Tag: Boris Vishnevsky

Cancel(ed) Culture in Petersburg and Moscow

Polina Osetinskaya

A concert by the famous and talented pianist Polina Osetinskaya at the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic has been canceled.

“I think everything is clear to everyone. Thank you for your concern,” Polina wrote on social media.

What could be clearer? At outset of the “special operation,” Osetinskaya wrote about her attitude to it, about what she really thinks.

And now, like many other artists whose conscience did not permit them to remain silent, she has been excommunicated from her work.

But our TV screens and concert halls are still full of those artists who have no conscience at all. Either they had one, or it atrophied from disuse.

Source: Boris Vishnevsky, Facebook, 2 September 2022. Photo of Ms. Osetinskaya courtesy of her website. Translated by the Russian Reader

Polina Osetinskaya playing Arvo Pärt, Valentin Silvestrov and Giya Kancheli at DK Rassvet in Moscow on 31 May 2022
Vsevolod Lisovsky

Moscow police on Friday evening detained the director, actors and audience of a theatrical street performance — a total of fourteen people, reports OVD Info. The reason for the arrests is not yet known.

Based on Bertolt Brecht’s play Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, the operetta Judicial Process was supposed to take place in a pedestrian underpass on Prospect Mira, but the police interrupted the performance.

The operetta has been produced by the Moscow troupe Theater of the Transitional Period and director Vsevolod Lisovsky. He chose the format of street performances in pedestrian underpasses a few months ago. He decided to stage the Brecht play, he said, “because you can’t think of anything more resonant with the time.”

Written by Brecht in 1934–1938, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich is based on eyewitness accounts and newspaper articles. It deals with fascism’s gradual penetration of all areas of life in Nazi Germany, thus discrediting justice and undermining morality.

Vsevolod Lisovsky is an experimental theater director and playwright who worked for many years at Teatr.doc in Moscow. He established a new venue for the theater, Transformator.doc. Lisovsky is is a two-time winner of the Golden Mask Award.

Source: “Moscow street performance’s director, actors and audience detained,” Radio Svoboda, 2 September 2022. Photo courtesy of Teatr magazine. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader

Terpily

Grigorii Golosov
Facebook
February 10, 2022

The sudden onset of winter has brought Petersburg to a state of ruin. The number of people crippled by black ice on pavements and ice floes falling from roofs is comparable to the number of victims of an international military conflict of medium intensity somewhere in Africa, and no terrorists could dream of having such an impact. I won’t even mention the regional authorities, whose only real task has long been to ensure “correct” election results, especially federal ones, but on occasion their own local elections as well. As for the federal authorities, they are even less interested in local problems. They prefer to spend hundreds of millions every day to senselessly drive tanks and other equipment along the southwestern borders. Geopolitical fantasies warm the soul, and their concern about security is quite sincere, because security for them is tantamount to maintaining power. The broken legs and broken heads of deadbeats are not included in this concept of security. Let them watch TV in a cast and rejoice in the country’s greatness, the doormats [terpily].

Screenshot from r/DoesNotTranslate

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Boris Vishnevsky
Facebook
February 10, 2022

A few sad takeaways from today.

A monstrous sentence was handed down to 15-year-old Nikita Uvarov: 5 years in prison for computer games.

In Chechnya, Zarema Musayeva, the wife of a federal judge, who was abducted from her home in Nizhny Novgorod, was denied a transfer to house arrest: she has been left in remand prison until April 1.

The arrest of journalist Ivan Safronov, who has never been told what kind of “high treason” he committed and what “state secrets” he gave out (secrets to which he never had access) had his arrest extended until April 7.

Ill and in need of medical care, Sergei Zuyev, the rector of the Shaninka [Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences], was transferred from the medical unit of the capital’s Matrosskaya Tishina remand prison to a gen pop cell.

No, we can’t change these thing now. Just like we can’t change many other things.

But when change happens — and it certainly will happen — we can refuse to forget or forgive these things.

