A courtroom within the southern Russian metropolis of Volgograd sentenced a 23-year-old girl to 10 months of obligatory labor on April 5 after convicting her of “rehabilitating Nazism.” The cost stemmed from a 2023 social media video that prosecutors stated contained “cynical actions that disregarded the norms of morality and ethics.”
Within the video, Alyona Agafonova, a vacationer from the mid-Volga area metropolis of Samara, documented her go to to Volgograd and at one level, utilizing a trick of perspective, playfully “tickled” the breasts of the large statue that dominates the town’s memorial to the Battle of Stalingrad — in all probability probably the most outstanding icon of World Warfare II wherever in Russia. In courtroom, prosecutors stated she had “offended a logo of the resilience of the Soviet folks in the course of the Nice Patriotic Warfare.”
The top of the investigations division of the Volgograd department of the Investigative Committee, Vladimir Surkov, stated the case needs to be a warning to others.
“Anybody who desires to hype themselves in an analogous method ought to take into consideration this and never do it,” Surkov advised a neighborhood information web site.
Underneath longtime President Vladimir Putin, the state has used its draconian legal guidelines on “overseas brokers,” terrorism and extremism, and treason to stifle political dissent, efficiently marginalizing all opposition. However the 2014 regulation in opposition to “rehabilitating Nazism,” which incorporates punishments of as much as 5 years in jail, has been used for a distinct function, analysts say: To mildew an more and more militaristic society by sacralizing a mythologized model of the Soviet and ethnic-Russian contributions to the defeat of Nazi Germany — and, by extension, to bolster Putin’s false claims that Russia is confronting “Nazis” in Ukraine and the West.
The regulation overshadowed a 2001 regulation in opposition to disseminating Nazi symbols, which Aleksandr Verkhovsky of Sova, a Russian group that screens extremism, advised the BBC in 2023 was a real try and fight far-right hate teams.
Activist Aleksandr Cherkasov of the banned human rights group Memorial advised RFE/RL that beneath the “rehabilitating Nazism” regulation, repressions are being carried out within the title of “historic reminiscence, which has itself turn out to be a quasi-religion.”
‘How Many Extra Alyonas?’
Agafonova was convicted regardless of publishing a public apology in July 2023.
“I wish to sincerely apologize for my actions, which certainly not had been supposed to ridicule the historical past of my nation or the lives of those that fell for the sake of our future,” she wrote, noting that her grandfather had been killed in the course of the conflict. “I’m a patriot and I like my nation.”
She pleaded responsible in courtroom and apologized once more in her closing speech, arguing that the 13 months she spent in pretrial detention had been enough punishment. Along with the ten months of labor she was ordered to carry out at a job assigned to her by the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) in Samara, Agafonova should give 10 % of the wage she earns to the state, and he or she is barred from utilizing social media for 2 years.
Instantly after her video appeared, Agafonova was inundated with criticism and denunciations from self-professed patriots. The professional-Kremlin Telegram channel Talipov, which is run from the Russian-occupied Ukrainian area of Crimea by blogger Oleksandr Talipov, wrote that the incident illustrated “the issue with the patriotic schooling of our youths.”
“Can it actually be that no schoolteacher in Samara or nobody on the institute [she attended] was capable of inculcate in Alyona a way of respect for the glory of our grandfathers?” the channel wrote. “And what number of extra Alyonas are there in Russia?”
Sociologist Maria Turovets, who left Russia within the wake of Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, advised RFE/RL that the “rehabilitating Nazism” instances are a sop to “the energetic minority that welcomes them.”
“I are inclined to name them ‘the get together of fascism,'” she added. “The authorities are attempting to anticipate and accommodate this minority.”
The statue Agafonova was accused of insulting is named Motherland Is Calling, an 85-meter behemoth that dominates the Mumayev Kurgan memorial advanced to the Battle of Stalingrad on a web site the place some 35,000 Soviet victims of the battle, which marked the turning level of the conflict when German forces there surrendered in February 1943, are buried in mass graves. It was devoted in 1967.
‘At A Time Like This…’
Among the many dozens of “rehabilitating Nazism” instances which have been filed lately, only some appear to objectively match the definition. In February 2022, a St. Petersburg professor was tried beneath the cost for allegedly denying the Holocaust in his lectures. The identical yr, an adolescent within the Siberian metropolis of Irkutsk confronted the cost for allegedly writing quite a few social media posts lionizing the World Warfare II German army and the infamous SS.
In some instances, the cost was introduced in opposition to individuals who criticized Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s conduct of the conflict, notably the 1939 Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact.
Far more generally, the cost is used to prosecute actions that query Russia’s “army glory.” In February, authorities within the Altai area settlement of Staroaleiskoye filed felony costs of “rehabilitating Nazism” in opposition to two teenaged boys who allegedly constructed a snow phallus subsequent to a conflict memorial and posted pictures of it on social media.
Many different instances contain folks accused of “insulting” the black-and-orange St. George ribbon or the pro-government Z and V symbols which are used to indicate help for Putin’s conflict in opposition to Ukraine and confrontation with the West.
Actually, Cherkasov of Memorial stated, one impact of the applying of the regulation is to convey to such modern-day symbols a standing equal to the standing of the symbols of victory in World Warfare II that has been fastidiously cultivated by the Putin authorities since he got here to energy almost 25 years in the past.
Additionally in February, investigators opened a felony probe on the cost in opposition to Rasul Akhiyaretdinov, a Bashkir activist who wrote in a social media submit that the Motherland Is Calling statue just isn’t dressed modestly sufficient for Muslim and Orthodox Christian requirements as a result of her breasts are seen. He referred to as the presentation a “mistake of the Soviet Union” and urged that they “put a scarf on her shoulders.”
Like Agafonova, Akhiyaretdinov was savagely attacked by the so-called patriotic social media channels. Not like Agafonova’s, the investigation in opposition to him was closed after he publicly apologized.
“Trying via the reactions, I understood that for many individuals this statue is not only a statue however the Motherland,” he stated in a social media video. “As an individual who doesn’t need divisions and conflicts within the Russian Federation, I apologize to all veterans of World Warfare II and to those that did not perceive me accurately or had been offended by what I stated. Our nation goes via tough instances. The conflict in Ukraine and different issues. I believe that at a time like this I shouldn’t have posted such a video.”
Roman Zaitsev, a lawyer in Volgograd, stated the safety forces like such instances due to the publicity and media protection.
“Earlier there was a political subtext or protest exercise behind these instances, however now they’re opened only for the sake of statistics,” he stated. “Within the case of [Agafonova], it’s utterly unclear what she did to dishonor a burial place. You would possibly take into account her actions inappropriate, provocative, or silly, however it’s laborious to see them as felony.”
Yelizaveta Klochkova, of the OVD-Information group that screens political repressions, agreed, saying the elevated curiosity in such instances on the a part of regulation enforcement and “denouncers” “is in full accord with different basic traits together with the sacralization of World Warfare II, the propaganda use of symbols related to it, [and] the seek for supposed Nazis or their supporters at dwelling and overseas.”
“For safety brokers and denouncers, such instances are only a method of [meeting quotas] and attracting consideration to themselves for ‘exposing ideological crimes,'” Klochkova advised RFE/RL.
“There’s a second facet,” stated self-exiled Tatar political analyst Ruslan Aisin. “They should scare folks. The safety forces are all the time hungry.”
