Russia’s Most Dangerous Shaman

shaman Alexander Gabyshev. Photo by Andrei Zatirko. Courtesy of RFE/RL

Riot Police Storm House of Alexander Gabyshev, Yakut Shaman Who Promised to Exorcise Putin
Radio Svoboda
May 12, 2020

Riot police have detained Alexander Gabyshev, the Yakut shaman who last year promised to exorcise Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin, and taken him to a mental hospital, according to MBKh Media, citing Alexei Pryanishnikov, the coordinator of Pravozashchita Otkrytki [Open Russia’s human rights program].

According to the human rights activist, at least twenty special forces officers had stormed the shaman’s house in Yakutsk. The reason for his arrest is unknown. Earlier in the day, Gabyshev had been visited several times by people who presented themselves as medical professionals, and asked to test him for the coronavirus. Two of Gabyshev’s supporters were detained along with him for violating self-isolation rules.

Gabyshev gained notoriety in the spring of 2019, when he set off on foot to Moscow to perform an exorcism ritual to force Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin.

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A Shaman for Putin: What Siberians Are Telling Gabyshev on His Way to Moscow, Radio Svoboda, September 12, 2019. Yakut shaman Alexander Gabyshev believes that Vladimir Putin is the “spawn of dark forces,” so he set off on foot to Moscow to “exorcise” him. The shaman began the journey alone, but soon followers began to join him. In Chita, he spoke to a large rally. Buryatia was the next region on Gabyshev’s journey: mass protests started in Ulan-Ude after his supporters were arrested. Gabyshev planned to take two years to get to Moscow so he could unhurriedly converse with the people along the way. The shaman and his followers moved along the roads, covering an average of twenty kilometers a day, stopping for the night in tents, sometimes at roadside motels. Local residents and passing people went to talk to Gabyshev, taking pictures, and helping with food and money.

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On September 19 of last year, Gabyshev was detained at the border between Buryatia and Irkutsk Region during an operation involving special forces. He was identified as a suspect in a criminal investigation into alleged instances of “incitement to extremism” and released on his own recognizance. A psychological and psychiatric examination ordered by police investigators found that Gabyshev was mentally incompetent.

Gabyshev subsequently tried to resume his campaign, promising to make another march on Moscow in June.

The criminal case against Gabyshev was suspended for the duration of the epidemic. International human rights organization Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience.

“‘What sounds like a tale from Russian folklore has become, in today’s Russia, just another act of brutal suppression of human rights,” the organization noted.

Translated by the Russian Reader

BBC Russian Service, From Yakutia to Moscow: A Shaman’s Journey Against Putin, September 24, 2019

Masked Men Invade and Search Kaliningrad Woman’s Apartment over Social Network Repost

A screenshot of the Popular Self-Defense movement’s page on the VK social network. If you’re in Russia, you should think twice about reposting anything the PSD posts about suicide bomber Mikhail Zhlobitsky. Otherwise, masked men might break down your door, as just happened to Lyudmila Stech in Kaliningrad.

Masked Men Invade and Search Kaliningrad Woman’s Apartment Over Social Network Repost
Novyi Kaliningrad
May 8, 2020

In Kaliningrad, masked security forces officers broke into the apartment of a local resident, Lyudmila Stech, and conducted a search. As transpired, she is suspected of publicly exonerating terrorism because of a post on a social network. The incident was reported to Novyi Kaliningrad by a friend of the Kaliningrad woman.

“They broke into her apartment at 6 a.m. today. First they knocked on the door and said they were from Rospotrebnadzor [the Russian federal consumer watchdog]. When Lyudmila didn’t open it, they broke the window,” our source said.

According to the source, the search of Lyudmila Stech’s apartment lasted about four hours. Stech’s router and mobile phone were confiscated, and then Sech herself was taken away for questioning. By evening, she had been released on her own recognizance. She was informed that she was suspected of committing a crime under Article 205.2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code (public calls to carry out terrorist activities; public exoneration or promotion of terrorism) due to a post on the Russian social network Vkontakte (VK).

“No copies of the documents that she was forced to sign were given to her. She received only a certificate for work, ” says the suspect’s friend.

Novyi Kaliningrad has learned that the Kaliningrad women has been charged over an incident in October 2019 in which she allegedly reposted a post, published on the group page of the Popular Self-Defense (Narodnaya Samooborona) dealing with 17-year-old anarchist Mikhail Zhlobitsky, who in 2018 set off a bomb in the building of the Federal Security Service (FSB) building in Arkhangelsk, killing himself and [injuring] three FSB employees.