No matter how often people tell us “we were ordered”, “we were forced,” “we were low on the totem pole,” “we had families, children, and mortgages”, and, more generally, “well, you understand…,” our answer will be, “No, we don’t understand.”

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Excerpt from an email that a friend in Petersburg sent me this morning:

In fact, I haven’t fully recovered yet, although it all started three weeks ago, apparently, and now [I’m suffering] the consequences of the fact that I blamed the initial symptoms on fatigue and ran through snowdrifts until I fell down with a temperature around 40; only then did I realize that this was it. It was right at this time that the medical system collapsed. It’s true that everyone is sick. I left the house [for the first time] a couple of days ago: there [were] five times fewer people on the streets and in the shops than usual, and a couple of weeks ago everyone was coughing and sneezing everywhere, without masks mostly, I won’t even mention vaccinations. Basically, I highly recommend not getting sick with this thing, if possible.

All three texts translated by the Russian Reader

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Russian Teenager Gets Five Years In Prison In Minecraft ‘Terrorism’ Case
Siberia.Realities (RFE/RL)
February 10, 2022

KANSK, Russia — A court in Siberia has sentenced a 16-year-old boy to five years in prison in a high-profile terrorism case prompted by plans he had with two friends to add the building of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) to the popular video game Minecraft to allow players to blow it up.

The First Eastern District Military Court in the Krasnoyarsk region sentenced Nikita Uvarov on February 10 after finding him guilty of illegal weapons possession and passing through training for implementation of a terrorist act, charges he has rejected since his arrest in fall 2020.

Two other defendants in the case were convicted of illegal weapons possession and handed suspended prison terms of three years and four years, Vladimir Ilkov, the lawyer for one of the two other defendants, told RFE/RL.

Prosecutors had sought nine years in prison for Uvarov and six years in prison for the other defendants.

The three boys were 14 when they were arrested in 2020 while distributing leaflets to support Azat Miftakhov, a mathematician, who was in custody at the time and later sentenced to six years in prison in January 2021 on terrorism charges that he and his supporters called politically motivated.

After their arrest, investigators confiscated their telephones and said later they found chats in the phone that “had proven” that the trio planned to add the FSB building to the Minecraft game and blow it up there.

The investigators also said that the boys criticized the FSB in the chats, read banned books, fabricated firecrackers, and blew them up in abandoned buildings in their native city of Kansk.

Uvarov refused to cooperate with investigators and spent 11 months in pretrial detention before he was released last year to finish the ninth grade at school, while his two co-defendants pleaded guilty and fully cooperated with the investigation.

In his final statement at the trial on February 9, Uvarov reiterated his previous comments rejecting the charges and added that if he is imprisoned, he “will serve the sentence with a clean conscience and dignity.”

“It was painful for me to see how my country oppresses people, civil rights activists, who want the best for the country and stand for its well-being. Now, unfortunately, I am experiencing myself the despotism of the unfair collaborators of the system,” Uvarov said.

Image credit: screenshot of a Google News search for “Minecraft,” February 10, 2022

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Julia Galkina
Facebook
February 10, 2022

It turns out that the joke about a pizza courier who arrives faster than the ambulance is not a joke. Yesterday, it took the ambulance two hours to get to me: I think that was very fast.

I get the feeling that, like organs in a body with terminal cancer, all services in the city are failing. The doctor has got sick, the janitor has been killed by a block of ice. It’s like we’re inside the quiet apocalypse from the movie Songs from the Second Floor.

And yet, I know people who, although they are probably infected (“oh, I only have a sore throat”), continue to ride the subway. And I know people whose ordeal with omicron has not been “three days on the couch and that’s it,” but has been quite hard.

I would like to say to people from the first category that they (and/or their employers) are fucked in the head — no matter what the assholes themselves say.

This text was added two hours after the original post. Translated by the Russian Reader

Article 354

Boris Vishnevsky writes:

Ms. Simonyan, who heads the state propaganda channel, publicly asks Lavrov “when we’re going to whack Washington,” and “how much snot we’re going to chew” [i.e., how long we’re going to dillydally]. She is certain that Article 354 of the Russian Criminal Code doesn’t apply to her. Today, no, it doesn’t. But there’s always tomorrow.

