There Will Be No Irina Slavina Square in Nizhny Novgorod

The Nizhny Novgorod authorities have refused to memorialize journalist Irina Slavina, who committed self-immolation on October 2, 2020, blaming the Russian state for her death. The journalist’s death was preceded by a search at her house as part of a criminal investigation into local businessman Mikhail Iosilevich, who was charged with “[carrying out the work of] an undesirable organization” (per Article 284.1 of the Criminal Code). In 2019, Slavina was sentenced to pay a fine of 70 thousand rubles for “involvement in the work of an undesirable organization.”

After Slavina’s death, human rights activists attempted to get the Investigative Committee to launch a criminal investigation of possible “incitement to suicide,” but the Committee turned them down on three occasions. The first time it argued that the journalist had suffered, possibly, from a “mixed personality disorder,” while the second time the Committee ruled that the suicide was the result of “emotional turmoil and a conscious wish to die.”

One of the projects undertaken by Irina Slavina, editor-in-chief of the independent Nizhny Novgorod publication Koza Press and a grassroots activist, was the rescue in 2015-2018 of a green zone near her house where the city authorities had decided to build a shopping center. The developer cut down dozens of trees, but the construction itself was stopped through the efforts of grassroots activists.

After Slavina’s self-immolation, Nizhny Novgorod residents began bringing flowers to the place of her death every Friday. Friends of the journalist planted flowers and seedlings in a small park near her house, dubbing the site “Slavina Square.”

Инициативная группа со созданию сквера имени Ирины Славиной — Irina Slavina Square pressure group

At the same time, activists gathered signatures on a petition asking that the place Slavina had fought to save from redevelopment officially bear her name. The greenery in the square was also restored by the heads of the city’s Nizhegorodsky district. But these officials did not support the idea to naming the square after the journalist. They decided instead to name it in honor of the local architect Vadim Voronkov.

One of the initiators of the idea of naming the square after Irina Slavina was the Dront Ecological Center, whose employees petitioned the mayor’s office. But the authorities turned the request down, explaining that Slavina was not “an outstanding statesman and public figure or a spokesperson for science, culture, art and other public spheres who deserved broad recognition for her work.”

Local media recall that Nizhny Novgorod regional governor Gleb Nikitin had once presented Slavina with an official certificate of gratitude for her professional journalistic work and personal service and had earlier promised that he would make every effort “to ensure that the investigation of the circumstances that led to the tragedy is supervised at the highest level.”

Дочь Ирины Славиной Маргарита — Irina Slavina’s daughter Margarita, holding a placard that reads, “While my mom was burning alive, you were silent.”

In April of this year, Dront began collecting signatures from ordinary Nizhny Novgorod residents who would like to see a Slavina Square in the city. The petition drive is still ongoing, but officials have already made their decision.

According to the newspaper Kommersant-Privolzhye, new trees were planted in the square a few days ago. The daughter of architect Vadim Voronkov, who was employed as the city’s chief architect for twenty years [in Soviet times, when it was still the closed city of Gorky], took part in the planting ceremony, which was organized by the Nizhny Novgorod State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering.

Alexei Fomenko, an activist with the project 42 — I Have the Right, called this decision by the authorities “a special operation on Slavina Boulevard.”

“For several decades, no one cared about the boulevard or the architect Voronkov. At one time, it was even decided to build the boulevard over. But then, suddenly, there is a ceremony, tree planting, and children. The mayor’s office and the deputies of the City Duma, realizing that we would not back down, and having no desire, on the one hand, to get a kick in the butt from their superiors, and on the other, getting their mugs dirty yet again, decided to resort to the good old ruse of round up some public employees, holding the necessary event hugger-mugger, and formalizing everything properly,” says Fomenko.

The plan of the authorities has not been welcomed on social media. Irina Slavina’s husband Alexei Murakhtayev was categorical in his condemnation.

“The authorities are once again doing something stupid. I do not know who the architect Voronkov was and what he has to do with this square. There must be some kind of cause and effect relationship! There is no cause, however, but the effect will be people’s discontent,” the deceased journalist’s husband argues.

The Nizhny Novgorod authorities explained their refusal to memorialize Slavina by claiming that her work “did not deserve broad recognition.” Vladimir Iordan, a friend of the journalist and a lecturer at the Nizhny Novgorod Theater School, does not agree with their appraisal.

“I have never met a more outstanding public figure capable of sacrificing their life for the sake of the ideals of justice, a more implacable campaigner against corruption and totalitarianism, a more honest and caring person. Slavina’s articles disciplined officials and deputies, and they exposed embezzlers. Governor Nikitin, when it was advantageous to him, liked to underscore that he reacted to all of Ira’s articles and requests. But Slavina was more than just a journalist — she was a real public figure in the original sense of the phrase. She was a driving force in many grassroots campaigns — against the lawlessness of tow truck operators, against the punitive beautification of parks and squares, against the redevelopment of Nizhny Novgorod’s historic center. She was a sensitive person who completely rejected injustice, lies, and hypocrisy,” says Iordan.

German Knyazev, an entrepreneur, public figure, and friend of Slavina, is sure that Slavina will not be memorialized under the current political regime.

“I think her main achievement was doing independent journalism in a totalitarian state, and my prediction is that this totalitarian state will never name a square after her,” Knyazev argues.

