any case a relative, someone who was “one of ours” …and who they can’t quite believe is really gone, never to show up again at their homes, at a peace rally or in some live link on their laptops/phones/etc. And doubtless many Russianists abroad, like me, are experiencing a version of that same feeling: an almost palpable sense of personal loss.
Over recent years I have described AN more than once as the only person who, if the nation proved very lucky, might just be able to bring the place to its senses following the prolonged and self-inflicted disaster that has defined Russia in the first quarter-century of the new millennium. But here we are: the nation has not been very lucky (it seldom is), and all of us — Russians, Russianists and the rest of the world — can only mourn the passing of a genuine Russian праведник (PRA-ved-neek; a righteous man) and regret that the country has missed the slim yet credible “Navalny chance” that he represented.
I am discouraged about the near-term future — meaning the country’s prospects overall as well as my own chances of returning to Moscow and our little family there (both wife and grandson continue OK, thanks) as long as the current President for Life remains either above ground or unincarcerated. But I am also trying to stay focused on AN’s injunction, which figures near the end of last year’s Oscar-winning Navalny documentary and is now being cited widely in various media. It goes, in paraphrase, “If they do kill me, it will be a sign of weakness, not strength. So don’t despair — that’s not allowed! — and keep up the good fight.”
AN’s daughter Dasha is, as you may know, an undergrad at Stanford. Somehow this picture cheers me up a little today.
Source: Mark Teeter, email newsletter to family and friends, 17 February 2024. Thanks to Mark for his kind permission to reproduce it here. Mark is not only a proud alumnus of Stanford University, but he also played a role in welcoming me to Russia for the first time, in 1994. He describes my own feelings about Navalny’s death to a tee. ||| TRR
ALEXEI NAVALNY (1976-2024): Покойся с миром / R.I.P.
Old Deaf Joke
A Russian and a Cuban and an American were on a train
It quickly came to pass that the Russian took out a bottle of vodka and after a few swigs he tossed it out the window
The other two men exclaimed why throw still have vodka good waste why
The Russian opened his fur coat and showed them rows and rows of bottles and he said there Russia vodka plenty
The two men said oh and settled back in their seats
After a while the Cuban took out a cigar and after a few puffs he tossed it out the window
The other two men exclaimed why throw still have left good cigar waste why
The Cuban opened his suit and showed them rows and rows of cigars and he said there Cuba cigars plenty
The two men said oh and settled back in their seats
After a while a young man came whistling into the car from the next one
The American grabbed him by the collar and belt and tossed him out the window
The other two men exclaimed why throw still young good man waste why
The American made an expansive sweep with his hands and said here America hearing people plenty
The two other men said oh and settled back in their seats
Apart from a detailed peace plan to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has a less conventional idea for ending geopolitical crises like these: let dogs run the world.
In the rare downtime he gets as a wartime leader, Zelenskiy, speaking to Reuters by video link on Wednesday, suggested man’s best friend might fare better when it comes to getting along on the global stage.
“Sometimes I’m … looking at all these wars or looking at all the crisis, Middle East crisis. It’s not only Ukraine, everywhere in Africa and the Middle East.
“Sometimes I’m looking at this and think that the best way (is) if this planet will be the planet of dogs,” he said at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York, responding to a question about what still makes him laugh.
The Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, now in its 21st month, has upended Europe’s security architecture and sent ripple effects through Africa and Asia, which have seen food shortages thanks to Russia’s de facto blockade of the Black Sea.
Kyiv’s Western partners have provided crucial financial and military support, but are now also dealing with the conflict in Gaza.
Along the front line, Ukrainian forces have been fighting for months to reclaim Russian-occupied territory in a counteroffensive but have made only incremental gains.
Zelenskiy, who is promoting a 10-point peace proposal, said his dogs provide much-needed relief when he spends time with his wife and children, and are “always funny”.
“Sometimes I don’t understand people, really,” Zelenskiy added with a smile.
Today we ask you to support one specific and very important project — Navalny’s Propaganda Machine. It functions very simply: volunteers telephone people in Russia and talk with them, persuading them to turn from Putin supporters into doubters, and from doubters into opponents of Putin and the war.
The more people in Russia start asking questions and stop tacitly supporting everything that the Putin regime is doing, the better for our country. The volunteers of Navalny’s Propaganda Machine are working on this right now.
You can become a volunteer by sending an email to antiwar@navalny.com or supporting the project with a donation. A one-minute call costs two cents. That is, your $10 will turn into 500 minutes of conversation. And $20 is a thousand minutes of conversation with actual residents of Russia, who, thanks to you, can learn the truth and get motivated to fight. Make your contribution at https://acf.international.
Thank you for being on our side! The Navalny Team
“Navalny has been in prison for 1,025 days”
Source: email newsletter from the Navalny Team (Anti-Corruption Foundation), 9 November 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader
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.
Igor Levit performing Erik Satie’s “Vexations” (short edit)
On 30 May 2020, Igor Levit performed all 840 repetitions of Vexations at the B-sharp Studio, Berlin. The performance streamed on Periscope, Twitter and other platforms, including on The New Yorker‘s website. Levit said the recital was in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, his reaction to which he characterised as a “silent scream” (stumme Schrei). The 840 sheets of music were sold individually to assist out-of-work musicians.
Finland will ban entry to passenger vehicles registered in Russia starting Saturday, the Nordic country’s top diplomat announced Friday afternoon.