Margarita Simonyan writes:

We have finished the interview with Lavrov. I asked what you asked: will there be a war, “when we’re going to whack Washington,” and “how much snot will we chew.”

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Article 354 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Public calls to unleash a war of aggression

1. Public calls to unleash a war of a aggression are punishable by a fine in the amount of up to three hundred thousand rubles or in the amount of wages or other income of the convicted person for a period of up to two years or imprisonment for up to three years.

2. The same acts committed with the use of mass media or by a person holding a governmental post in the Russian Federation or a governmental post in an official region of the Russian Federation are punishable by a fine in the amount of one hundred thousand to five hundred thousand rubles or in the amount of the salary or other income of the convicted person for a period of one to three years or imprisonment for up to five years with deprivation of the right to hold certain posts or engage in certain activities for up to three years.

Source: KonsultantPlus. All translations by the Russian Reader

 

Snowpocalypse

Mighty Putinist Russia can occupy Crimea, invade Ukraine, and “pacify” the “terrorists” in Kazakhstan, but it can’t manage to shovel the sidewalks in our old neighborhood in Petersburg, reports Boris Vishnevsky, the city councilman for our district. If you’ve been watching this space for a while, you’ll recall that snow removal has vexed the Petersburg authorities at least since the “anomalous” winter of 2010-2011, when a healthy amount of snow (Petersburg is the world’s northernmost major city, after all) led to a total “snowpocalypse” on the streets and, most devastatingly, the roofs, flooding thousands of apartments, including ours. ||| TRR

I walked around my council district for two hours: Zagorodny – Zvenigorodskaya – Pravda – Socialisticheskaya – Dostoevsky – Razyezhaya – Svechnoy – Marat – Kuznechny – Pushkinskaya – Mayakovsky – Nevsky – Liteiny – Bolshaya Konyushennaya.

I found no signs that the sidewalks had been cleared. Nor did I find any traces of janitors.

Walking on the vast majority of sidewalks on these streets (the exception is Nevsky, and parts of Marat and Liteiny) is simply dangerous.

Even Mayakovsky Street is dangerous 2-3 meters off Nevsky. On Pushkinskaya, the danger zone begins even closer to the city’s main street.

Don’t even get me started about smaller streets.

I’m posting a portion of the photos I took. Social media are chockablock with similar images.

Now it will get colder — and the black ice and widespread injuries will kick off.

A friend suggested a good idea: to arrange an inspection of janitors. They would all have to be at “their” houses at seven in the morning. And the head of each district would have to personally make the rounds and check how many of them are real — that is, how many of them don’t exist only on paper.

We should demand that the authorities carry out such an inspection.

Meanwhile, [Petersburg] Governor Alexander Beglov, according to the Smolny’s website, has been discussing with Tamara Moskvina the prospects for the development of grassroots sports in Petersburg.

Meanwhile, walking on the sidewalks in the center of the city he leads is a real extreme sport.

Translated by the Russian Reader

The Doubles

The powers that be in Petersburg (i.e., Putin’s United Russia party) have decided to confuse voters by running two candidates named “Boris Vishnevsky” against the popular liberal city councilman Boris Vishnevsky, pictured on the far right, who is running for re-election on September 19. The two fake candidates (who were known as Alexei Shemlyov and Viktor Bykov before the current campaign and, presumably, will resume their real identities after it) have now also grown beards and mustaches to further muddle Petersburg voters, who will have this poster to look at in their polling stations when they vote in two weeks. As the real Boris Vishnevsky points out, above, it also appears that the photos of his doppelgangers have been retouched to heighten their resemblance to him. ||| TRR

They Have Nothing Better to Do

Dmitry Gudkov
Facebook
January 9, 2021

I understand that Russians there is no problem more important than Trump’s showdown with Twitter. The precedent of blocking a social network account is not a very good one, of course, but the folks in the US will cope without us. I would venture to throw out a different topic for discussion.