Kaliningrad has already seen a similar case. In the fall of 2018, FSB officers detained Kaliningrad resident Vyacheslav Lukichev. According to investigators, the antifascist had posted a text on the Telegram channel Prometheus that called anarcho-communist Zhlobitsky’s deed “heroic.” Lukichev admitted during the investigation and during the trial that it was he who had published the post on the Telegram channel, but he argued that the content of the text had been incorrectly interpreted. In March 2019, Lukichev was found guilty of vindicating terrorism, under Article 205.2.2 of the criminal code, and fined 300,000 rubles [approx. 4,066 euros at the then-current exchange rate].

Thanks to Novaya Gazeta for the heads-up. Lyudmila Stech is the latest in a growing list of Russians prosecuted or facing prosecution for allegedly “exonerating” the suicide bomber Mikhail Zhlobitsky on social media or in the traditional media. Stech has joined the ranks of Ivan Lyubshin, Svetlana Prokopieva, Anton Ammosov, Pavel Zlomnov, Nadezhda Romasenko, Alexander Dovydenko, Galina Gorina, Alexander Sokolov, Yekaterina Muranova, 15-year-old Moscow schoolboy Kirill, and Vyacheslav Lukichev. On March 5, OVD Info reported that Oleg Nemtsev, a trucker in Arkhangelsk Region, had been charged with the same “crime.” Translated by the Russian Reader

“Red Darya” Polyudova Arrested Again

“Red Darya,” the fourth episode of Grani TV’s series “Extremists,” posted on October 30, 2017

Darya Polyudova Remanded in Custody in Terrorism and Separatism Case
Grani.ru
January 16, 2020

Judge Anna Sokova of the Meshchansky District Court in Moscow has remanded in custody Darya Polyudova, leader of the Left Resistance movement, until March 13, Moskva News Agency has reported. Polyudova has been charged with calling for separatism and vindicating terrorism.

According to the news agency, Polyudova has been charged with violating Russian Criminal Code Articles 280.1.1 (public calls for separatism, punishable by up to four years in prison) and 205.2.2 (public vindication of terrorism via the internet, punishable by five to seven years in prison).

Polyudova pleaded innocent and informed the judge of a number of procedural violations. According to Polyudova, she has been charged with “calling for separatism and a referendum on the Kuril Islands, and vindicating terrorism on social networks.”

Earlier, civic activist Alla Naumcheva reported that the investigation of the case was focused on “two video clips of some kind.”

Kuban activist Viktor Chirikov has reported that Polyudova is represented by court-appointed lawyer Galina Timofeyeva.

The record of Polyudova’s case on the Meshchansky District Court’s website lists only one charge, the alleged violation of Russian Criminal Code Article 205.2.2.

The political prisoner’s mother, Tatyana Polyudova, wrote on Facebook that her daughter had been taken to Remand Prison No. 6 in Moscow’s Pechatniki District. According to her, FSB investigator Dmitry Lashchenov was handling the investigation.

Human rights activist Irina Yatsenko told MBKh Media that on Wednesday leftist activist Kirill Kotov had been detained and questioned in the same case. He signed a non-disclosure agreement.

The day before Polyudova’s arrest, the security forces searched her dormitory room, as well as the dwelling of Gradus TV reporter Olga Sapronova, in connection with the case. Sapronova was questioned at the FSB’s Moscow and Moscow Regional Office on Bolshoi Kiselny Alley before being released. Her attorney, Olga Pelshe, was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement on the case. Sapronova’s procedural status is currently unknown.

In 2015–2017, Polyudova served a two-year sentence at Work-Release Penal Settlement No. 10 in Novorossiysk after being convicted of publicly calling for extremism (Russian Criminal Code Article 280.1), publicly calling for extremism via the internet (Article 280.2), and publicly calling for separatism via the internet (Article 280.1.2). The opposition activist was convicted for organizing the March for the Federalization of Kuban and solo-picketing against the war with Ukraine, and for posts she had published on the VK social network. Polyudova maintained her innocence.

After her release from prison, Polyudova moved to Moscow, where she had been organizing protest rallies.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Banned: The Kremlin’s Empire

kremlin's empire.jpeg A screenshot of the section of the Russian Justice Ministry’s list of “extremist” matter containing two editions of Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov’s The Kremlin’s Empire: The Soviet Style of Colonialism. They are wedged between a video entitled “Bumblebees: Moscow Skinhead Girl,” and the lyrics to a song entitled “Wog Devils” by the group Kotovsky Barbershop, each of them posted on personal pages on the Russian social media network VK.