“Our decision is for the ban to come into force after midnight,” Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen was quoted as saying by the state broadcaster Yle.
“We estimate the new rules will significantly reduce traffic on the border between Finland and Russia,” she added.
EU citizens and “their immediate circle,” as well as diplomats and those traveling for humanitarian reasons, would be exempt from the restrictions, according to Yle.
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia issued no-exception entry bans this week for Russian-registered cars after the European Commission clarified that existing regulations prohibit the import or transfer of goods originating in Russia.
Estonian and Lithuanian officials later suggested that cars with Russian license plates would be confiscated if they refused to re-register or leave.
Finland’s Valtonen ruled out confiscations in her country, telling Yle that vehicles with Russian license plates would have to leave Finland by March 16, 2024.
Supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny urged Baltic leaders to lift the vehicle ban on claims that they harm Russian war exiles and play into the Kremlin’s narrative of anti-Russian feelings in the West.
Moscow has accused the EU of “racism” for its ban on passenger vehicles, while former President Dmitry Medvedev called for a suspension of diplomatic relations.
Finland, a member of the European Union, joined NATO this year, thus doubling the length of the U.S.-led military alliance’s border with Russia.
Finland’s neighbor Norway, which has joined the EU’s sanctions against Russia despite not being a member of the bloc, said it was also considering banning entry to Russian-registered vehicles.
Source: “Finland Follows Baltics, Bans Entry to Russian Vehicles,” Moscow Times, 15 September 2023. The emphasis is mine. Judging by the outsized reaction to this news by “anti-war Russians” in the press and on social media, the proposed vehicle entry ban vexes them more than the endless repetitions on violent death, widespread destruction, and genocide in Ukraine, unleashed by their country’s now-572-day-long invasion of their former neighbor. ||| TRR
This how and what the former “Fennomans” from the newspaper Delovoi Peterburg write about Finland today (in their morning newsletter)—without a hint of shame, so to speak:
Finland is selling its house in St. Petersburg, and the Central Bank is struggling with the fall of the ruble. Such are the economic news in St. Petersburg this week.
How much does the “Finnish House” cost? The issue is very difficult, given Finland’s unfriendly attitude towards us and the sanctions. Basically, with the sale of the building on Bolshaya Konyushennaya, which belonged to Finland, an entire era of good neighborliness between our countries ends.
Not all attempted performances of this work have been successful. In 1970, Australian pianist Peter Evans decided to abandon a solo performance of the piece after five-hundred and ninety-five repetitions because he felt that “evil thoughts” were overtaking him and observed “strange creatures emerging from the sheet music.”
Colleagues, I may have missed something, but how do Finland, Poland, etc., make the case for the reasonableness of banning cars with Russian license plates from entering?
I mean, how does this contribute to the stated goals of combating military aggression?
Source: A “friends only” social media post by a Russian acquaintance, 16 September 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader
We demand that Western leaders end the policy of avoiding “escalation of the conflict.” It only allows Putin to blackmail the West with the very “escalation,” hoping to force him to “geopolitical capitulation.” Any international legal order is maintained only as long as its violator meets a collective rebuff. While his co-founders are ready to fight for him.
We demand a fundamental expansion of military assistance to Ukraine up to the direct participation of NATO troops in hostilities. Ukraine should receive binding security guarantees now, not after the end of the war.
We urge Western leaders to put aside fears about the possible collapse of the Russian Federation as a result of the fall of the regime. None of the “painful consequences” of this will outweigh the danger of preserving the imperial state, which will reproduce aggressiveness and revanchism. Either Russia will become confederate, democratic and “pro-Western,” returning to its European roots, or it must disappear as an integral entity.
The space between good and bad began to diminish Daughter studied botany while I analyzed the transference Over the PA someone said, And the wisdom to know the difference We integrated our sensory impressions into a coherent scene Her hair was getting long, her eyes were turning green As for wisdom, we didn’t know what to do with it
There was a time before and after thinking of death As the worst thing that could happen to a person Bodies were interred and then exhumed again Satisfactory, said Hank, which meant the opposite We had overestimated our capacity for wonder We had underestimated our capacity for pain
I’ve always liked a certain phrase from our fellow countryman, the philologist Professor Lotman. In one of his university lectures he said: “A person is always in an unforeseen situation. And here they have two legs: conscience and intellect.”
This is a very wise thought, I think. And a person must rely on both of those legs.
Relying on your conscience alone seems intuitively right. But abstract morals that fail to take into account human nature and the real world will devolve into either stupidity or evil-doing, as we’ve seen more than once in the past.
Then you have reliance on the intellect without conscience—which is exactly what lies at the foundations of the Russian state today. At first this idea seemed logical to the elites. Using petroleum, gas and other resources, we’ll build a conscience-free, but very clever, modern, rational and merciless state. We’ll become richer than the tsars of the past. And we have so much gas that even the populace will get a little something. Making use of the contradictions and vulnerability of democracy, we will become leaders and be respected. And if not, then feared.
But what happens is what happens everywhere. The intellect, unfettered by conscience, whispers: seize, steal. If you’re stronger, then your interests are always more important than the rights of others.
Not wishing to rely on the leg of conscience, my Russia made several big leaps, pushing everyone else around, but then slipped and came crashing down, destroying everything all around it. And now it is floundering in a pool of either mud or blood, its bones broken, its population destitute and robbed blind, while all around lie tens of thousands of people killed in the stupidest and most senseless war of the 21st century.