Meanwhile, the Iosilevich case, responsible for the humiliating search took place at Slavina’s home the day before her death, continues. Entrepreneur and activist Mikhail Iosilevich is on trial, accused of collaborating with Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia and threatening a witness. Despite the flimsy evidence, the prosecutor has requested four and half years in a minimum security prison camp for Iosilevich. On the eve of his trial he tried to leave Russia using an Israeli passport. The attempt was unsuccessful: Iosilevich was removed from a plane bound for Tel Aviv. According to the activist, his departure would have been the “ideal option” for all parties in the trial. “But no it is then! We will go on with the oral arguments, the rebuttals, the final statement . . . and the conviction of an innocent man,” Iosilevich wrote in a telegram.

Immediately after Slavina’s self-immolation, the Nizhny Novgorod regional prosecutor’s office ruled that the search in her apartment had been lawful. The search was part of the investigation into Iosilevich, which was prompted by his alleged cooperation with Open Russia. It is still not clear what form this “cooperation” took, however.

The next day, Slavina burned herself outside the Interior Ministry headquarters in Nizhny Novgorod. She left a suicide note on Facebook: “I ask you to blame the Russian Federation for my death.”

Source: Alexander Lugov, Radio Svoboda, 12 May 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader

“Give Birth Yourself!”

The crackdown against Russians who oppose the war with Ukraine continues. Two new articles in the administrative offenses code and the criminal code — Articles 20.3.3 and 280.3, i.e., making it a crime to “discredit the Armed Forces” — have been specially adopted to punish those who call the war a war. But they have been enforced by the courts and the security forces in a such a way that grounds can be found in anything — a placard reading “Fascism will not pass,” a placard containing an anti-war quote by Putin’s, leaflets containing the biblical commandment [“Thou shalt not kill”], asterisks instead of letters, the inscription “Two words” [i.e., “No war”] — for detaining and charging someone. Police in Nizhny Novgorod did not like placards that read “Mariupol. We remember, we grieve” and “Give birth yourself!”

A photo of a young woman holding a placard featuring a man in black cradling a bomb and the slogan “Give birth yourself!” gained fame far beyond Nizhny Novgorod in March. The woman in the photo was the school teacher and feminist Maria Petrovskaya. She had not been involved in public protests before. According to her, the war was her turning point.

“There is a certain last straw,” says Petrovskaya. “All my friends were on Bolotnaya Square, and then on Sakharov Avenue. [This is a reference to the “fair elections” protests in Moscow in 2012.] I endorsed their stance and supported them emotionally, and it was around that time that I began to get a little interested in politics. And yet, as long as it was about the pro-Putin clique’s political, territorial (e.g., Crimea), and financial ambitions, I was not so deeply worried about it. But war destroys and takes the lives of people on both sides. When it comes to the suffering of people, I can’t stand on the sidelines.”

The court hearing on the “Give birth yourself!” protest is still to be held, but the police charged Petrovskaya not with violating Article 20.3.3, but with the more familiar Article 20.2.5, i.e., “involvement in an unauthorized protest rally.” Law enforcement officers decided that Ilya Myaskovsky, who photographed Petrovskaya, was a full-fledged participant in the picket, which meant that it was no longer a solo picket, but a “mass” protest.

But last week, the Sormovo District Court in Nizhny Novgorod fined Petrovskaya and Myaskovsky for their involvement in another protest, in memory of the victims of Mariupol, under Article 20.3.3. Petrovskaya says that, as in the case of the “Give birth yourself!” protest, it was entirely a feminist protest that Myaskovsky had nothing to do with. He only photographed a homemade cross made of branches on which the message “5,000 killed. Mariupol. We remember, we grieve” had been hung.

Нижний Новгород, плакат в память о жертвах в Мариуполе — Maria Petrovskaya’s placard in memory of the victims of the Russian assault on Mariupol.
Photo courtesy of Radio Svoboda

After the police took Petrovskaya to the precinct, Myaskovsky followed her in a jitney.

“For over an hour [Myaskovsky] hovered outside the doors to the police station, waiting for me. In the end, the inspector who was writing me up dragged him into the station as well. ‘To talk,’ as he said. Meaning that Ilya might not have been charged if he hadn’t chivalrously followed me.”

Petrovskaya and Myaskovsky were charged with “discrediting the Armed Forces.” But Sergei Kulikov, a lawyer from the Visor Project who represented them, says that in court even the policeman who wrote out the arrest sheet could not immediately explain how Kulikov’s clients had discredited the Armed Forces.

“‘Can we say exactly who this text targets?’ I asked the police officer [in court]. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Does this text contain a negative appraisal of the authorities?’ I asked him. ‘No,’ he says. Well, okay, I thought, let’s take the bull by the horns. ‘Does this text discredit the Armed Forces in any way?’ I asked him, and he repled, ‘No!” The police officer later realized that he had made a mistake, and asked to testify at the very end [of the hearing]. He said that in the context of everything that was happening, it discredited [the Armed Forces], of course! Who else was it about?” recalls Kulikov.

Both activists were fined: Myaskovsky, 30 thousand rubles [approx. 324 euros], and Petrovskaya, half that amount. The lawyer presented the court with written proof of Petrovskaya’s low salary at the remedial school where she teaches, and the judge decided to show leniency.

People at Petrovskaya’s workplace do not approve of her activism.

“After the “Give birth yourself!” placard went so vividly public, I was horrified to find that almost all my colleagues supported the war and had a positive take on what Putin was doing. They thought I was a disgrace to the school. The head teacher told me that her colleagues had been calling her all weekend, consoling her and asking her how I could have done such a thing. I was given a very long dressing-down, and so was the director, although he is already an elderly man. Everyone told me that I was throwing him and the [regional] education ministry under the bus, although it’s hard to see how I could have done that,” recounts Petrovskaya.

Нижний Новгород, задержание Марии Петровской — Police detaining Maria Petrovskaya in Nizhny Novgorod. Photo courtesy of Radio Svoboda

Kulikov argues that the police’s lack of preparedness helped his client avoid the charge of “discrediting the Armed Forces” in this case.

“They probably had not yet been instructed what to do with this article. They have been instructed now. I know this for sure because there are two cases in which even pro-government picketers have been charged under this article. So, I think our policemen are performance artists, too. They have been given an absurd tool, and they are raising the absurdity to the next level! It’s more like the law enforcement that the Soviet authorities practiced after the Revolution: ‘revolutionary legal awareness’!” says the lawyer.

“If they fined people who held up a blank piece of paper or a placard with three asterisks followed by five asterisks [thus suggesting the Russian phrase Net voine (‘no war’), which consists of a three-letter world and a five-letter word]… Or, for example, I saw an image of three bears and five bears drawn by a female artist, and she was fined, too. Toy bears in memory of dead children: yes, that discredits the army, of course,” says Petrovskaya.

Last week, city hall announced a competitive review of Nizhny Novgorod’s bomb shelters. The purpose of the review is to maintain the shelters “in constant readiness so that they can be used for their intended purpose.”

Source: Alexander Lugov, Radio Svoboda, 11 April 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader

Yefim Khazanov: One Repost Too Many?

Yefim Khazanov. Photo: Roman Yarovitsyn/Kommersant

Yefim Khazanov, Academician of Russian Academy of Sciences, Detained in Nizhny Novgorod
Roman Ryskal
Kommersant
April 21, 2021

Yefim Khazanov, an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and laureate of the State Prize in Science and Technology was detained in Nizhny Novgorod on Tuesday, April 20. Presumably, the reason was his reposts of information about Alexei Navalny on Facebook.

As Mr. Khazanov reported to Kommersant, he was taken to the police department in the city’s Kanavinsky district. “I was detained in the afternoon at work and brought to the police station. They said that I had written [something] about Navalny on Facebook, but I believe that I did not write [anything],” the scientist said. He added that, for the time being, he was in the lobby of the station, and the police officers had not gone through any procedures with him. Lawyer Mikhail Lipkin had gone to the department to represent the physicist.

Mr. Khazanov’s page on the social network contains reposts of information from Alexei Navalny from the [penal] colony, an appeal by human rights defenders to Vladimir Putin about the convicted person’s [sic] condition, as well as posts by Leonid Volkov about the state of health of the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK, entered in the register of foreign agents). The police have not yet commented on Khazanov’s detention.

Yefim Khazanov is a Russian experimental physicist who specializes in creating laser systems. In 2008, he was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Department of Physical Sciences. In 2012, he was awarded the Russian Federation Government Prize for his work creating a petawatt laser system. In 2018, he was awarded the Russian Federation State Prize for establishing the basic foundations of and devising instrumental solutions to the problem of registering gravitational waves.

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

Putin’s Base

Jenya Kulakova
Facebook
January 30, 2021

A random interlocutor told me about their friend, a Russian National Guardsman. Last Saturday, he worked the protests in St. Petersburg from 9 am to 10 pm without a single lunch break. After the elections in Belarus, his unit was taken to Pskov, where they removed all their insignia: if necessary, they could be shipped to Belarus to beat up the protesters. For a week, two hundred of them lived in a school, sleeping on mattresses tossed on the floor: “It was great way to get covid! But nobody gives a shit.”

They weren’t exported to Belarus, so they went home. The friend makes 40 grand a month. [40,000 rubles is approximately 435 euros at the current exchange rate.] “Do you think he loves Putin? No. But he took out a mortgage, and he has to pay it back.”

I wonder: do they really do what they do for forty thousand rubles a month and humiliating “working conditions”? Or do they do it out of conviction?

But they are now being forcibly vaccinated, and so the friend is thinking about quitting. Not because he has to harass peaceful fellow citizens, mind you.

Dmitry Gudkov
Facebook
January 30, 2021

All day I was planning to write about the awful things that the regime has done, but every time it seemed that they couldn’t do more and go lower, it turned out that no, they could, and then some. So, now I will summarize what were probably the most egregious things that happened during the day to remind you once again that we are not dealing with “police,” “judges,” and “prosecutors,” but with people (?) who are ready to commit any crime in order to preserve their power, salaries, and AMP license plates.

In Tver, the security forces came for the deputy coordinator of Navalny’s local HQ, Pavel Kuzmin. When he refused to come out, they cut off his electricity and internet, and then grabbed his fiancee. He surrendered.