Avtorkhanov’s Kremlin’s Empire Ruled Extremist
Grani.ru
December 15, 2018

Two editions of The Kremlin’s Empire: The Soviet Style of Colonialism by Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov, a Chechen émigré historian of the Soviet Union, have been placed on the list of “extremist” matter, as published on the Russian Justice Ministry’s website. The SOVA Center reported the news on Friday.

The first edition of Avtorkhanov’s book was published in the Bavarian town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1988. The first Soviet edition of the book was published in Vilnius in 1990. In 2001, Moscow publisher Dika-M reprinted the book, dropping the subtitle The Soviet Style of Colonialism. The Vilnius and Moscow editions were placed on the list of “extremist” matter on December 5, registered under No. 4661 and No. 4662, respectively.

Avtorkhanov’s book was placed on the list due to a ruling made over three years ago by the Meshchansky District Court in Moscow. On the court’s old website, which is no longer updated, there is a record of ten administrative suits filed by Yevgeny Novikov, who was the Meshchansky Inter-District Prosecutor at the time. Judge Maria Kudryavtseva ruled in Novikov’s favor on September 24, 2015. The Justice Ministry and the Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow were third parties in each of the proceedings.

Along with Avtorkhanov’s book, the Justice Ministry also placed a number of books in Ukrainian on the list of “extremist” matter on December 5, books that had also been banned by order of the Meshchansky District Court on September 24, 2015. This could mean Avtorkhanov’s book was confiscated during one of the numerous police searches carried out at the Library of Ukrainian Literature.

Grani.ru was unable to locate the decision to ban the editions of Avtorkhanov’s book in open sources.

“Perhaps the complaint against the book had to do with Avtorkhanov’s interpretation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or the history of the Bandera movement, which the prosecutor and the court construed as dissemination of falsehoods about the Soviet Union during the war,” SOVA Center wrote in its article. “However, evidence that Russian Federal Criminal Code Article 354.1 [exoneration of Nazism – Grani.ru] may have been violated cannot serve as formal grounds for ruling an item extremist.”

In his youth, Avtorkhanov (1908–1997) was a Bolshevik Party functionary in Chechnya. He was arrested and tortured in 1937. In 1940, he was exonerated. After his acquittal was reversed, he fled from Grozny into the mountains, but was soon captured. In October 1941, he was sentenced to three years in prison. He was released in April 1942. Lavrenty Beria tasked Avtorkhanov with assassinating his childhood friend Hasan Israilov (1910–1944), who in 1940 led an armed revolt against the Soviet regime in Chechnya. Avtorkhanov secretly contacted Israilov and gave him the memorandum “A Provisional Popular Revolutionary Government of Chechnya-Ingushetia,” which he had drafted for the German government.

In the summer of 1942, during the German offensive in the Caucasus, Avtorkhanov crossed the frontline, presenting the Germans with the memorandum, and offering to a write a series of pamphlets about anti-Soviet uprisings in the region. In January 1943 he moved to Berlin, where he was involved in the North Caucasus National Committee. He lived in a displaced persons camp from 1945 to 1948, subsequently settling in Munich.

In 1949, Avtorkhanov was appointed a lecturer at the US Army Russian Institute in Garmisch and Regensburg. In 1955, US counterintelligence foiled an assassination attempt on Avtorkhanov’s life. He retired in 1979. During the 1990s, he supported Chechen independence.

Avtorkhanov’s other books include The Technology of Power (1959), The Origin of the Partocracy (1973), The Mystery of Stalin’s Death (1981), From Andropov to Gorbachev (1986), and Lenin in the Destinies of Russia (1990). The Technology of Power was widely distributed in samizdat in the Soviet Union. Reading and possessing the book was a criminal offense.

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

Be Kind, Don’t Repost 2: Blessed Are the Ice Hole Bathers

Epiphany ice hole bathing on Lake Shartash in Yekaterinburg, January 2012. Officers from the Emergency Situations Ministry (EMERCOM) stand watch.

Berdsk Resident Sentenced to One Year, Three Months in Work-Release Penal Colony for Commenting on Ice Hole Bathing
Mediazona
May 31, 2016

The Berdsk City Court in Novosibirsk Region has sentenced local resident Maxim Kormelitsky, charged with extremism, to one year and three months in a work-release penal colony, reports Radio Svoboda.