On Monday, January 11, the verdict in the case of Azat Miftakhov will be read out in the Golovinsky District Court in Moscow. Trump was banned on Twitter, but Azat, a graduate student in mathematics from Moscow State University, has been locked up in for allegedly breaking a window at United Russia party office. He has been in a pretrial detention center for two years, although there is no evidence of his guilt.

If you’re worried about freedom of speech, Azat’s case is also cause for worry. At the last court hearing in the case, people who came to support Azat were not only not allowed into the court building. They were simply locked up in the courtyard of the building. A paddy wagon was brought  in and shipped them out of there. The detainees included two journalists, with press cards, but that means nothing to our authorities.

If the Miftakhov case were given at least 1% of the attention that has been spent on Trump in Russia, the case would not have happened. And we’re not taking about a ban on Twitter here, but arrest, torture, and a [possible] imprisonment in a penal colony.

Today, someone spelled out the message “FREE AZAT” on Lake Kaban in Kazan. This was protest action in support of mathematician and anarchist Azat Miftakhov. On January 11, at 12:00 p.m., the Golovinsky District Court will announce the verdict. The prosecution has asked for six years in prison for the young academic. If you have the opportunity, be sure to come to the hearing!

Boris Vishnevsky
Facebook
January 9, 2021

In our country, Roskomnadzor can block any media outlet or website that tells truths that the authorities find unpleasant.

But this does not cause popular outrage.

In our country, people are put in jail for reposting things on the internet.

But this does not cause popular outrage.

In our country, hundreds of political prisoners are being held on falsified charges, starting with Yuri Dmitriev and ending with the defendants in the Ingush protest movement trial.

But this does not cause popular outrage, and rallies and pickets in support of these people attract almost no attention.

In our country, anyone who disagrees with the authorities can be declared a foreign agent.

But this does not cause popular outrage.

In our country, the president has been given lifelong immunity from prosecution for any and all crimes, and he does not even need to pardon himself in advance.

But this does not cause popular outrage.

But what an explosion of indignation there has been over the blocking of Trump’s Twitter account. It has been the main topic of discussion in Russia!

As long as this is the case, the Kremlin can rest easy.

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Sergey Abashin
Facebook
January 9, 2021

It’s stunning. Russia has hundreds of political prisoners, political assassinations and political persecution, two ongoing wars involving tens of thousands of dead and the occupation of territory in several [foreign] countries, a personal dictatorship that has been de facto and legally established, and laws that permit total censorship in the mainstream media. And yet Russian intellectuals are hotly debating whether it is right or wrong to block the American president’s Twitter account two weeks before the end of his official term.

Translated by the Russian Reader

A “Political Hit Job” in Petersburg

vishnevskyBoris Vishnevsky. Photo courtesy of Deutsche Welle

Petersburg City Councilman Boris Vishnevsky Accuses Prigozhin Media of Slander
Deutsche Welle
November 14, 2019

On Friday, November 14, Boris Vishnevsky, a Yabloko Party deputy in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, filed a complaint with the Primorsky District Internal Affairs Department, requesting it open a criminal slander investigation into articles published by Patriot media holding company, whose board of trustees is headed by businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, as reported by Vishnevsky himself on his Facebook page.

Novaya Gazeta has reported that, beginning on November 7, Patriot’s media outlets have been running stories claiming that, in his capacity as a professor at the Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University (RGPU), Vishnevsky had sexually harassed first-year female students.

The basis of the charges is, allegedly, an email from a young woman named Kristina, who identified herself as an RGPU alumna and claimed Vishensky harassed her and other female first-year students in 2014.

On November 12, the national TV channel Rossiya 24 told viewers there had been “widespread complaints” against Vishnevsky, and students had been holding solo pickets against him outside the Legislative Assembly.

