16 Oct 2014 | News and features, Politics and Society, Russia
Russia’s All-Russian Memorial Society faces closure after the Justice Ministry filed a suit with the country’s Supreme Court late last month.
The Justice Ministry filed its suit on 26 September, though Russian news outlets only publicised the case last week.
Recently, Memorial, a long-time critic of the Kremlin, has tried to gain more information on political prisons and has sought justice for victims of political persecution.
Russian prosecutors first sued for Memorial to register as a “foreign agent” under a law that targets groups that receive grants from abroad. However, the court struck down this request.
The Supreme Court will hold another hearing on 13 November, according to Radio Free Europe.
Updated 31 October. An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that the International Memorial Society, an Index on Censorship award winner, was the subject of the Kremlin action.
This article was posted on 16 October 2014 and updated on 31 October 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
12 Sep 2014 | Belarus, Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Russia
(Photo: Okras/Wikimedia Commons)
Pity poor Dmitry Dayneko. The Belarusian teen recently completed the ice-bucket challenge, as millions like him have before, and posted the video of himself being drenched in cold water on social media. So far, so hilarious/tedious (depending on your view of the challenge), but, ultimately, quite harmless.
Except apparently it wasn’t. Dmitry and the friends who poured cold water over his head say they were summoned by local authorities and given a stern warning to behave themselves, apparently on the orders of the KGB in Minsk. The reason? Not the icy water itself, but Dmitry’s temerity in nominating Belarus’ president, Alexander Lukashenko, to do the challenge next.
Lukashenko, one feels, is not a man who does lighthearted fun. One cannot imagine him posting a selfie of himself holding a cocktail with an umbrella in it, hashtagged #YOLO. One cannot even begin to think what he’d wear on fancy dress day at Bestival. He’s probably weirdly competitive at bowling. He does not do Wii.
This does not make him an exceptional dictator. In the history of autocrats, I can’t think of a single one who was mainly in it for the laughs, unless it was fun of the crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of their women variety.
In journalist Ben Judah’s recent, acclaimed essay on the court of Vladimir Putin, he describes a lonesome, rigid emotionless figure, whose only apparent joy is ice hockey, which Judah says, Putin finds “graceful and manly and fun”. This is quite normal for a man of his age and geographical situation (Lukashenko has the same love for ice hockey). But there is a difference between “fun” and “funny”; playing sport is fun. It may even be more fun if your opponents are scared of you. What it is not, though, is funny.
Because dictatorships don’t — can’t — do funny. People can make great jokes about authoritarian regimes, certainly. Ben Lewis’s Hammer And Tickle details the jokes that got people through Soviet communism between 1917 and 1989, most of which revel in the jarring, depressing juxtaposition between Soviet promises of milk and honey and everyday reality (“What is the definition of capitalism?” “The exploitation of man by man” “And what is the definition of communism?” “The exact opposite”.)
But those within the regime, within The Party, never, ever find themselves funny, which is why the generals end up with such large hats.
A couple of years ago, a viral video spread of Belarusian soldiers putting on a display on the country’s Independence Day. It was synchronised, controlled, disciplined, and one the campest things I have ever seen — the Red Army choreographed by Busby Berkeley. But this would not for one moment have occurred to anyone in charge.
Funny doesn’t work for dictatorships because funny usually involves humanity, and vulnerability. This is the appeal of the viral ice bucket challenge video: not admiring the superhuman feat of standing still while freezing water cascades over you, but laughing at the apprehension beforehand, and the hopping and shouting and screaming in the moments afterwards.
In the hands of the likes of Putin or Lukashenko and their apparatchiks, the challenge would have to become a real feat of strength and endurance: somehow Vladimir Putin would invent colder iced water than everyone else did, and then have more of it poured on him than anyone thought possible. And it would be boring because he would not flinch. And then he would not nominate anyone else, because, well, where do you go after Vladimir Putin or Alexander Lukashenko? What man could equal such a task?
Andy Warhol once pointed out that in America, an odd consumer egalitarianism existed: “You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola,” the artist said, “and you know that the president drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.”
The same is true of viral phenomena like the ice bucket challenge, or the Harlem Shake before it (that meme aggravated the Azerbaijaini authorities so much that people were arrested for allegedly taking part in it). There’s no way of making throwing water over someone’s head much more than it is. The Harlem Shake effectively died when people started trying to make slicker or (shudder) sexier versions.
In spite of near-ubiquitous celebrity participation, an ice bucket challenge is an ice bucket challenge is an ice bucket challenge.
In spite of its claim to oversee a “social state” that works “for the sake of the people”, the Soviet nostalgist regime of Lukashenko cannot bear such egalitarianism.
This article was posted on 11 Sept 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
22 May 2014 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Politics and Society, Ukraine
(Photo: Milana Knezevic/Index on Censorship)
Walking around Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti square, months after the protest that enveloped the city and toppled the corrupt government of Viktor Yanukovych died down, is a strange experience. International attention has understandably shifted, the images now beamed across the world are from the ongoing crisis in eastern Ukraine. The capital is calm these days, so I don’t know exactly what I was expecting as I made my way down Mykhailivska street.
Tents still populate Maidan, with young and old lounging, talking and cooking in the May sunlight. I walked past sandbag barricades, and ones made of tyres painted in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. There were flags were everywhere — EU, American, British, and many more. I walked past the independence monument, juxtaposed against the new year tree, covered by protesters in posters, and yet more flags. Music was blaring out from the small stage facing these towering structures. The lyrics I couldn’t understand, apart from the cry of “Ukraina” in the chorus. I made my way past the Maidan press centre, towards a bridge which had a large banner emblazoned with names and faces hanging from it. The Hotel Ukraina behind me, I looked out over the square.
(Photo: Milana Knezevic/Index on Censorship)
The only thing missing was the crowds. It felt like they had just taken a break — gone for lunch, to return at any moment. Perhaps I arrived with a naive “out of sight, out of mind”, mentality, subconsciously assuming that the square would to an extent have been cleared out. But Maidan seems to be, for now at least, a living monument to the profound change, and crisis, Ukraine is going through.
It was against this backdrop, and with the country’s general elections set for this Sunday, I travelled to Kiev to take part in the conference Ukraine: Thinking Together. The brainchild of Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder and the New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier, its purpose was “to meet Ukrainian counterparts, demonstrate solidarity, and carry out a public discussion about the meaning of Ukrainian pluralism for the future of Europe, Russia, and the world.” The guest list included academics like Bernard-Henri, Lévy Timothy Garton Ash and Ivan Krastev, and journalists like The New York Times’ Roger Cohen and The Atlantic’s David Frum. Former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt also made an appearance at the welcome reception.
(Photo: Milana Knezevic/Index on Censorship)
One could question what, if any, effect the discussions of a group of intellectuals might have on the very real crisis on the ground. Over the weekend, there were among other things, a Crimean Tartar journalist was detained in Simferopol, while the Ukrainian military arrested two Russian reporters. But Kiev-based journalist Maxim Eristavi told me, and tweeted, that it was “surreal” to have the “intellectual powerhouse of the West in one room in Kyiv”. If nothing else, organising a big-name gathering to talk about Ukraine, in Ukraine, makes a bold statement — and one likely to be heard all the way to Moscow.
A range of topics were tackled in five days of panel debates and public lectures. The Maidan protest was applauded, with Wieseltier in his opening remarks calling it “one of the primary sites of the modern struggle for democracy”. Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy, called Maidan a geopolitical move, but by a people rather than a government.
(Image: Milana Knezevic/Index on Censorship)
Bernard-Henri Lévy spoke of his recent visits to eastern Ukraine, explaining that while they might be fewer than in the Maidan, there are people in these areas who support a unified Ukraine. He contested what he believed to be the image presented in western media that people in the east are all separatists. While the point was made that flags, national symbols and the Maidan movement is not perceived as positively in all parts of the country as in Kiev, Constantin Sigov, professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla, argued that the Ukrainian crisis is first and foremost civil and political, not one of identity.
