We often hear some public figures outside of Russia slam the Russian people for being half-hearted in their effort to stop the war.
Like, if a million protesters take to the streets, the regime will collapse.
And since the numbers aren’t there, they conclude that there’s some wrong with Russians:
a faulty genetic makeup, slave mentality, and other insulting comments.
On Feb. 22, the Proekt media outlet published an investigative piece on the history of repression in Russia,
comparing the present-day country with the USSR.
The sobering conclusion is that during Putin’s previous presidential term alone,
more people were charged in political cases than those on Brezhnev’s and Khrushchev’s watch.
The piece was dedicated to the memory of Alexei Navalny.
Today, we’ll discuss the piece and talk about the efforts the regime has to put in to bridle the protest sentiment.
Before we roll, here’s an important message for you.
Many independent media outlets have been left penniless and are struggling to scrape by.
One of those is Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper with a 30-plus-year track record in journalism.
Despite the government pressure and the nationalization of the publishing houses that brought Novaya revenues,
the editorial team stays in Russia and keeps doing honest journalism.
They offer in-depth reporting and interview eyewitnesses.
Their mammoth work helps us all make sense of what’s going on in Russia.
Today, Novaya Gazeta has to start auctioning off its property to keep their effort alive.
The proceeds will help pay the employees’ salaries and their business trip arrangements.
The auction will be taking place between Apr. 1 and 8, featuring items like The Beatles’ gold record once presented to Mikhail Gorbachev,
a football signed by the CSKA players following their UEFA Cup win, film director Dmitry Krymov’s Golden Mask award, etc.
Follow the link in the description to take part in the auction and support Novaya Gazeta.
But those who have a Russian-issued bank card can donate money to the publication.
The donations are now the team’s main income sources.
By subscribing to a regular payment, you’ll help them plan their work for the coming months.
Please click the link in the description to fill out the donation form.
Let’s roll.
First, let’s figure out why the reporters decided to compare the present-day Russia with Khrushchev’s and Brezhnev’s rule,
seeing as Stalin’s stint was the most gut-wrenching of them all, followed by far less gory periods.
Many Russians think that Stalin’s rule was a totalitarian dictatorship associated with Gulag, murderous secret police, and mass repression,
whereas post-Stalin memories include cheap and tasty ice cream cones, peace, and feel-good animated cartoons.
That’s exactly the kind of the USSR the old-timers are waxing nostalgic about.
But the truth is, that wasn’t the kind of era you’d want to revisit.
Up until its waning days, the USSR was a totalitarian state that sentenced people for their statements,
opinions, and even thoughtcrimes.
Some were locked up on psych wards for an indefinite stay.
Others were executed for entrepreneurship and dealing in foreign currencies.
Here’s one conspicuous episode.
On Aug. 21, 1968,
the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact nations invaded Czechoslovakia, putting and to the liberalization effort known as the Prague Spring.
On Aug. 25, eight individuals took to Red Square to protest the invasion.
They held up posters reading, “For your and our freedom!” and “Shame on the occupiers!”
Several minutes into the rally, the protesters were nabbed, beaten, and escorted to a police station.
Back then, the Prague-based Literárni Listy newspaper wrote,
“Seven individuals on Red Square represent the seven reasons we will never hate the Russians.”
The youngest protester was, thankfully, released as an innocent bystander,
but seven individuals were sentenced either to prison terms or to punitive psychiatric treatment.
Sure enough, there was no immediate effect on the occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Nonetheless those eight individuals braved the enormous risks and turned out at Red Square.
They had little hopes of succeeding, while facing the incredible odds of getting roughed up and charged.
That sounds oddly familiar to present-day Russians.
In today’s Russia, the protesters aren’t always formally prosecuted for their dissent.
The political case can be redressed as economic charges.
That’s what they busted Navalny for.
Or they can be charged with “hooliganism” and vandalism, like the ones who left anti-war inscriptions.
Also, people are tried for mass riots.
Proekt’s investigative team scoured the websites of the Russian courts for details of felony
and misdemeanor charges used to politically persecute the dissenters.
They found out that during Putin’s last six years in office alone,
more than 10,000 individuals were slapped with repressive felony charges
and over 105,000 individuals were found guilty of politically motivated misdemeanor for a total of 116,000 people.
The odds are, it’s a moderate estimate since the investigators may not have gained access to all of the court rulings.
Some of them failed to download because of the spotty server connectivity.
Some weren’t analyzed because they were tried by magistrates.
Others, like terrorism, extremism, and high treason charges, are classified information.
Let’s compare this data with that of the Soviet-era repression,
and the law enforcement archives become publicly available,
the real figures may be way more ominous.
!Russia vs. USSR!
The investigators broken down the cases by category for a fair comparison.
For example, both regimes punished people for their speech.
In the USSR, such defendants were sentenced for anti-Soviet propaganda
and the dissemination of deceitful claims intended to smear the Soviet system under the notorious Article 58 of the Penal Code.
Today, this kind of censorship is covered by the following charges:
extremism, justifying terrorism, discrediting the armed forces, calling for sanctions, and misinformation.
These charges can be brought about over a social media post or comment.
Sometimes just speaking to a wrong crowd can do the trick.
Over the past six years, 5,613 individuals were charged with these “crimes.”