But sooner or later, of course, Russia will rise again. And it’s up to us what [leg] it will rely on in the future.
Russian prosecutors have requested a 20-year prison sentence for jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on a new string of “extremism” charges, his team reported Thursday.
Navalny, 47, has been charged with creating an extremist community and an organization that infringes on the rights of citizens; financing extremism; making calls to extremism; and involving minors in dangerous acts and the rehabilitation of Nazism.
He and his allies have denied the charges as “absurd” and politically motivated.
If convicted, the trained lawyer and Putin opponent will spend a total of 29 years in prison.
In his final word in a prison court before his sentencing, Navalny slammed the invasion of Ukraine and expressed his hope for Russia’s future.
“My Russia made several big jumps, pushing everyone around, but then slipped and with a roar, destroying everything around, collapsed,” Navalny said, according to a statement published by his team.
“And now it is floundering in a pool of either mud or blood, with broken bones, with a poor and robbed population, and around it lie tens of thousands of people killed in the most stupid and senseless war of the 21st century.
“But sooner or later, of course, it [Russia] will rise again. And it’s up to us what it will rely on in the future,” he added.
His verdict is expected to take place on August 4.
The European Union added the chief of the Russian prison camp holding Navalny to its sanctions list as prosecutors requested the 20-year sentence.
Navalny was jailed upon his January 2021 return to Russia after recovering from a near-fatal poisoning with what Western scientists determined was Novichok, a banned military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviets.
Russian officials outlawed Navalny’s political and activist organizations as “extremist” organizations later that year, prompting nearly all of his close associates to leave the country.
“For our series of reports on relations between Finland and Russia, we head to the border area. The two neighbours were strong trading partners until the 2022 invasion of Ukraine led Helsinki to cut off business ties. Russian tourists are no longer welcome and with EU sanctions in place, Finland is on the frontline in checking goods crossing its 1300 km long border with Russia. FRANCE 24’s Julien Sauvaget and Clovis Casali report.” France 24 (YouTube), 14 June 2023.
People in Russia don’t have time to think about world events, explains a Russian young man at the Vaalimaa border crossing. There are plenty of goods in St. Petersburg, despite the sanctions. This kind of me-centric luxury does not exist for Ukrainians.
If I were an autocrat, I would provide these border crossers with a thorough guided tour of the massacres in Mariupol and Bucha. The price would include a night of experiences, i.e., a month-long air raid simulation every night. I could think of a lot of other empathy exercises, though I don’t think they’ll do any good.
This is a comment on the news report, above, by a Finnish friend of mine, living near the Finnish-Russian border, who wishes to remain anonymous. Translated, from the Finnish, by the Russian Reader
“Steak House”: a still from yesterday’s episode of the MCU, supposedly set in Moscow but clearly not filmed there.
Navalny, as a politician, is making a systemic mistake by hoping to turn people against the war in three to four months, because in a fascistic society the tools of democracy (canvassing, persuasion, solidarity campaigns ) just don’t function.
These tools presuppose democracy, and Navalny has not been a candidate standing for elections for a long time, but a political prisoner. And yet behaves as if it’s 2018 and his team will go door to door campaigning against the war.
“Let’s fantasise a little,” writes Navalny, “if every tenth of the 1.5 million who left the country since the beginning of the war […] and [the] 1 million who stayed in Russia but are not afraid, joined the campaign against candidate War, then this army of 400,000 canvassers could reach 12 million citizens per month […] Such a strong canvassing machine would dramatically change the public mood in the country in three or four months.”
To this end, Navalny wants to recruit “100 pioneer volunteer canvassers” ready to act “according to the laws and techniques of good election campaigns [b]y polling everyone, targeting hundreds of different groups, finding an approach to each and every one of them, identifying the waverers and persuading them to change their minds.”
Navalny is going to defeat the manipulators of public opinion on their own field by using a “canvassing machine” and counter-manipulation (finding an approach, targeting, and persuading), as if it were a matter of finding the right tools of influence and the right political strategies.
These are the illusions of a systemic politician who still hopes to win by following the rules for running elections and interacting with his electorate aboveground, in the open. But there is no “electorate,” no “elections,” and no conditions for “canvassing” in Russia right now. The fascist reality is completely different.
It would have been rather strange to call on “brave Germans” to go door to door canvassing against the war and the Fuehrer in 1943. Heroic people (we know their names) tried to do this in Berlin by scattering leaflets, and they were finished off by the Gestapo. They were heroes, of course, but the effectiveness of persuading people with words and leaflets in a fascizoid society is zero.
Only the regime’s defeat by outside forces, when the failure of the state is translated into “pain and suffering” for the so-called common folk, can reformat Zombieland.
History knows no other way to impact the zombified brains of the “common folk.” The task of the opposition in Russia, therefore, is to call for the destruction of the state and defeat in the war as soon as possible. We need to donate money to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and raise funds for the transfer of cutting-edge weapons to Ukraine, because crazy “Russian women” (the wives and mothers of war criminals) will not be persuaded by leaflets and conversations, but by coffins and funerals.
The losses suffered by the occupiers are the only key to peace.
And the dreams of the systemic politician (with all due respect to Navalny’s steadfastness) cannot come true. The mythical “army of canvassers” will simply end up in adjoining jail cells, like the brave picketers who protested on the streets.
In fact, Navalny proposes to his thousands of supporters the model of behavior he followed when he bet on the system’s sticking to rules of the game when he returned to Russia. By that time, however, there were no rules (as the FSB’s Novichok should have convinced him). We all remember what end his faith in the system (the ability to defend oneself in open court and hold large-scale protest rallies, and reliance on the power of aboveground regional organizing hubs) came to.
Playing at systemic politics with fascism ended with a “life” term in prison. Unfortunately, neither Navalny nor Yashin draw the right conclusions. They are free to make their own decisions for themselves, but daydreaming about “canvassers” who will go out and agitate among the common folk in keeping with the “laws of good election campaigns” is tantamount to being divorced from reality.
Unfortunately, it is clear why. The systemic opposition in Russia still clings to the illusion of “persuading” Russian society without defeating the state. But betting on the “internal forces” of the rotten imperial óchlos (which calls itself a society) is another illusion that renders the opposition’s politics toothless.
Alexei Navalny has launched a big political campaign against Putin and the war. Using modern technology we will create a real truth machine that will help us reach out to Russians.
In this video, Leonid Volkov explains how the campaign will be set up and how you can get involved.
[…]
Source: Alexei Navalny (YouTube), 20 June 2023. The video, above, includes English subtitles, which can be turned on by toggling the "CC" button on the bottom of the screen. Even more curiously, the annotation, above, is also in English.
Hi, it’s Navalny.
Today marks the beginning of yet another trial, which will greatly increase my total sentence. However, I don’t want to use this day simply to draw sympathy for myself and other political prisoners. I want to call everyone to action, and use this day to announce our new, very important project. The big propaganda machine. The truth machine. We don’t just intend to make it, we will definitely create it in order to join forces against Putin’s lies and the Kremlin’s hypocrisy. We really need you. Join us.
Why is today the right day for this announcement? Because my trial itself proves the rightness and necessity of such a project. What is the most important thing about this trial? Not lawlessness, not “phone justice”, not the obedience of unscrupulous judges and prosecutors. The main thing is its format: it is a trial inside a prison. Putin doesn’t shy away from jailing the innocent, and he’s not afraid that I might be taken back by rebellious mobs during a court session in Moscow. However, he is afraid of what I have to say. Even if they are obvious words known to all. He is afraid of the word. Not just mine, of course, which is why Kara-Murza and many others were also tried in a closed trial.
Putin is afraid of any word of truth, he hates speeches that turn into Internet memes, he is furious at the “last words” [i.e., the closing statements of defendants at political trials] that get an audience of millions. In essence, the task of strengthening and prolonging Putin’s power is accomplished by shutting up those who dare to speak the truth. This goal is the subject of almost everything that has been done in Russian politics over the last few years. And since the start of the war, the regime has not thought about anything else. People get jailed for their posts, for defamation, for spreading misinformation, there are endless arrests and blockings, everyone gets labelled as “foreign agents” or “undesirable organisations”. Why not let people talk though? When the government fights rallies that it considers dangerous, there is some logic to it, but what exactly is the problem with chatter on the Internet or even over the phone?
It may even seem that this way, discontent goes to waste. Keyboard warriors spend their time leaving likes instead of building barricades. But that’s not really how politics works.
Putin has proven to be a fool in the military sphere, a talentless military leader, but he is no fool when it comes to politics. He knows that the backbone of any political action is an idea and a word. Canvassing and persuasion. This is very evident during elections, especially those that are highly competitive. Whatever the specifics of the state, its political traditions and agenda issues, during elections it still comes down to canvassers going door-to-door, making phone calls, persuading people on social media and messengers. And during every US presidential election, with all their high technology and huge budgets, the candidates themselves volunteer at call centres to encourage their supporters to also come there and call, explain and persuade.
Because in terms of the power of persuasion, nothing has or will ever beat the most basic kind of campaigning – simply talking to people, providing them with examples and arguments.
People like to claim that they are not influenced by election campaigning, that they already know exactly what they want and that they cannot be persuaded. But this is not true. A large part of the electorate makes their choice at the polling station, so a good canvasser can sow doubt, persuade, and change their minds. This has long been proven. And we ourselves have conducted experiments in this field.
So what is there to campaign for when there is no election? There is actually plenty to campaign for, and the stakes are very high. We will campaign against the war. And against Putin. That’s right. We will conduct a long, hard, exhausting, but fundamentally important campaign to turn people against the war.
Against war and everything related to it. Against the deadlock that Putin so madly and stupidly spiralled into on February 24, 2022: deaths, casualties, mobilisation, war crimes, isolation, sanctions, tens of thousands dead and millions leaving the country. Degradation of the economy and decline in living standards, criminals fighting at the frontlines and penniless mobilised soldiers, lots of wounded and killed.
This is a very precise task, and I have no doubt that our work will be successful. Here is the most important table and the main figure from one of our surveys:
Every fifth person has relatives or acquaintances who died in this war. Sadly, these figures will only continue to grow, changing public perceptions. Tens of thousands of wounded and disabled people. Hundreds of thousands of mobilised men who have seen Putin’s war for themselves: the talentless thieving generals, the shortage of everything from socks to shells. They return home, their stories are listened to and retold. This does not at all mean that these people automatically become anti-war activists. But it certainly means that they can become them with our help. We have a good reason to talk to them about important issues, and many will be willing to talk.