Maxim Kormelitsky was accused of posting a captioned pictured on his personal page in the Vkontakte social network. According to police investigators, in January 2016, the young man published a photograph of wintertime Epiphany bathing and in the comments insulted people involved in the religious ritual. According to Kormelitsky, he “simply evaluated the mental state of people who sacrifice their health for the sake of religion.”

During the hearing, the prosecutor argued that Kormelitsky had insulted people who took part in the bathing, since he “is an atheist and feels hatred towards people who profess Christianity.”

“I copied it from another community. Besides me, something like seventy people reposted it. I think it odd that ultimately I am the only one on trial because an Orthodox activist saw my page. There were no calls for violence; there was only the insult. I have acknowledged my wrongdoing, I am sorry for what I did, and I ask the court to sentence me to a punishment not involving deprivation of liberty,” Kormelitsky said in court.

The court found Kormelitsky guilty under Criminal Code Article 282.1 (incitement to hatred on religious grounds) and sentenced him to a year in a work-release penal colony, adding three months to his sentence for a previous conviction.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Photos courtesy of Yuri Vershinin/Panoramio and Tatiana Shtabel (RFE/RL)

The 501st: Russian Death

‘Sociologist Denis Volkov from Moscow’s independent Levada Center pollster, on the other hand, says the bill is unlikely to make Russians more wary about what they post on the Internet. “Most people are not aware of these laws,” he says.’

Ha-ha. It’s good that reporters are forced to turn to “sociologists” and “pollsters” for quotable quotes, and that the Putinist state decided at some point long ago it would pollocratize everyone and their cousin into submission, because otherwise the “independent” Levada Center would have had to pull up stakes long ago and move to Nevada to start calling odds on the trifecta at Santa Anita racetrack.

I have already seen the chilling effect that the bill and the generally malignant, soul-destroying climate of the last year or so have had on what people talk about politically (or not) in daily life, much more dare to post on the Internet, e.g., Russia’s role in Syria, which absolutely no one I know has discussed, publicly or otherwise, under any circumstances for a very, very long time now. And that is just the top of the list.

A fair number of Russians, young and old, know very well how to read signals coming from on high and when to keep their mouths shut. Or how to substitute abstract, self-important chatter or furious trivial pursuits for meaningful conversations about what is happening in their country and what to do about it. Now is one of those times, and it is absolutely depressing.

All it will take is a few more “light touches,” and the country will essentially be dead, that is, waiting for its Supreme Leader to kick the bucket (when? twenty years from now?) so it can rejoin the rest of the world and resume building “democracy,” “capitalism” or whatever it has been pretending to do the last twenty-five years.

Photo courtesy of the Facebook page of Russkaia smert’ (Russian Death)

“He reposted the wrong thing.”

source: Alexander Safronov

Prosecution Witness in Brinikh Case Recants

Prosecution Witness in Brinikh Case Recants
Grani.ru
March 24, 2016

77-year-old Mugdin Guchetl, a witness for the prosecution in the extremist case against environmentalist Valery Brinikh, recanted from the testimony identified as his in the case file during a court hearing in Maykop City Court in Adygea, as reported by the international human rights group Agora, who cited Brinikh’s defense attorney Alexander Popkov.

In testimony signed “Guchetl,” given during the investigation, it states that Brinikh has insulted not only the witness but the entire Adyghe people with his article “The Silence of the Lambs.” During the trial, however, the witness said he had not read the article, that he had not been in Adygeisk for around five years (although according to the interrogation report he was questioned in Adygeisk), that he had not given testimony to a police investigator, and that he had not signed the interrogation report.

Presiding Judge Vitaly Galagan pressed Guchetl, telling him that if he did not acknowledge his own signature, he would be summoned to court again. The defense protested the judge’s actions and filed a motion for a handwriting analysis to be performed.

The article “The Silence of the Lambs” was published on the website For Krasnodar! in September 2014. It recounts the environmental problems caused by Kievo-Zhuraki Agribusiness JSC, a large pig-breeding facility in Adygea’s Teuchezhsk District. The company was founded by Vyacheslav Derev, Karachay-Cherkessia’s representative in the Federation Council.

The article contains the following passage: “But who or what has forced the Adyghe to breathe manure-polluted air and swim in ponds poisoned by sewage? Nothing but cowardice and a lack of self-esteem.”

On December 17, 2014, Maykop City Court ruled that “The Silence of the Lambs” was extremist. On March 20, 2015, the Adygea Supreme Court reaffirmed the lower court’s decision. In their rulings, the courts claimed the author of the article had insulted ethnic Adyghe, accusing them of cowardice. On January 12, 2016, Brinikh submitted a written petition to Maykop City Court asking it to reexamine its ruling in the light of new circumstances, but on January 21, Judge Irina Ramazanov refused to consider the petition.