Meanwhile, RGPU has issued a press release. It stated there were no first-year students named Kristina enrolled at the university in 2014, Vishnevsky had never taught courses to first-year students there, and no allegations of sexual harassment had ever been made against him.

Vishnevsky has called the scandal an obvious “political hit job.”

“This is the regime’s revenge for my political activities and political stance, for exposing fraud involving the city budget and utilities rates, for fighting to save the city, for defending political prisoners, and for Yabloko’s victories in the municipal district council elections in the Central District,” he wrote.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Russia Without Putin

1211505Vladimir Putin playing hockey Moscow’s Red Square on December 29, 2018. Photo courtesy of Valery Sharufulin/TASS and RA’s Daily News Blast

Yana Teplitskaya
Facebook
December 27, 2018

Police officers usually realize that, whatever they do, they are breaking the law or disobeying standing orders, and since they are afraid of being found out, they definitely don’t talk to the press. Here we have a different story, which I don’t know how to explain. Petersburg opposition activists are well aware of a police officer from the “Third Department” by the name of Ruslan Sentemov, while other people have not heard of him, likely as not. For some reason, Sentemov operates quite openly, going so far as to give the local news website Fontanka.ru a detailed interview about his work.

I don’t knowwhat happened to Petersburg opposition activist Shakhnaz Shitik at the Yabloko Party’s Petersburg office, but this is what happened at the police precinct, as related by Shakhnaz. It has been corroborated by one police officer, nor has it been refuted by the other officers who were present. According to the shift commander, during the incident, all or nearly all the officers at the 78th Police Precinct were in the duty room and were separated from the incident by a glass door. I also understand that Shakhnaz’s account is borne out by the videotape that civil rights activist Dinar Idrisov and Petersburg city councilman Boris Vishnevsky have seen.

Sentemov and two of his colleagues (their names are also known) used force on Shakhnaz. They pressed her head hard to her chest, causing her agonizing pain. Consequently, in the incident report, according to the social defender, in addition to the injuries she suffered at the Yabloko office, damage to her cervical vertebrae was caused at the police station.

Moreover, the officers grabbed Shakhnaz’s telephone by sticking their hands down her painties. No public witnesses or female police officers were present during this search, nor was an incident report filed. Taken from her but not officially confiscated, her telephone lay in the police department, along with her blouse and other clothing, prior to the Public Monitoring Commission’s visit. During the incident, Shakhnaz was wearing a bra. The blouse was returned to her only at the hospital.

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Concerning the sadistic tendencies of our police investigators and judges, I would argue this is an allegory, artistic embellishment. Otherwise, what kind of judicial system do we have? These were your words: the judicial system. The system includes the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court. Are they sadists, too? We should choose our words more carefully. I realize you wanted to rouse us, you wanted to get our attention. You did what you set out to do. Thank you.

The courts and law enforcement agencies are staffed by our fellow Russian citizens. They live in the places we live in. They [were] raised in the same families in which we were raised. They are part of our society. There are probably all kinds of different people everywhere, in all large organizations. If you have a look at the percentage of law enforcement officers convicted of crimes, it has recently increased and increased considerably.

This suggests the work of housecleaning has not stood still. It has intensified and produced certain results. In order to minimize this, however, we do not need repressive actions against the justice or judicial system. We need serious, multi-pronged, multi-faceted work. That is what we have been trying to do on this Council.

Source: Vladimir Putin, Meeting of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, The Kremlin, Moscow, December 11, 2018. Thanks to Yevgenia Litvinova for the heads-up.

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Open Russia Activist Whom Police Assaulted in October Detained in Lipetsk
OVD Info
December 12, 2018

Alexander Kiselevich, the Open Russia activist assaulted by four police officers in October, has been detained in Lipetsk. He has reported the incident to OVD Info.

Kiselevich was stopped near his home by traffic police. After checking his papers, they asked Kiselevich to follow them to the Izmalkovo District Police Department, where he was charged with breaking Article 19.3 of the Administrative Offenses Code (disobeying a police officer’s lawful orders). The policemen told Kiselevich he would be taken to court from the police station.