In Yakutsk, the security forces came for Sergei Tikhy and Viktoria Postnikova, a couple who support the shaman [Alexander] Gabyshev and have a large family. The security forces shined a laser in their windows (apparently they had the family in their sights), and it seems that they still have not left.

In Moscow, the security forces came for the editor-in-chief of Mediazona Sergei Smirnov when he was out walking with his young child. Now he is in the holding cage at the Tverskaya police precinct, a place I know well. He is accused of participating in the demonstration on January 23, although at the time he was at home coordinating his website’s news coverage of the event.

In Nizhny Novgorod, the security forces came to the special detention center to visit the coordinator of Navalny’s local HQ, Roman Tregubov. They threatened him into reading on camera a text renouncing the protests (which he has now disavowed). I should explain that Roman had every reason to take the threats seriously: Nizhny, which is only three and a half hours from Moscow by train, is known for the insane torture that the local “anti-extremism” police practice. They made one guy sit naked on an anthill, and then for a long time publicly mocked him on “anonymous Telegram channels.”

The security forces in Nizhny also came for my friend Mikhail Iosilevich, who had already been charged with two felonies for cooperating with Open Russia and for not informing the authorities about his dual citizenship. Terrible crimes! Today, a court changed his pre-trial restrictions and remanded him in custody to a pre-trial detention center, and in this case too they hastened to mockingly report this fact on an “anonymous Telegram channel.”

It was after her apartment was searched as part of the case against Ioselevich that Irina Slavina set herself on fire and died.

This story is very personal to me. I know Ioselevich and knew Slavina, and I like visiting Nizhny. Mikhail was always willing to help me and local activists, and he had fun founding the local branch of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Church. But only cops—angry, offended, and embittered—can “have fun” in Russia nowadays.

I used to appeal to the reason of the “other side,” but now I understand that it’s like admonishing a mad wolf to go vegetarian. It’s useless. The conversation is over, and the wolf, no longer a man, has pounced.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Translated by the Russian Reader

Irina Slavina: “I Ask You to Blame the Russian Federation for My Death”

Irina Slavina

Baza
Telegram
October 2, 2020

Irina Slavina, editor-in-chief of the online publication Koza Press, set herself on fire near the Interior Ministry headquarters in Nizhny Novgorod [on October 2]. Before that, she wrote [the following] post on her Facebook page: “I ask you to blame the Russian Federation for my death.”

Slavina died on the spot.

Slavina’s alleged suicide note on Facebook

Yesterday, Slavina’s home was searched as part of the Open Russia case. According to the journalist, all of her electronic devices confiscated.

“Today, at 6:00 a.m., 12 people entered my apartment using a blowtorch and a crowbar: Russian Investigative Committee officers, police, SWAT officers, [official] witnesses. My husband opened the door. I, being naked, got dressed under the supervision of a woman I didn’t know. A search was carried out. We were not allowed to call a lawyer. They were looking for pamphlets, leaflets, Open Russia accounts, perhaps an icon with the face of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. I don’t have any of these things. But they took what they found—all the flash drives, my laptop, my daughter’s laptop, the computer, phones (not only mine, but also my husband’s) a bunch of notebooks that I had scribbled on during press conferences. I was left without the means of production. I’m completely okay. But May [a dog?] suffered a lot. They didn’t let him go outside until 10:30.”

Passersby and Interior Ministry tried to extinguish Slavina. According to eyewitnesses, the flame blazed up very quickly and they were unable to save [her].

*****

This video is not for the faint of heart: it show the self-immolation of Koza Press editor-in-chief Irina Slavina in Nizhny Novgorod. From the very beginning, a bystander tried to help her, but [Slavina] pushed him away.

*****

In the spring of 2019, [Slavina], for example, was fined 20,000 rubles for an “unauthorized” protest march, and in the autumn, a record 70,000 rubles for “disrespecting the authorities.” This summer, the journalist was investigated on suspicion of “disseminating false information” because of a news item [she published] about the coronavirus, and this time she was threatened with a fine of 500,000 rubles [approx. 5,500 euros], which [Slavina] regarded as “financial murder.”

____________________________

Thanks to Alexander Chernykh for the heads-up. Photograph and video courtesy of Baza. Translated by the Russian Reader. The most recent article published on the Koza Press website was posted yesterday (October 1) at 8:27 p.m. local time. It may have some bearing on Ms. Slavina’s death.

Politically Motivated Criminal Investigation Launched Against Businessman in Nizhny Novgorod
Koza Press
October 1, 2020

The investigative directorate of the Russian Investigative Committee’s Nizhny Novgorod regional office has launched a politically motivated criminal investigation against entrepreneur Mikhail Iosilevich, who has been charged with violating Article 284.1 of the criminal code (“activity in the Russian Federation on behalf of a foreign or international non-governmental organization that has been ruled an undesirable organization in the Russian Federation”). A copy of the document confirming this fact has been made available to Koza Press.

In particular, Mr. Iosilevich is accused of the fact that, on September 2 and 3, lectures for election observers from the Yabloko Party were held in his premises (That Very Place, on Gorky Street), lectures that were twice disrupted by the police. According to investigators, activists from the Open Russia movement organized the lectures. Previously, That Very Place was a venue for discussions of current political problems in Russia, for which Mr. Iosilevich was twice charged with and convicted of administrative offenses.

As part of the criminal case against Mr. Iosilevich, the homes of several Nizhny Novgorod residents—Alexei Sadomovsky, deputy chair of the Yabloko Party’s Nizhny Novgorod regional branch; Dmitry Silivonchik, former coordinator of Alexei Navalny’s headquarters in Nizhny Novgorod; Roman Tregubov, current coordinator of Alexey Navalny’s Nizhny Novgorod headquarters; civic activists Yuri Shaiposhnikov and Mikhail Borodin; and Koza Press founder and editor-in-chief Irina Murakhtayeva (Slavina)—have been searched by law enforcement officers, who, among other things, confiscated electronic devices, personal belongings, documents, and notebooks containing notes.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Vladislav Barabanov: Anarchism and Center “E”

e9efc978d793898ae4de6e727570e6ca Vladislav Barabanov during a rally on September 29, 2019, on Sakharov Avenue in Moscow in support of suspects and defendants in the Moscow case, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) case, and Russia’s political prisoners. Photo by Sergei Bobylev. Courtesy of TASS and Republic

Police Detectives Created YouTube Channel Where They Uploaded Video of “Rioting”: Vladislav Barabanov, Former Suspect in Moscow Case, on Center “E” and Anarchism
Margarita Zhuravlyova
Republic
October 17, 2019

The Russian Investigative Committee has stepped up the investigation of the so-called Moscow case: five people were detained on October 14 and 15 and charged with assaulting police officers. In total, twenty-six people have been investigated as part of the case, which was launched in the wake of protests this past summer in Moscow; only six of them have gone free. One of them is Vladislav Barabanov, an anarchist from Nizhny Novgorod. He made a special trip to Moscow for the July 27 protest rally, was arrested on August 3 and charged with involvement in rioting, and was released from remand prison in early September. In an interview with Republic, he recounted how a video entitled “Our Attempt to Overthrow the Government” found its way into the evidence against him, how his jailers hinted he might be tortured, and what he talked about with Center “E” officers.

Prosecution
The wording of the charges against me was vague: “group of individuals,” “sprayed tear gas,” “destroyed property,” and so on. In my case file, however, there were two screenshots from a video that was uploaded, I am certain, by the very same police detectives who were involved in cooking up the criminal case against me. They created a channel on YouTube, calling it “Yegor Zhukov” [Yegor Zhukov, who has been charged in the Moscow Case and is currently under house arrest, is a student at the Higher School of Economics—Republic] and uploading a video entitled “Our Attempt to Overthrow the Government.” That was how this recording and two screenshots, in which I am seen marching in front of a crowd and waving my hand, were entered into the evidence. But I did not “coordinate” any riots.

The first alarm bell was at the detention center: someone from the Investigative Committee came there, wanting to interrogate me as a witness. Then I was detained as I was leaving the detention center, making it clear they would try to pin criminal charges on me. But I couldn’t imagine what would happen next and that so many people would be charged. I thought I would be the only one to face these charges.

Given the psychological pressure they applied in the investigative department, it was hard at first. There were these guards there, for example, who talked on the phone with someone and asked, “Where do we keep the gas masks?” I understand perfectly well how gas masks are used during interrogations. They are put on people’s heads as a way of forcing them to testify. Cigarette smoke can be blown into them or the air can be turned off so a person loses consciousness.

I had the support of family members and my comrades, who met me at the detention center after I did time there for administrative offenses. When they saw me being put into a police cruiser and driven away, they blocked the road and tried not to let it get through. They formed a human chain, but the police pushed them aside. Right at that moment, an officer from Center “E” (Center for Extremism Prevention) was sitting next to me in the car and videotaping everything. He wouldn’t let me contact anyone or take out my mobile phone, threatening to confiscate it.

Center “E”
Center “E” was intensely interested me back in Nizhny Novgorod, too. On September 9, 2018, we held an “unauthorized” protest march against the government’s raising the retirement age. Afterward, there was a wave of arrests, with the police detaining some people in their homes, and others at work. I was detained at a presentation of the almanac moloko plus. I think they knew me, because I was politically active in Nizhny Novgorod, doing solo pickets and helping organize events.

I didn’t say anything to Center “E” officers without a lawyer present. I was detained along with a comrade. He was released, but I was charged with involvement in an “unauthorized” event that had caused disruption to public transport and impeded pedestrians. They had a file with my name on it in which they rifled through papers. One of the Center “E” officers was really curious about what anarchists had in common with Navalny’s supporters. They were worried opposition forces were consolidating.

Anarchists
Since I was young, I guess, I have had a yearning for justice. I followed the Bolotnaya Square Case and all the events of 2011–2013. I was between fourteen and sixteen then. The first protest rally I ever attended was in Nizhny Novgorod on March 26, 2017, my birthday. Due to my age, I was not involved in the events of 2011–2013, but comrades say that rally, which took place after Alexei Navalny published his investigation of the corruption schemes in which Dmitry Medvedev was involved, drew a much bigger crowd. It was a really cool, very significant event: there had never been anything like it in Nizhny.

I didn’t go to protest rallies before that, although I was interested in politics. This was due to my personal rethinking of effective methods of struggle. First, there was the ideological aspect: perhaps I didn’t see any points of contact among the opposition. Second, I rejected public activism.

If we talk about the anarchist milieu and why I now call myself a libertarian socialist [libertarian socialism is a political philosophy focused on resisting authoritarian coercion and social hierarchy—Republic] the fact of the matter is that there are lots of stereotypes around the notion of anarchists, who are either imagined as subculture types with as subculture types with mohawk haircuts and the letter A on their backs, screaming “Anarchy is the mother of order,” or people in masks whose only thought is torching, blowing up, smashing, and destroying things, meaning anarchists are equated with terrorists.

As for methods, some anarchists consider it more effective to put up leaflets and stickers, do graffiti, and hang banners on the street—as long as no one sees them. Their public activism begins and ends there. But when they are confronted with crackdowns, they take to the public arena all the same, because only a huge public outcry can defend people from persecution.

I think that, if you want to promote your political ideas you have to be as public about it as possible. This will help you get around the stereotypes attached to the notion of anarchism and recruit people to your side.

I see anarchism as the endpoint in society’s evolution. It is what happens when people realize they are capable of solving their problems without recourse to any representatives whatsoever, when they realize they can organize themselves and their own lives. When the concept of centralization goes away, people won’t need power over each other.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Did the FSB “Recruit” for Islamic State in Nizhny Novgorod?

imgbin-islamic-state-of-iraq-and-the-levant-black-standard-boko-haram-syria-others-XD0ZwSqRYuFuazPa6K3kJy23r The Islamic State’s Black Standard was used by Russian state prosecutors as evidence that three Uzbek nationals resident in the Nizhny Novgorod area were involved with the terrorist organization. In fact, the flag that was entered into evidence in the case probably belonged to an FSB provocateur. Image courtesy of IMGBIN

Video Published Showing Nizhny Novgorod FSB Provocateur Recruiting for ISIL
Irina Slavina
Koza Press
August 25, 2019

On August 22, the Russian Supreme Court’s Judicial Board on Military Cases considered an appeal of the sentences handed down to three Uzbek nationals whom the FSB’s Nizhny Novgorod Regional Office had accused of involvement in ISIL, a terrorist organization banned in Russia. The charges against Azamatjon Urinov (b. 1988), Adishun Husanov (b. 1990), and Dilshodbek Yuldoshov (b. 1996) were based on the testimony of another Uzbek, identified as “Ulugbek,” as well as videos shot with a hidden camera in an apartment, allegedly rented by “Ulugbek” in the Bor Urban District. The videos are posted below.

When it heard the case in February of this year, the Moscow Military District Court, chaired by Judge Albert Trishkin, refused to examine the videos during its hearings. Nevertheless, State Prosecutor Vsevolod Korolyov asked the court to sentence each of the defendants to sixteen years in maximum-security penal colonies for the actions captured in the videos.

urinova Defendant Azamatjon Urinov’s wife fainted when she heard the prosecutor ask the court to sentence her husband to sixteen years in prison. Photo courtesy of Koza Press

The court demonstrated how much the evidence gathered by state investigators and the arguments made by the persecution weighed by adding Russian Criminal Code Article 30.1 (“preparations for the commission of a crime”) to the charges against the three defendants. This enabled the court to sentence them to shorter terms in prison than were stipulated by Criminal Code Article 205.5.2 (“involvement in the work of a terrorist organization”). Consequently, Husanov was sentenced to seven years in a maximum-security penal colony, while the other two defendants were sentenced to six years each.

It took the court four days to try the case.

In the video below, shot by a hidden camera in the afternoon, “Ulugbek” puts on a black [New York Yankees] cap at the 7:35 mark, gets up out of bed, goes to the closet, and takes a piece of black fabric emblazoned with Arabic script and the ISIL logo [the so-called Black Standard of the Islamic State], which he then hangs on the wall. This flag would later be entered into the physical evidence in the case against Urinov, Husanov, and Yuldoshov. “Ulugbek” would then persuade his countrymen to swear an oath of allegiance to an Islamic state emir. He then, allegedly, went to confess to law enforcement authorities, who classified his identity, exempted him from criminal charges, and sent him back to Uzbekistan.

He did not attend the trial, even as a witness.

In the second video, recorded in the evening, it is “Ulugbek” who talks about the war in Syria and his plans to travel there to help his fellow Muslims. This was established by Husan’s defense counsel, Shuhrat Hamrakulov, who speaks Uzbek.

“Ulugbek” thus entrapped Urinov, Husanov, and Yuldoshov into committing a crime while avoiding criminal prosecution himself; no charges were filed against him. Accordingly, there is good reason to believe he was a provocateur working for the FSB’s Nizhny Novogorod Regional Office.

The Russian Supreme Court’s Judicial Board on Military Cases rejected the appeal of the sentences handed down to Urinov, Husanov, and Yuldoshov, but it reduced their sentences by six months each, their defense lawyers told Koza Press. Their sentences have thus come into force.

Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Zaitsev gave Nizhny Novgorod prosecutors a dressing-down for the fact that they had not uncovered a single piece of evidence concerning the financing of terrorism in their region.

Thanks to Two Hundred Fives for the heads-up. In her comment to their reposting of this article, Petersburg Public Monitoring Commission member Yana Teplitskaya noted that all three defendants in the Nizhny Novgorod “Islamic State” case were, allegedly, tortured in custody. Translated by the Russian Reader

Who Cares, Right?

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Novaya Gazeta in Petersburg reported yesterday that Petersburgers who worked security at the football stadium in Nizhny Novgorod during the 2018 FIFA World Cup have not been paid their wages.

Since July 10, they have been living at the local train station. They have spent all their savings and now have no money to make the trip back home.

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Before they decamped to the train station, they were housed in the stadium itself in conditions as depicted in the photograph, above.

But you were glued to your TV sets the whole time, so what do you care? || TRR

Photos courtesy of the Express and KozaPress

The No Choice Movement

putin bench

President Vladimir Putin announced he would be running for president in 2018. He made the announcement at a meeting with workers of the GAZ auto plant in Nizhny Novgorod. The occasion was the plant’s 85th anniversary.

“This is always a very responsible decision for any person. Because the motive in making the decison can only be the desire to improve the lives of people in our country, to make the country more powerful, better protected, and forward looking. And these goals can be achieved only on one condition: if people trust and support you,” he said, as reported by Rossiya 24. Photo by the Russian Reader

Why Putin’s Announcement He’s Running for Re-Election Doesn’t Matter
The only mystery of the 2018 presidential election, already purely symbolic, has died
Maria Zheleznova
Vedomosti
December 6, 2017

The deed is done. On December 6, Vladimir Putin told workers at the GAZ auto plant in Nizhny Novgorod he plans to run for a fourth term as president. “GAZ supports you” [GAZ za vas], the workers chanted in reply. Thus the slight suspense generated by the 2018 presidential election came to a trivial end.

No, there was no mystery as to whether Putin would run. The bashful talk about the hypothetical possibility of his not running died several days after it was born, leaving a slight sense of embarassment. The only mystery was when and where he would say he was running. There were many options, and lots of discussion, and the pros and cons of this or that date were numerous, but there was almost no point to any of it. What the GAZ plant workers heard in Nizhny Novgorod on December 6 could have been said today, yesterday or December 31. It could have been said in Moscow, Penza or Tynda. It could have been said to soldiers, schoolchildren or cooks. On the eve of the announcement, his spokesman said we could expect Putin’s throwing his hat in the re-election ring any day. We had to be ready to hear his annoucement every day. The spokesman sure said it. People waited and waited and grew weary of waiting. Now they can cease waiting.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov dubbed December 6, 2017, a “historic day, a festive day,” of course, but it is unlikely to go down in history as much as September 24, 2011, when it transpired Putin would seek a third term as president, and Dmitry Medvedev would be a one-term president. That was a fundamental choice. Today’s choice was formal, and indeed there is no choice.

On December 6, 2017, the only mystery of the 2018 presidential election, a mystery that was purely formal anyway, died. Yes, we still have the official announcement of election day, the campaign’s kickoff, and the nomination of other candidates to look forward to. (Although Alexei Navalny, who is really trying to win the presidency, is unlikely to be amongst them.) This will be followed by campaigning, the usual refusal to debate the other candidates, voting, and, finally, the vote tally and announcement of the results. But none of it means anything to anyone, except the official election chroniclers and Central Electoral Commission. All these obligatory but purely technical stages and their circumstances are seen by many as a needless hindrance, in particular, by liberal economists, who are forced to wait, first for the election, and then the new old president’s inauguration, as a signal to launch long-overdue reforms (or reject them). Everyone else regards Putin’s self-nomination as something like the coming of the New Year. The next day, life will go on as before, irregardless of New Year’s Eve’s irrational illusions.

Russia faces another six years of life under Putin. We must imagine they will be more or less like the previous seventeen years of Putin’s rule. The workers at GAZ will assemble cars, liberals will talk about the need for reforms, Kadyrov will praise the president to the heavens, and Navalny will fight for the right to get his name on the ballot. While this goes on, people who were born when Putin was already president will become adults, meaning full-fledged voters. An entire generation will come of age, a generation for whom the principal suspense of presidential elections is the choice of the day and the place when the president says he is running for re-election, an announcement they must anticipate every day.

Commentary
Dead Moroze, 7:27 p.m., December 6, 2017
As a “democratic federal state, based on the rule of law, with a republican form of government,” the Russian Federation has ended. So, no announcements regarding Putin really mean anything in this context.

Translated by the Russian Reader

“Congratulate Me, I’m a Foreign Agent” (Dront Ecological Center, Nizhny Novgorod)

Congratulate Me, I’m a Foreign Agent
pippilotta-v-r.livejournal.com
May 14, 2015

It was to be expected, of course, and we all knew quite well approximately what would be written in the Ministry of Justice’s certificate of inspection, but for some reason it was unexpected all the same. Like a knife in the back.

Dront’s certificate of inspection was brought to our offices on Tuesday. I felt very bad about it all day. Plus, there was a lampoon on a stupid Nizhny Novgorod site (which I will not advertise here, of course) in which I was targeted personally. I even recalled the favorite joke of my youth, which I haven’t recalled for over ten years.

Piglet comes to Winnie the Pooh’s house and sees that the whole place is filled with blood. The bear is lying on the floor, his stomach ripped open, his guts hanging from the chandelier.

Piglet anxiously asks, “Winnie, Winnie, do you feel bad?

“Do I feel bad? Do I feel bad? Yes, it’s curtains for me!”

Because the problem is not the obvious disadvantages of this status, which we will legally challenge, of course. The problem is “faith in humanity.”

For an evening I lost my faith in humanity.

What has to be going through a person’s head to seek proof of “political activity” amongst people who protect nature on behalf of all citizens, and hence them as well? What kind of person do you have to be, for example, to classify money paid to do an analysis of a proposal to raise the level of the Cheboksary Reservoir as foreign financing, since the money came from the WWF (the Russian office of WWF, by the way)? I just hope that those three beauties from the Ministry of Justice who inspected us live somewhere in the Leninsky District, and their houses will be flooded when the reservoir rises.

Oh, to find out where they live and never to stand up for that corner of the city again. Let them build all the auto service centers and waste incineration plants right there!

And why do so-called patriots (we were inspected at the behest of the National Liberation Movement) so hate the natural environment in their own country? On the other hand, they love power in all forms. This phenomenon, incidentally, has haunted me for a while. So some people have decided they are “Russian patriots,” and what do they do? That’s right, they set out to spoil the lives of people trying to do something good for their country. I still remember those young men, “Russian patriots,” who six years ago tried to attack me, a pregnant Russian woman, just because my female friends and I were coming back from a protest rally against a nuclear power plant. Of course, there are different views on atomic energy, and debates can be very emotional, but it’s a matter for debate, damn it, not a matter for a fist fight. And they would have attacked us, and maybe even stabbed us with something, but we ran and got on a bus, and the driver closed the door on them. One young man with wicked eyes kept banging his fists against the windows, spewing out his anger and hatred. Roman Zykov, that wasn’t you, by chance? And now you’ve grown up and become an informer?

During its April 17, 2015, broadcast, the NNTV program Itogi nedeli aired a segment on the “foreign agent” case against Nizhny Novgorod’s Dront Ecological Center. The segment begins at the 1:40 mark, with the presenter explaining that the Ministry of Justice launched its audit of Dront after receiving a complaint from Roman Zykov of the National Liberation Organization (NOD). Zykov is interviewed on camera beginning at the 5:25 mark. He is identified as NOD’s “information officer.”

To be honest, I don’t understand any of this. I can’t get my head around it. I don’t believe there are people who really are happy, for example, if a highway or an asphalt plant is built near their home in place of a forest. People can be indifferent to environmental topics or indulge in pessimism because “everything has been decided, nothing can be changed.” I have seen this many times. But for people sincerely to desire the deterioration of their habitat, that I can not imagine. And I don’t understand how it can be called “patriotism.”

Well, the heck with them, the informants.

So the certificate of inspection was delivered to us. Here it is, this wonderful document. Of course, we have proven to be “foreign agents”: the law interprets the concept as broadly as possible. The inspectors had to prove a quite simple theorem: that we have foreign money (we can check off that box), and that we are engaged in political activity, that is, that we haven’t exactly been sitting on our asses but have been doing something. (Here we could check off a hundred boxes if we so desired.)

And the law does not require a logical connection between these parts of the theorem. It matters not a squat that the money was for one thing, and something else was deemed “political activity.”

Damn, when I was in university, “politics” meant being involved in the struggle for power. Nowadays, if you say it would be good idea to amend a law, you’re already a nasty political intriguer. And even if you praise a law, you’re an intriguer as well, because it is none of your damn business to evaluate laws.

You might think that all Russian environmental legislation is absolutely perfect: that it was handed down to us in the sacred tablets, and each word was cast in gold. This, to put it mildly, is not true. Moreover, these laws are constantly amended and changed, meaning the authorities are aware of their imperfections. It suffices to mention the new law on waste management. It was completely turned inside out and redrafted. I don’t really understand why we should stop criticizing laws.

The whole business with foreign money is also ridiculous.

After all, it doesn’t matter to the inspectors that the funds have been earmarked, for studying turtles, for example. (And, in fact, protection of animals is not deemed political activity, and that is stipulated in the law.) Or for seminars on sustainable development. Or for a public impact assessment of the proposal to raise the level of the Cheboksary Reservoir. No one except the WWF provided any money for this—no state agencies, no legislators, no businessmen—although the entire Nizhny Novgorod Region rose up as one against the proposal.

And it doesn’t matter that all these funds were not only earmarked but were quite small sums (less than one percent of our annual budget) and could not significantly have impacted our operations. We would have criticized the same laws even without this money. But who is interested in logic if you just have to tick off some boxes?

In short, the young female inspectors proved the theorem to their own satisfaction. But I just don’t have the heart to call them lawyers, because, for example, they don’t distinguish between federal and municipal (i.e., local) government. (Maybe employees of the Ministry of Justice don’t necessarily have to have a law degree?) Apparently, the way they see it, all power is sacred and should be beyond criticism.

Well, my depression has passed. It has been nice to see that many people support us and have stood up for us. It has been nice to read your kind words.

P.S. I will not approve any vicious comments, if they show up.

Translated by the Russian Reader. You can see the list of Russian NGOs included in the registry of “foreign agents” (as of May 15, 2015) here. This list is constantly updated, apparently.