We will change many people’s minds and raise doubts in almost all of them. This is a campaign against the candidates War and Putin. And we will do it according to the laws and techniques of good election campaigns. By polling everyone, targeting hundreds of different groups, finding an approach to each and every one of them, identifying the waverers and persuading them to change their minds.
I strongly doubt the huge numbers of “war support” reported by Kremlin sociologists. The main reason is that it is unclear what the term “support for the special military operation” actually means. I ask to be sent everything that Strelkov and Prigozhin write and say, I read it very thoughtfully. Are they pro-war? Of course they are. But despite all their mutual dislike, I can’t find any clearer anti-Putin and anti-Kremlin statements from anyone else. And frankly, some of their statements are already close to anti-war. Have you seen Prigozhin’s interview? As savage as it is, it’s still anti-war. Putin’s cook says expressly the war is already lost. A scenario of victory – in his words, the “optimal” scenario, in which we manage to keep what we have already grabbed – is hardly possible. The elites have stolen everything and their children are abroad. The generals are stupid thieves. Our weapons are bad, there are no shells. This is actually the style that the ACF has always spoken in, but now this comes from the main supporter of the war and one of its main commanders who is speaking.
So whenever a voter repeats all this to us, our task is to ask him ingratiatingly: well then, maybe to hell with this war? Why did we even start it? Yes, many people dislike not war itself, but a lost war, or a meaningless war. OK, any anti-war campaign relies on that too, as was the case with the Vietnam and Iraq wars.
I agitate the cops the best I can over here. Naturally, they say they are pro-war. That’s to be expected: our conversations are recorded on their body cams. It is useless to talk to them about war crimes, Bucha, aggression, and sanctions. They do not care about those suffering. But when I ask: “Where are the shells though? Where has your Putin, who has been in power for 23 years, having a ton of money, wasted all the shells, socks, bulletproof vests and quadcopters?” – they have no answer. “It wasn’t me who asked about the shells first. It was your Prigozhin, whom you were kowtowing to when he came here to recruit prisoners for the war. And if your government is so fucked up that there’s no intelligence, no commanders, no border, no air defence, no shells, no socks – then why the hell did you start this war? To bury a million people in the ground?” They don’t put me on a pedestal after such talk, but they do start thinking and having doubts.
So we are going to find a personal approach to everyone, without using the same language to talk to a programmer from Moscow, a young mother from Orel, and a retired serviceman from Chelyabinsk. This is a campaign against candidate War, and it can only be conducted successfully with the support of an army of tens, and preferably hundreds of thousands, of motivated, diligent, hard-working people who believe in success. People who don’t burn out every five minutes, who don’t faint when their interlocutor tells them to piss off, who don’t get demotivated when facing an average voter and don’t expect them to be logical, intelligent, educated, polite, and quick to change their minds. This is a smart, subtle and difficult long term job, and I encourage those who want to do some real work and make a real contribution, rather than endlessly whining on Facebook and Twitter where we try to re-convince ourselves, to join us.
We already oppose the war, there are already several million of us, we have already learned how to organise and finance our own actions. Let’s fantasise a little: if every tenth of the 1.5 million who left the country since the beginning of the war and mobilisation, 1.5 million who left after 2014 and 1 million who stayed in Russia but are not afraid, joined the campaign against candidate War, then this army of 400,000 canvassers could reach 12 million citizens per month, even if each of them only makes one contact a day, i.e. does not overwork in the slightest. Such a strong canvassing machine would dramatically change the public mood in the country in three or four months.
But let us stop imagining things now. Because this is not likely to happen in practice. People are lazy, they have their own things to do. The most vociferous of them, those who demanded “real action”, will be the first to disappear. The idlers, as always, will find excuses for themselves along the lines of “that’s no real action, I would gladly derail some trains, but this is rubbish”. And they will concentrate on criticism without ever derailing a single train. And so on. These things happen during any election campaign. Nevertheless, we do realise that there are tens of thousands of people who are prepared to devote at least one hour a day to work diligently and persistently for the common good. This is a colossal force. It will not be easy to organise such a canvassing machine – one of the largest in the world. However, all things are difficult before they are easy. I am confident that we can set ourselves the first task of reaching 10 million voters with our campaign against the war and Putin. That will already guarantee a noticeable shift in public opinion. No one can predict what effect this will have on the political situation. But our work will certainly not be in vain.
Let’s move on to specifics. What instruments of persuasion are available to us within Russia? Rallies or pickets – no. Door-to-door visits – no. Calls from one’s own phone if the caller is inside Russia – no. Call centres inside Russia – no. As you can see, the basic arsenal of traditional election campaigns is not available to us. We rationally acknowledge this.
However, there are new opportunities, new technologies. Offshore call centres, decentralised call centres. Messengers – campaigning through them can be amazingly effective, given that every granny already has WhatsApp and Telegram. Campaigning on Kremlin-controlled social networks is also possible if the risks are properly avoided. Thus, a rough description of the campaign machine that we will be building is as follows: it will be a system that will allow you (the canvassers) to join it at any convenient time, from anywhere, and (while preserving your anonymity if you wish) communicate with voters within Russia that fit the required parameters (gender, age, city, occupation, etc.) by voice or text. The system will teach you how to canvass, drawing on previous experience and suggesting a pattern of conversation, facts and phrases. In a way, it’s like creating and training artificial intelligence. We have to create and train a system of collective intelligence, convincing voters to oppose the candidates we hate – War and Putin.
«Woah!», — you might say.
Well, yes, it is an ambitious task. However, it is nothing unrealistic or previously unseen. Marketers, advertisers and political strategists have been doing this for decades. All those cold calls, warm contacts and sales funnels are well known to all. It is just that, more often than not, marketers do not go to prison for such things. Our activities, of course, will be declared illegal and subversive. All the forces of the state apparatus will be rushed to combat it. Very well, we will throw all our energy into the fight against the apparatus of war, corruption and stupidity.
There is a lot of technical work to be done. Nothing like this exists yet. The system must be very flexible and have qualities that would appear to be mutually exclusive. It should be a user-friendly database of contacts, but it must be designed in such a way that would rule out any possibility of it leaking out and causing problems for people. Anyone should be able to get involved quickly, but we need to be able to weed out the provocateurs, the crooks, the stupid, the hotheads and so on as quickly as possible. A large number of one-time accounts will have to be created, but this should not turn into a spam machine. The propaganda machine should be able to adapt instantly to blockages and any opposition, and be as creative as possible. My colleagues and I have been doing or trying to do some elements of such a thing since 2012 – old-timers may remember the Good Truth Machine project, which I announced at one of the rallies back in the day.
However, the scale of this project is such that there has always been a lack of time, knowledge, money and staffing. I think this is one of my biggest political mistakes: I did not make the Good Truth Machine a priority and we did not manage to build it after the 2013 elections, being constantly distracted by other things. And now we simply don’t have a choice. Neither political (what could be more important than stopping a war and a government living a war?) nor organisational (hundreds of thousands of the most active and literate citizens have been forced into emigration). They are ready to do something, but what? We get thousands of messages: “Guys, give us some work, useful work that can be done from abroad or in Russia, but without too much risk.”
So, we start inventing, we start building, we start hiring, we start raising money. We need you very much. First and foremost, we need those who understand the technical, logistical and organisational side of what I have described. We are collecting opinions, expertise and ideas. We will soon organise hackathons in various cities. And, of course, we need the most resilient and the most patient, the most understanding, those who will become the heart and essence of this system. A technical shell is being built, but must be filled with people.
In order to campaign successfully, we need to have conducted thousands of hours of conversations by the time we build and launch a full-fledged machine. We need to listen through them and analyse them, determine micro-targeting parameters, create, try, modify and improve hundreds of scripted conversations for different target groups.
We’re looking for 100 pioneer volunteer canvassers who are ready to tackle this awesome, but challenging, task, especially amidst the inevitable chaos and mess of the first steps.
Email antiwar@navalny.com if you are:
– an IT specialist willing to invest a lot of time into creating technology solutions for our campaign system;
– a marketer, sociologist or political scientist willing to invest a lot of time into creating conversation scripts, engagement funnels, etc.;
– a supporter willing to donate a substantial amount of money to this particular canvassing project;
– a volunteer willing to be in the first hundred people who will invest a lot of time conducting conversations, working out scripts and finding the words and approaches that take voters away from candidate Putin and candidate War.
Write about yourself in sufficient detail, stating where you are from, where you live now and how much time you have for this job. We will get back to you shortly.
This is a long-term project. Putin’s military defeat is inevitable. But no one knows what it will look like or what its consequences will be. Those at the very top of power, the ones who are ready to wage war for the sake of money and strengthening their position, are not going anywhere. They will not pack up and fly off to the moon. Their response to a lost war will be hysteria and preparation for a new war. That is what they will brainwash the citizens with. No one but us can enter this fight for the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens. So, we must enter it and win it.
While thousands of Ukrainians were fleeing their submerged homes after a catastrophic dam explosion last week, high-society Russians gathered for a glitzy restaurant festival in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, just 500 miles away from the devastating flooding.
The event, called Gastreet, saw some 5,000 citizens pay up to $2,000 dollars for the opportunity to listen to some of Russia’s top businessmen, restaurant owners, and influencers over the course of five days. The event also included concerts, lavish nightlife experiences, and gourmet dinners.
If there’s one thing that was made clear at the Sochi resort, it’s that no amount of Western sanctions, Kremlin restrictions, or spillover violence within Russia can stop the country’s rich and famous from living large—despite the raging war in neighboring Ukraine.
Take Ksenia Sobchak, Putin’s rumored goddaughter and one of the VIP Gastreet guests who spoke at the Sochi resort last week. The Russian influencer—who reportedly made over $3 million from her media holding company, Careful Media, last year—has continued to promote products on her Instagram page in the lead-up to the event, even though the app has been banned in Russia.
One of her latest marketing campaigns is for Primepark, a luxury real estate complex in the heart of Moscow.
“Just imagine, valet meets you in the parking lot, bellmen carry your shopping bags to your apartment, housekeepers help with all your routine around the house—I always said that comfort is made by details,” Sobchak wrote under photos of herself in designer outfits, wandering around luxury apartments. (The comment sections are flooded with responses blasting Sobchak with “reminders” of the countless missiles descending on Ukraine.)
“Mikhail Ivanov: ‘A million have left. 139 million stayed,'” Tell Gordeeva (YouTube), 20 June 2023. In Russian, with no English subtitles
Mikhail Ivanov is a star of the Russian book market and the subject of the new episode of Tell Gordeeva. Ten years ago, he reinvented the old Soviet bookstore Subscription Editions and made from St. Petersburg fashionable. Why write, read and sell books in a world where there seems to be no cultural values left anymore? And who needs books when a war is underway? We talk with Ivanov about why he continues to live and work in Russia and on whose behalf he does it.