The environmentalist had been charged under Articles 33.5 and 282.1 of the Criminal Code (complicity in inciting hatred and enmity) as he was accused of having help to disseminate the article. Subsequently, Major Konstantin Kustov, senior major case investigator at the regional headquarters of the Russian Federal Investigative Committee, recharged the environmentalist, removing Article 33.5 from the charges and accusing the biologist of having authored “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Defense attorney Popkov has noted that over the past year the Investigative Committee has ordered five forensic examinations in the case. However, the lawyer stressed that data from a wiretap of Brinikh’s telephone, conducted by the Federal Security Service (FSB) a few months before “The Silence of the Lambs” was published, has been subjected to a phonological forensic analysis.

Hearing of the case on the merits began on January 26, 2016. Popkov had insisted on sending the case back to the prosecutor’s office, pointing out that a number of pieces of evidence had been falsified, but Judge Galagan rejected his appeal.

During the February 9 hearing of the case, one of the ethnic Adyghes who was questioned refuted the charges against the defendant.

“The environmentalist’s article caused no enmity,” he said. “On the contrary, Brinikh has help the Adyghes fight for the environment.”

Translated by the Russian Reader. Photo courtesy of 8772.ru. See my previous posts on Valery Brinikh and the case against him.

Vologzheninova Gets 320 Hours Community Service and Laptop Destroyed for Reposts

Court Sentences Yekaterinburg Resident to Community Service for Posts on Social Networks and Order Her Laptop Destroyed
Mediazona
February 20, 2016

Yekaterinburg’s Zheleznodorozhnyi District Court has found single mother Ekaterina Vologzheninova guilty of inciting social hatred and enmity (Russian Criminal Code Article 282), reports Grani.ru.

The court has sentenced the woman to 320 hours of compulsory community service and ordered her laptop, which served as physical evidence in the case, destroyed.

As Grani.ru explains, the court based its verdict on the conclusion reached by a forensic linguist that Vologzheninova had incited “ethnic [sic] hatred and enmity towards volunteers from Russia” who were involved in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, as well as towards public officials.

Criminal charges were filed against Vologzheninova after she [re]posted Anatoly Marushkevich’s poem “Katsaps,” along with an image of a young Ukrainian woman and the caption “Death to the Moscow Occupiers,” and a caricature featuring a man resembling Vladimir Putin leaning over the Donbass holding a knife. The last post was later excluded from the evidence.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Photo courtesy of Nasha Gazeta. See my previous post on this case: “The Case of Ekaterina Vologzheninova: What What You ‘Like’,” October 21, 2015

The Strange Trial of Valery Brinikh

Judge Refuses to Return Case of Environmentalist Accused of Extremism to Prosecutor
OVDInfo.org
January 26, 2016

Maykop City Court has refused to return the case of environmentalist Valery Brinikh, accused of inciting hatred against the Adyghe people, to the prosecutor’s office for further investigation. This happened on January 26 at the first hearing in Brinikh’s trial. Lawyer Alexander Popkov, Brinikh’s defense attorney, told OVD Info that the reason for the motion to return the case to the prosecutor were the violations of criminal procedural law that have surfaced during the case. According to Popkov, the case files which the police investigator allowed them to examine did not match the case files submitted to the court.

“The dates of the inspection protocols of the items seized during the search [of Brinikh’s home] have been changed,” Popkov explained.

According to him, during the investigation, he and his client discovered that the inspection protocols had been drawn up before the items were confiscated. After they pointed this out, protocols that were formally drawn up later than Brinikh and Popkov reviewed them were submitted to the court.

Brinikh told OVD Info that the court had refused to admit two defenders to the case: retired judge Oleg Alexeev and Zaurbiya Chundyshko (an ethnic Adyghe), chair of the Maykop grassroots organization Adhyge Khase. The presiding judge has refused to call to the stand the witnesses and experts whom Brinikh and his attorney had asked to testify, including the people who performed the computer and linguistic forensic examinations during the investigation. The defense has a number of questions for them.

According to police investigators, in the fall of 2014, Valery Brinikh produced a piece of extremist matter: the article “The Silence of the Lambs,” which dealt with the environmental problems cause by a hog farming facility in Adygea’s Teuchezhsky District. It was founded by Vyacheslav Derev, the Federation Council member for Karachaevo-Cherkessia.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Photo courtesy of Cogita.ru

Please read my previous posts on the Brinikh case: