Posted by Sean on June 30, 2010
Since everyone is afflicted with spymania at the moment, I wanted to make sure this little tidbit of news didn’t go unnoticed.
Well, as I assumed the copies of Putin. The Results. 10 Years seized by St. Petersburg police will be returned. Reports Ekho Moskvy:
Executive Director of United Civil Front Olga Kurnosova reported to Interfax, a representative of the police have contacted her and said that all the copies would be returned today.
They found no extremism in them whatsoever.
Nah, really? I could have told them that without even reading the damn thing. So basically this whole scandal has boiled down to some zealous police minion giving Nemstov and Milov two week’s worth of free advertising. Good job boys.
Score: Team Solidarity 3 : Putin 0
Posted by Sean on June 12, 2010
Russia’s Far East has always been an unruly place. Tsars and Communists alike dumped its criminals and politicals there. In the interwar period it was a hot bed for lawlessness and banditry, where gangs and holdouts of the White Army made life difficult for the new Soviet state. There is one historical artifact that always stands out in my mind when it comes to the Russia’s Far East. I tend to give it to my students so they can get a flavor of the heady days of the Russian Revolution. The document is an anonymous letter to Lenin dated 15 January 1918. After lambasting Lenin for not keeping his promise to deliver “peace, bread, land, and liberty in three days’ time” the complainant ended with this warning: “If you’ve picked up the reins [of power] then go ahead and drive, and if you can’t, then, honey, you can take a ..read more
Posted by Sean on August 18, 2009
Posted by Sean on July 18, 2009
Russian authorities just keep stretching and stretching the meaning of extremism. Now the list of extremists will include a variety of youth subcultures extending from skinheads to fans of the iconic Soviet rock band Kino. This is according to a report released by the St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office which places music fans under police surveillance. Reports the St. Petersburg Times:
According to the report, the district’s criminal police have identified and included on a register “88 people who attribute themselves to informal entities such as ‘Skinheads,’ ‘Aggressive Football Fans,’ ‘Punks,’ ‘Emos,’ ‘Black Metallers,’ ‘Fans of [the band] Kino,’ ‘Alternative Rock Fans,’ ‘Anarchists’ and others.”
Kino was a local 1980s pop-rock band influenced by The Cure and Duran Duran, and is still popular with young people in Russia, though it split up when its frontman and sole songwriter Viktor Tsoi died in a car crash in 1991. Plans to erect an official monument ..read more
Posted by Sean on April 30, 2009
Anti-racist activists finally have a reason to mildly celebrate. Today, Russian xenophobe Aleksandr Belov was sentenced to six months in a penal colony for violating Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Inciting hate and enmity as well as the debasement of human dignity”). The case stems from the Russian March in fall 2007 where Belov goaded protesters “to chant anti-Semitic and anti-government slogans.”
People were wondering whether Belov would serve any time at all. The authorities were apparently afraid that jail time would turn Belov into a martyr.
Belov’s sentencing also led to his resignation as leader of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI), Russia’s largest ultranationalist movement. According to Belov, he was forced to resign because if he was convicted while serving as DPNI’s leader, the organization would have been banned as extremist. “I do not want to let my brothers-in-arms down. I’m sure that they will never denounce me. ..read more
Posted by Sean on February 8, 2009
I’m normally not a big fan of the Guardian‘s Luke Harding, but I think he deserves kudos for his latest article, “Putin’s Worst Nightmare.” Harding opens with the chilling and brutal murder of Karen Abramian, who was stabbed 56 times by two skinheads named Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, both 17, as he returned from visiting his parents.
Abramian’s murder was one in the string of 20 murders committed by the racist duo in a nine month period in 2006-2007. They also racked up about 16 attacks in their stabbing spree. Most importantly, as Harding stresses, the two youths “were proud” of their killings. After all, they are part of a “holy war” to rid Russia of racial others. “As they saw it,” Harding writes, “Abramian’s violent death was part of a national liberation movement – an ambitious, quasi-mystical struggle to get rid of Russia’s foreigners, in which they played the ..read more