Contents:
00:00 How Misha visited the store he now owns for the first time 2:48 “Books smell of danger, freedom, and freshness” 4:27 “On my fifth birthday I ran away from home to see the battleship Aurora” 5:47 “She likes it, but she didn’t believe it until the bitter end”: how Misha’s grandmother handed him control of Subscription Editions 7:27 “It was hard for me to concentrate on reading” 9:24 Harry Potter’s graphic art secret 13:46 Subscription Editions’ business model 14:59 “Here you could drink tequila from someone’s navel right at the bar”: what happened to Subscription Editions in the 2000s? 17:02 “Mom and Grandma gave me 2.5 million rubles to buy the store in 2013” 18:12 How to get round all the restrictions 20:57 “I’m Mikhail Ivanov: I work in a bookstore and publish books. I have nothing to do with it” 24:30 “I promised to stay with my employees. I can’t leave” 26:12 “We know who owns what fur coats, buildings and planes, but we were not offered an alternative”: on the opposition 28:03 “I am a citizen of Russia, I pay taxes here. But I don’t associate myself with the Russian Federation” 30:09 “How can you do public opinion polls when they can inform on you?” 32:26 “I’ve been dreaming of going to a Monatik concert for 10 years” 33:22 Top 5 books of 2022 in Russia 34:09 Why do some bookstores hide books by “foreign agents” and do they have to do this by law? 37:26 “The employees of Subscription Editions treated me like my grandmother’s grandson” 40:30 Who Katerina Alexandrovna is and why her favorite books are important to us 42:12 “4,000 people come to our store every day” 43:02 “We had our biggest earnings in March and April 2022” 44:27 “We will close the libraries and smuggle out the books” 48:02 “Where to find a haystack?”: how Subscription Editions’ unique Instagram is created 52:18 What did people do in the bookstore behind a closed grate? Yes, yes! 53:08 “We are a catalogue of the good books published in Russia” 55:05 “We are from Petersburg, and only then from Russia” 1:00:04 Installing a lift in a bookstore for 6 million rubles: what???!!!! 1:02:42 “Our growth strategy doesn’t allow us to stumble”1:04:05 “Do your job and sell books” 1:06:45 “A long strange courtyard that no one knows about”: Mikhail Ivanov gives a tour of Petersburg’s pass-through courtyards 1:08:36 “We show that you can live differently” 1:12:02 St. Petersburg’s Books Quarter 1:15:05 Why is Margarita Simonyan’s book selling so badly? 1:17:24 “I won’t say and do things I don’t believe in” 1:20:01 “How can I lose the meaning of what I am myself?”: on emigration 1:21:09 How Ivanov came up with the postcard “From Petersburg with apathy and indifference” 1:23:55 “There is a separate room with padded walls for bookmen in paradise”
A man sporting a “Made in the USSR” tattoo, Liteiny Prospect, Petersburg, May 1, 2023. Photo by Vadim F. Lurie, reproduced here with his kind permission
Victory Day is a memorable holiday for every citizen of St. Petersburg! During the celebration of the Great Victory, each of us remembers the heroic deeds of our grandfathers. In keeping with a long-established tradition, many musicians dedicate their concerts to this important date.
On May 15, the Lensovet Palace of Culture will host “Echo of Victory,” a soulful solo musical performance by Dmitry Pevtsov and the Pevtsov Orchestra.
Dmitry Pevtsov, “Echo of Victory,” 15 May, Lensovet Palace of Culture
“Echo of Victory” is a new themed concert in which poems and songs of the war years and the best songs of Soviet and modern composers will be performed. The program will feature such songs as “Airplanes First of All,” “From Dawn to Dawn,” and, of course, everyone’s favorite song, which has become a symbol of the celebration of May 9—”Victory Day”!
We invite everyone to the “Echo of Victory” concert on May 15 at the Lensovet Palace of Culture. Let’s remember the great songs of that heroic time and once again feel proud of our great nation!
Directed by Denis Isakov
Duration 1 hour 40 minutes (without intermission)
Source: Bileter.ru. Translated by the Russian Reader
The Russian authorities and Russian propagandists have been competing with each other to recreate something outwardly similar to the Soviet system in our country. The message to Russian society is simple: we are different, we have a different path, don’t look anywhere else, this is our destiny — to be unlike everyone in the world. And yet there are more and more traits of our country’s yesterday in its tomorrow.
For some reason, the speakers at the Knowledge educational forum, starting with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, called directly for Russia’s self-isolation. Mishustin demanded that we achieve independence from foreign designs in the information sphere. The word “independence” has been increasingly used to mean isolation and breaking ties.
Deputies in the State Duma have proposed re-establishing the mandatory three-year “repayment through job placement” for university graduates, and prohibiting those who have not served in the army from working in the civil service.
With Ella Pamfilova, head of the Russian Central Elections Commission, on hand as a friendly observer, Uzbekistan held a referendum on April 30 to decide whether to adopt a new constitution that would grant the current president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the right to de facto lifelong rule by lengthening presidential terms from five to seven years and nullifying Mirziyoyev’s previous terms. The ballot, which involved digital technologies, produced a turnout of 84.54%, and according to preliminary data, 90.21% of voters said yes to the amendments, which would change two-thirds of the Constitution, while 9.35% of voters voted no, and 0.49% of the ballots were disqualified. Although democratic procedures were seemingly followed, Uzbekistan is moving away from democracy.
Something makes us see Pamfilova’s visit to Uzbekistan not only as a trip “to strengthen friendship and cooperation,” but also as a completely practical exchange of know-how in organizing such referendums. Only by adopting a new constitution can the first and second chapters of the current Russian Constitution be amended, and it is the second chapter that enshrines civil rights and freedoms, we should recall.
Alexander Bastrykin, the prominent human rights activist and chair of the Russian Investigative Committee, has proposed adopting a new Russian constitution that would enshrine a state ideology, completely eliminate international law’s precendence over domestic law, and re-envision human rights as an institution alien and hostile to Russia, as something encroaching on its sovereignty. Uzbekistan’s know-how in voting on a new constitution will come in handy for the Russian Central Election Commission.
At seven o’clock this evening live on Citizen TV, we will talk about why, exactly, the Russian authorities are so enthusiastic about Soviet political practice and the Soviet style, and where such intentions can lead our country.
Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed with the need [for Russia] to develop its own communication protocols instead of foreign TCP/IP to ensure the country’s technological sovereignty and independence.
On Thursday, the head of state held an event at the Rudnevo Industrial Park during which the specifics of the development of domestic unmanned aerial systems were discussed. In this context, Alexander Selyutin, board chair of the Technojet group, spoke about the “Internet from Russia” project.
After listening to the proposals, Putin turned to his aide Maxim Oreshkin.
“Maxim Stanislavovich, talk to your colleagues, then report back to me separately, we need to help. This is obligatory, because if you have advanced proposals, your own, of course, we need to do everything to support them. It means technological sovereignty, and better competitiveness, and independence. […] We will definitely help,” the president said.
Those wishing to take part in a virtual LDPR rally at the monument to Vladimir Zhirinovsky created in Minecraft have overloaded the server. The number of applications exceeded twelve thousand, LDPR’s press service informed us.
As Andrei Svintsov, a member of the LDPR faction [in the State Duma], noted, this is only the first such event. The Liberal Democrats plan to continue using [Minecraft] and other gaming platforms to communicate with voters and attract new supporters, becoming in fact “Russia’s first digital party.”
The MP also recalled that experts continue to work on the “Cyber Zhirinovsky” political algorithm, which was previously announced by the party’s current leader Leonid Slutsky.
In late April, Judge Yevgenia Nikolayeva closed a court hearing at which it was decided how much time to give Alexei Navalny to examine the 196 volumes of the latest criminal case against him. According to the police investigator, this was necessary in order to protect investigatory privilege.
Over the past five years, judges in Russia have increasingly closed court hearings to observers, journalists, and even relatives of defendants. Because of this, defense lawyers cannot inform the public about what happens in these proceedings. Mediazona reviewed the judicial statistics and discovered that, in 2022, judges ruled 25,587 times to hear cases in closed chambers. This was almost twice as often as in 2018, when judges decided 13,172 times to hear cases without outsiders present.
The Constitution actually guarantees that your case should be heard in open court, but there are exceptions. The principal exceptions are cases involving state secrets (which is why all treason and espionage trials are closed), cases against defendants under sixteen years of age, and cases involving sexual offenses. The statistics for all such cases have not changed much in recent years.
But there is one more exception — a trial can be closed to “ensure the safety” of the people involved in the proceedings and their loved ones. This extremely vague wording allows judges to close any court hearing. Judges make vigorous use of it, especially when hearing high-profile cases.
Here’s another example. In September, the Moscow City Court closed the hearing of an appeal against the verdict in the “fake news” trial of municipal district council deputy Alexei Gorinov, who had been sentenced to seven years in prison for an argument over a children’s drawing contest in which he had said that children were dying in the war in Ukraine The judge alleged that the court had received threats, and said that the hearing would have to be closed for the safety of the parties to the proceedings.
Russian judges may be following the lead of their Belarusian colleagues, who have learned how to conduct political trials without outside scrutiny. They cite covid regulations, or fill the gallery with persons unknown, or don’t let anyone except the relatives of the defendants in the courtroom. Russian courts have begun to use many of these methods. And the Belarusian courts can declare a hearing closed without explaining the reasons at all.
The authorities do not want people to know about political trials, to monitor these trials, or to support the accused. That is why, on the contrary, it is important for society today to talk about political prisoners and help them.
A Russian version of the song by the French left-wing chansonnier Georges Moustaki. Translation: Kirill Medvedev. Guitar: Oleg Zhuravlev. Video: Nikolay Oleynikov
Don’t ask what her name is, she’s Beloved and tender, but fickle Very spunky, she’ll wake up and go forward To a new life that shines and sings
Bullied and branded Tortured and executed Well, how much can she suffer! And she rises up and strikes, And spends many, many years in prison, Yes, we betrayed her But we only love her more and more And so we want to follow her Right to the end
What her name is, don’t ask, my friend, She’s just a mayflower and a wild fruit She sprouts anywhere, like grass Her path will take her wherever she wishes
Don’t ask what her name is, she’s Sometimes beloved, sometimes persecuted, but faithful This girl that everyone is waiting for Permanent revolution is her name