Most of them were convicted, while some are waiting for the sentencing,
but given a less than 1% of “no guilty” verdicts, this number is likely to grow.
More than 5,500 have been charged under the clearly repressive laws.
Khrushchev’s and Brezhnev’s rule combined only had one six-year period when the numbers were close but still fell short of the above.
Between 1956 and 1961, shortly after Stalin’s death and with the repressive machine still riding the momentum,
close to 5,000 people were charged for those “crimes.”
Throughout the rest of these two leaders’ stints,
a six-year period only yielded between 500 or 600 and slightly upward of 1,000 speech-related court sentences.
Just like in the Soviet era, politically motivated criminal charges still constitute a relatively small share of repression in Russia.
More often than not, the authorities are just putting pressure on people and leveraging their power.
People are fired from their jobs, kicked out of college, threatened, or forced to leave the country.
A popular obnoxious practice is browbeating and coercing people into videotaped apologies and fake confessions.
We’ve seen a ton of such videos over the last couple of years.
Besides, in the lead-up to protest rallies, people were issued official warnings.
The range of these tactics may seem endless.
The Soviet government followed almost the same script.
Back then, it was referred to as “preventive measures.”
You didn’t even need to overstep the bans.
They could just deem you politically unreliable if you had “suspicious ties to foreign nationals,”
were “harboring treason,” or engaged in “politically harmful conduct.”
They would put you on a high-risk list and issue an official warning.
They could also publicly censure you, discuss the issue at a factory committee meeting, dish out a reprimand,
or even try you before a collective justice panel.
Those mock trials may look funny when seen in Soviet movies. In reality, they messed with people’s lives big time.
Proekt unearthed the details of those “preventive measure” spanning the period between 1967 and 1974.
According to the KGB, more than 120,000 individuals were affected.
Today, both the police extremism taskforce and the FSB don’t report any official figures.
So far, the only information available concerns misdemeanor charges that infringe on free speech,
the freedom of thought, and the freedom of assembly.
According to Proekt, over the last six years, more than 105,000 cases went to court, most resulting in fines,
arrests, and community service sentences.
The figures are pretty much the same, with 120,000 sentences over the eight-year Soviet period
vs. 105,000 sentences over the past six years of Putin's presidency.
Add to it an incalculable number of people who were fired, expelled from college, threatened, and suchlike.
This may well be a large number of people as such stories make news headlines on a regular basis.
A separate category of political persecution is the protest rally follow-up cases.
It happens like this. Several randomly picked protesters end up charged with either contempt of authority or violence against the police officers.
The randomness of their picks is important in that it grips the public with fear and makes protesters reassess the risks.
Protesters are told by the authorities that they can’t be safe once they step outside and join the rally.
Also, people are clueless as to who may be busted and what for. That makes participation even less safe.
!Our Capabilities!
Proekt’s study has put it all into perspective.
Without brushing off certain reservations, the numbers show us that Russia is currently hovering between Stalin’s repression campaign and Khrushchev’s and Brezhnev’s crackdown.
It’s not close to the Great Purge of 1937 with kangaroo courts and mass executions, but it’s no thaw, either.
The authorities are using repression to retain their grip on power,
and people can’t do anything to counter this bulky machine willing to destroy anyone who dares to take a stand.
The reasons behind the political dead-end Russia finds itself in aren’t attributable to our citizens’ flawed mindset or slave mentality.
The real reason is that the repressive machine stoked by the powers-that-be leaves no room for safe dissent.
And if there’s anything that can surprise us, it’s not that 1 million Russians haven’t still made it to Red Square.
It’s that, for all the risks, people are still capable of opposing it.
Despite all the threats and official warnings, a lot of people turned up at Navalny’s funeral,
signed up for Nadezhdin’s bid, and voted at midday, taking the opposition leaders’ call.
The authorities know that the Russians no longer protest via public opposition rallies.
They know why so many people attended Navalny’s funeral and kept laying flowers to his grave in the days that followed.
Those people weren’t sure if attending the funeral was safe.
Social media posts were awash with people’s expectations to spend the night in custody.
Users wrote, “I said goodbye to my kids,”
“I handed my passwords to my colleagues in case I don’t make it back,” “I set a new complex password,”
“I’ve grabbed a paperback to read in a police van,” and “We’ve charged our power bank and packed a bite to eat.”
A lot of people turned out at the polling stations, lining up, monitoring the election, voting against Putin,
and drawing Navalny’s portraits across their ballots.
It all happened despite the numerous threats leveled at election observers and those who wanted to vote at midday.
The prosecutor’s office warned the activists that voting at midday could qualify as an act of extremism.
Undergrads were threatened with expulsion.
The Russian are taking part in something the authorities may qualify as a protest act with no safety guarantees.
True, we haven’t toppled the regime or stopped the war,
and some outsiders keep saying the Russian civil society’s attempts at change are half-hearted.
But the hard facts show that Russia is currently one of the world’s harshest autocracies.
The regime’s repressive activity has hit a 70-year high.
Moreover, dozens of thousands of people are willing to protest, which is huge.
And it makes us hopeful that Russia, Ukraine, and the rest of the world may have a better future.
Perhaps that’s our only hope, as there seems to be no conceivable way of ending the war other than political change within Russia.
The news feeds may lead you to believe Russia stands no chance, but that’s not true.
Let’s bear this in mind.
See you tomorrow!