In October, on the eve of an election to choose the head of the Izmalkovo District Council, Kiselevich was beaten by police officers before being taken to a psychiatric hospital for a compulsory examination. Kiselevich was thus unable to present himself to the competition committee, and his name was struck from the ballot

Kiselevich was charged with breaking Article 19.3 after the incident in October. The police claimed Kiselevich resisted them when they were forcibly delivering him to the psychiatric hospital.

Kiselevich is a well-known opposition activist in Lipetsk Region. In 2016, he was elected head of the Afanasyevo Village Council, but shortly thereafter the majority of council members voted to dismiss him. Kiselevich was charged with embezzlement (Article 160 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code).

UPDATE. Kiselevich has reported to MBKh Media that a court in Lipetsk has found him guilty of disobeying a policeman’s lawful orders and fined him 500 rubles. Kiselevich plans to appeal the sentence.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Petersburg: How Low Can You Go?

Elections to the State Duma and regional legislative assemblies throughout the country are scheduled for September 18, and the campaign, such that it is, is in full swing. Journalist and Yabloko Party member Boris Vishnevsky has behaved the way a real city councillor should during his first four years representing part of Petersburg’s giant Central District. So it is no wonder the ruling party, United Russia, has taken aim at him by running a loyalist like Maria Shcherbakova, longtime head of the Central District, against him in the city’s second single-mandate electoral district. And her campaign, it would seem, is pulling out all the dirty stops, confident it will never ever have to pay for its crimes. TRR

"Opposition candidate Boris Vishnevky.

“Opposition candidate Boris Vishnevsky. Residents of the Central District! I must become a deputy in the [St. Petersburg] Legislative Assembly. To make this happen, transfer 1,000 rubles to my special election campaign account. Account no. 40810810956049000026.” The fine print in this counterfeit campaign poster creates the impression the poster was ordered by Vishnevsky himself and lists other fake details, such as the print run and the name of the print planting where the poster was, allegedly, printed, along with its address.

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Boris Vishnevsky
Facebook
August 26, 2016

WARNING: FAKE!

Friends and colleagues, especially those of you from the Central District:

The district has been pasted with fake ads, allegedly endorsed by me, suggesting that people transfer money to my election campaign account.

I think this is a reaction to my complaints against illegal campaigning on behalf of Maria Shcherbakova, United Russia’s candidate [for the seat in the Legislative Assembly currently held by Vishnevsky] and head of the Central District. Likely as not, the fake were posted early in the morning by employees of the housing and maintenance service. By the way, the number of the election campaign account is fake too, of course.

There is nothing surprising about this, friends. They don’t know how to campaign any other way and they won’t do it.

Complaints have been filed with the police, the prosecutor’s office, and the Municipal Electoral Commission.

First, don’t believe fakes.

Second, this is proof I have real support from people, and city hall is scared of me.

Third, when you see something like this, call my campaign headquarters immediately at +7 967 596 5021.

Maximum repost. People should be aware of dirty campaign tricks.

Translated by the Russian Reader

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But that is definitely not how low the regime can go. That was just a party trick, so to speak.

Meanwhile, some more productive Petersburgers have produced this nifty map of the city’s subway system. Unlike all other maps of the system, and there have been plenty since it went online in 1955, this one shows the depths, in meters, of all the stations in the subway.

The deepest, at 86 meters, is Admiralteiskaya, a relatively new station, opened in 2011, and located near Palace Square and the Hermitage, as well as, naturally, the Admiralty.

What do Petersburgers do as they ascend and descend the long escalators that take them down into and up out of the underground, rides that can take over five minutes in the most profound cases? Well, they do lots of things, including reading, chatting, meditating, listening to music, etc. One thing they are not doing a lot of, I am afraid, is thinking about the upcoming elections. But that is no accident, just as it was no accident all those fake Vishnevsky campaign posters were plastered all over downtown. TRR

spb-metro depths

Source: VKontakte; thanks to Comrade DE and others for the heads-up