Russia’s foreign policy and Russian President Vladimir Putin were unsurprisingly recurring themes. “He has values. They are not our values, but they are values,” said François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, talking on the panel of geopolitics after Crimea. Writer Paul Berman argued, in the same panel, that Putin is acting from a position of weakness, and fear that Russia is not stable. Others, meanwhile, were uncomfortable with the term geopolitics, saying it legitimises Putin’s world view.
(Photo: Milana Knezevic/Index on Censorship)
Russia’s propaganda strategy was also a hot topic and elicited strong responses, with one audience member referring to it as a weapon of mass destruction. “Propaganda is the beginning of bloodshed, it precedes bloodshed,” said Alexandr Podrabinek, editor-in-chief of Prima information agency, on the panel discussing whether rights make us human. State-run news channel RT, formerly Russia Today, got several mentions. Academic Anton Shekhovtsov argued that RT gives space to democratic consensus in its coverage, but also to left-wing, far right and libertarian narratives, and even conspiracy theories. Because each is treated in roughly the same way, the democratic narrative becomes just one of many. He said this explains why RT appeals to some people in the west, but stressed that they’re pushing an overall Russian agenda.
Podrabinek, despite dubbing RT “hateful”, argued that while there might be a temptation to shut down views we don’t like, this is not a good way of confronting them. If we want freedom of expression, he said, we can’t do that. On a related note, Carl Gersham argued that while Ukraine needs to be supported economically and militarily, they also need support in modernising the media landscape, to foster internal dialogue.
(Photo: Milana Knezevic/Index on Censorship)
And while the regime was criticised by speaker after speaker, ordinary Russians and their rights were not forgotten. Sergei Lukashevsky, director of the Sakharov Museum and Public Centre, put the support for Putin into the context of fear. When people see that the state is cracking down on human rights again, he argued, they make themselves fit in — go into survival-mode. While rights exist formally in Russia, he explained the practical situation through an old Soviet joke: “Do I have the right? Yes. Can I? No.”
In a weekend of intellectuals discussing how to solve a crisis, novelist and non-fiction writer Slavenka Drakulic gave a sobering lecture on the role of intellectuals in causing crises, specifically the Balkan wars. To be able wage war, to kill, you have to create an enemy and dehumanise it, she argued. Here is where academics, poets, journalists came in handy in former Yugoslavia — by preparing people psychologically for conflict, “using words almost like bullets”.
(Photo: Milana Knezevic/Index on Censorship)
And this leads well into the final panel of the conference, on the role of history and memory in politics, the difference between official history and collective and personal memories of the people, and how especially the former can be manipulated. We’re arguably seeing that today already, with Timothy Snyder saying that with events in Ukraine, a European revolution is being contested even as it’s happening. The Russian Ministry of Education is already writing new chapter to explain Crimea, said acclaimed Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov. “And Ukraine might have their version.”
After my trip to Maidan, I asked a Ukraine-based AP journalist what the future might bring for the square. There are only a specific type of people still there, she explained, and they might see how the elections go before they decide to stay or leave.
Or as Myroslav Marynovych, the founder of Amnesty International Ukraine, said during the conference — when there is democracy, there will be no need to go to Maidan.
This article was published on May 22, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
14 Apr 2014 | News and features, Russia
(Image: /Demotix)
Censorship of anti-war sentiment in Russia now uses a mixture of state-sponsored media attacks, arms-length loyalists, crooked think tanks and legal strong-arming – but is it working?
Politonline, a website well-known for its support of Putin, has produced an article with the top twenty most “negative” news sources in Russia. Editors claim to have pioneered a methodology which can gauge “emotional sentiment and tone” in online articles. Politonline don’t elaborate on how the algorithm has been put together, or indeed the source data they used. However some of the keywords used have been published, including the words “annexation” and “support for Crimea.”
Meanwhile, a prominent academic has been publically slammed by a pro-Putin think tank, in a pro-Putin newspaper, after he compared Hitler’s strategy in Anschluss with the annexation of Crimea. Professer Andrei Zubov was also dismissed by his employers – the Moscow Institute for International Relations. The Institute for Democracy and Co-operation, the think tank who critiqued the article, included a list of American academics who had lost their jobs over their political views – although many had been fired for comments which were overtly racist, sexist, or incited hate.
The man who blew the whistle on Putin’s invasion in Crimea, Lev Shlosberg, has also been targeted by his opponents. Some of the masked paratroopers now in Crimea were originally based in his home region : Shlosberg helped alert the media when the invasion began. A legislator and newspaper editor, he has since been accused of being a “fifth columnist” and “traitor.” In an interview on the Russia 1 television channel, Putin’s press secretary Dmitri Peskov adopted a similar strategy when he smeared dissenters as “professional critics” and a “nano-fifth column.”
Alexey Navalny, a lawyer, blogger and pro-reform opposition politician has also faced penalties. A lengthy article he published on his blog regarding Crimea prompted authorities to accuse him of breaking the terms of his house arrest. Authorities then blocked access to the site, and warned citizens that anyone promoting his article online would be subject to unspecified sanctions.
Protesters brave enough to go on the streets are also being met with state-sponsored aggression. Tanya Lokshina, Russia Program Director and Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Index that “anti-war protesters have been subject to arbitrary detention, harassment, intimidation, and even physical attacks.”
Between February 21st and March 4th, the NGO allege that police detained well over a thousand peaceful protesters in Moscow alone. Courts ordered at least fifteen of them to serve ten days of administrative detention for alleged failure to obey police orders, and fined dozens of others for participating in unauthorized public gatherings. The majority are still awaiting administrative court hearings. Other cities have seen similar policing tactics and unfair judicial process.
“Many wondered what a post-Sochi crackdown might look like,” Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch told Index. “These detentions, the crackdown under way on the media, and violent attacks against dissenters by unidentified assailants paint a stark picture of what is going on in Russia right now.”
So is all this working? In December, Putin’s popularity was at its lowest since 2000, according to a report on the Reuters website. Polling conducted by the Levada Agency showed that “61 percent of respondents voiced approval for Putin’s performance in November, down from 64 percent in October and the previous low this year of 62 percent, recorded in January.”
It’s also notable that before the Crimea crisis escalated, the Russian people were indifferent to Euromaidan. Another Levada poll showed that 63% of Russians didn’t sympathise with either Yanukovych or the protesters.
However a poll by VTsIOM, conducted in March after troops had moved into Crimea, showed that Putin’s approval ratings had leapt up. VtsIOM is state-run but according to Russian politics analyst Mark Adomanis, “remains one of the most widely respected polling outfits in Russia.”
Crimea has sent Putin’s poll numbers skyrocketing,” says Adomanis, who writes a column for Forbes about Russian politics and economics. “Levada currently has him at a little over 80%, his highest level since 2010.”
“Other agencies have shown a similar rebound in his numbers – pretty much everyone agrees that the poll numbers are the best in a long time.”
Adomanis also commented on the lack of media, political and academic freedom surrounding the Ukraine crisis.
“Even in democratic societies there’s always a concern that polling can be heavily influenced by the nature of media coverage. It’s definitely more of a concern in Russia, given the heavy-handedness with which the authorities manage the press
“You can’t totally separate the biased coverage from popular support, but I don’t think one can fully explain the other.”
So Putin’s strategy in Crimea has played out well politically. It’s hard to know what the polls would have been like had the press been able to fully criticise his actions, or had street protests been allowed to go on unhindered. It’s also likely that the long-term economic impact of the annexation will be great enough to push polls down again in the future. However, the tactics used by the authorities to keep dissent out of the public psyche appear well-rehearsed and difficult to counter. A quick review of any Russia Today bulletin, compared with multiple on the ground sources in Kiev, Crimea and eastern Ukraine, reveal that the Russian public are not getting the full picture about their leaders international transgressions.
This article was published on April 14, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
