Arkhangelsk student Olesya Krivstova faces five years for sharing anti-war posts. The lawyer: “She’s not even an activist.” There is a hunt for “traitors” in the universities. Woe to those who don’t conform. While the political processes multiply. And the atmosphere is reminiscent of fascist Italy.
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They had a good discussion in a history department chat. Then they decided: better to report Olesya directly to the FSB, the security service heir to the Soviet KGBnot just the police. “Denunciation is a duty for a patriot” one of the guys wrote in the chat to dispel any doubts about the morality of the initiative. Marcello Clerici, fascist spy and philosophy professor, protagonist of the novel and film The Conformist, would have appreciated it.
conformists and informers
Olesya Krivtsova, 19 years olda student at the Federal Arctic University (Narfu) School of Social Sciences in Arkhangelsk, northern Russia, is now under house arrest with a total ban on communications. She has been accused of “denigrating the armed forces” and “justifying terrorism” for some post-pacifists and for sharing an article about the attack on the Kerch Bridge in Crimea. On February 13, the court will decide whether to extend the sentence and whether he should serve it in prison. He risks three to five years for the first load alone. The case shows how risky it is becoming, even indirectly, to express criticism of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. It also shows how ideology and conformism permeate schools and universities. And how much Vladimir Putin’s country now resembles – in some respects – the Italy of the late 1930s described by Moravia’s pen and Bertolucci’s camera.
Greetings from Wagner
“The nice thing is that Olesya is not even an activist,” her lawyer Alexei Kychin told Fanpage.it: “She is just a normal student who is not indifferent to the war situation. But he was never in politics.” However, when the complaint was received, the FSB did not hesitate. The young woman’s apartment was broken into with hammer blows: “Greetings from our Wagner friends,” the “chekists” shouted after they smashed the door and pushed the “suspect” to the ground. The reference refers to the method Wagner’s mercenaries used to massacre the “traitors”: namely with hammer blows. “The agents were extremely tough and my client was under great psychological pressure” , explains lawyer Kichin, referring to Olesya’s story. “The situation for those affected by such allegations is becoming more and more difficult, and the lawsuits for crimes of opinion are increasing,” Kichin notes. According to the organization Ovd, we are between ongoing lawsuits and judgments that have already been passed -Info monitoring the persecution of dissidents in Russia at a height of 400.
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tears and anger
In court, the girl cried when the prosecutor asked for a prison sentence. His lawyer has managed to avoid this for the time being. But a fine she received in the past for publishing a leaflet about Ukraine’s heroic role in the war against Hitler could end up costing her dearly. “Until recently, everything could have been clarified with another administrative procedure,” explains the lawyer. “Not any longer. Repressive rules have increased and tightened. A new article of the Criminal Code (280.3, ed) provides for severe penalties in case of repeated discrediting of the Russian armed forces. Paradoxically, a monument in the Alexander Gardens under the Kremlin walls reminds all Russians of Kiev’s heroism against Nazism in World War II. Just like Olesya’s leaflet. But the reality in Russia is never one-sided. Today, “discrediting the military” simply means saying something different than the official Kremlin story. And according to the official version, Ukraine is Nazism. Who cares about the memorial “They just told untruths,” the defendant commented at the end of the trial We don’t know if he was just referring to his trial or if he was speaking more generally about the government’s narrative of the ongoing conflict and history .
Aggressive conformists
Undoubtedly, anger at injustice turned tears into courage. Olesya wiped her eyes and denied the allegations in the courtroom. She unmasked a classmate who said she threatened her and another who she claimed fled Russia, the lawyer says. But even if the match is not closed and she has won a few rounds, everything is against her. Among them the “traitor hunter” Timur Bulatov: famous for studying social networks to denounce “enemies of the people”. – or those who dare to deviate from the Kremlin line – in the past he arrested LGBT activist Yulia Tsvetkova and accused other people. Now, on his Vkontakte page, Russian Facebook, he boasts of the “merit” of having also denounced Olesya Krivtsova long before his diligent classmates. Neither the lawyer Kychin nor the Interior Ministry contacted by the news site 29.Ru have confirmed the fact. Bulatov is an “aggressive conformist,” is how political scientist Andrei Kolesnikov defines a type of society that is becoming increasingly widespread in Russia. They are the regime’s fundamentalists, who need no input from above to crack down on those they deem unworthy, and often do more damage than the authorities themselves can do. These are people who took very seriously Putin’s call to “spit out traitors like gnats in your mouth” some twenty days after the invasion of Ukraine.
university ideology
If Bulatov could only be a show-off in this affair, the trial documents surely contain a report from the director of Olesya’s university course, Ayrtom Makulin. “Very negative towards my client,” reports Kychin. Makulin was recently expelled from the university Darya Poryadina, a journalist with the independent newspaper Sota who specializes in documenting the anti-Putin protests. Last March, he spoke at the “Patriotism, Law and Order” conference organized by the presidential United Russia party to “consolidate the healthy forces of society in the face of threats from the West.” In short, it’s clear which side he’s on. On the other hand, in the race to give Russia a “special operation” ideology, the regime has by no means forgotten the university: a compulsory course has recently been introduced for all students of all faculties, the history lesson in Putin’s “patriotic” reinterpretation, others on traditional spiritual and moral values and a section on “Russia and the World” to justify isolationism and opposition to the West. The vision tends to mobilize society in support of the sovereign, delegitimizing anyone who does not conform to the national idea and the values it proposes. These have become Putin’s universities. It is not surprising that in the classrooms the climate around “not indifferent” people like Olesya becomes gloomy.
Putin’s “Balillas”.
The university ideology course was approved a few months ago. Indoctrination used to stop in schools. With a strong acceleration that took place last May, following the national forum entitled “Syla b pravde” or “The power lies in truth”: a joke known to all in Russia and taken from the cult film “Brat 2” comes from the idealized eternal struggle between “just us” and “the hostile West”. But power in Russia is not in truth. It’s in the propaganda. And as decided in the forum, this school year, starting in elementary school, classes begin every Monday with the national anthem sung in choir and the flag hoisted. Homeland history lessons, revised and corrected by the Kremlin, will be added to the usual subjects. Military training courses will also be phased in over the coming months, Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov told TASS. The modules should be fully functional from September next year. Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov would like 140 hours for 15 to 17 year olds. So Vladimir Putin will have his “Balilla”. Which serve little for wars but much for the indoctrination of society. They serve to increase the number of conformists. And then the denunciations. And trouble for Olesya Krivtsova and many others. People will denounce “traitors” because they learned in school that this is normal. Because our Marcello Clerici was also driven by the desire for normality in his actions. Then one day the regime will fall. Even in Russia. Olesya and the others will be safe. And like Marcello Clerici at the end of the film, today’s more or less aggressive conformists will screamingly attribute to others the atrocities they have committed themselves. I wonder if Russians and the world will believe him.