Читать книгу The Russian Totalitarianism. Freedom here and now - Dmitrii Shusharin - Страница 9

Political analyst Igor Zhordan identifies the following stages in the formation of a new political system since September 2004 (the terrorist attack in Beslan) until March 2007 (Putin’s Munich speech)16:

• Reform of the electoral system, elimination of the minimum turnout threshold, prohibition of criticism of opponents, imitation of democratic institutions.

• Adoption of laws on extremism that equate criticism of power institutions and people in power with extremism and terrorism, as well as a law authorizing Russian special services to liquidate terrorists and extremists regardless of their whereabouts.

• The emergence of national projects, which were reduced to increasing the financing of a number of socially significant industries and the increase of corruption. Actual bribery of employees in the budgetary sphere.

• Creation of state corporations as a system of state control of branch industries with financial non-transparency of corporations themselves.

• Creation of private armed forces of Gazprom and Transneft as government power reserve.

• The almost unnoticed (neglectfully) expansion of the border zones, sometimes several times, as a result of which almost all oil and gas fields were directly controlled by the FSB. Entry into these zones requires special permission from the FSB.

In 2012, the Russian edition of Forbes published a detailed history of the Kremlin’s lawmaking activities, beginning in 2000, when a law was passed to change the principle of the formation of the Federation Council17. Systematically and methodically a new system of power had been built, isolating it from the population, which fully supported this division of labor. Consistently adopted laws changed the Russian political system: the judiciary, the party system, the electoral system, and the institution of the presidency. The laws passed after the publication of this review put an end to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, turned NGOs into foreign agents, minimized the participation of foreign capital in the media market.

The NGO law, adopted in the summer of 201218, obliged non-profit organizations engaged in political activities and receiving funding from abroad to register as foreign agents. Under financing, as shown by law enforcement, it means not only grants, but also foreign accounts of NGO founders. And the concept of “political activity” could be interpreted broadly and arbitrarily.

Sometimes they say that the siloviki isolate the country, that they are the only ones who can’t be called a foreign agents. The situation is different: we should talk about their monopoly on the status of foreign agents, on the control over the financial flows from abroad.

Such connection with the outside world – raising the status within the country, writing petitions, so that at least the notion of “political activity” is not interpreted broadly, humiliatingly and meaninglessly, it’s like trying to give an exhaustive definition of “counterrevolutionary activity” in the thirties, and to clarify the connotations of anti-Soviet agitation and “knowingly false fabrications” in the seventies.

Then, in the summer of 2012, amendments were made to the law on rallies, which significantly complicated the holding of mass actions19. The subsequent changes are introduced gradually, expanding government’s punitive possibilities.

According to the statistics of the judicial department under the Supreme Court, 525 persons were convicted in Russia in 2015 for crimes against the foundations of the constitutional system and state security under the main articles of chapter 29 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The articles include treason, espionage, divulgence of state secrets, armed insurgency, extremism and others. It should be noted that none of the defendants under the main articles of the chapter was acquitted. Trials were held in closed sessions. A significant number of convicted were senior citizens or people who simply sent their resume abroad, makes doubtful the authenticity of the charges against them20.

The main thing Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation remains the main instrument, which allows the authorities to persecute a person for any statement, even quoting someone’s words or images, including criticism of any government activity, even the lowest level of it. In the spring of 2016, the Center for Economic and Political Reform (CEPR) issued a report on the application of this article in the previous five years. During this time, the number of convicted persons has increased three-fold according to the statistics of the judicial department under the Supreme Court, from 137 to 414 people. First of all, the number of convicts under Part 1 of this article (the incitement of hatred or enmity committed with the use of the Internet) is growing. If in 2011 there were 82 such convicts, in 2015 the number has grown to 369.

Even more serious was the increase in the number of people convicted under articles 280 and 280—1 of the Criminal Code (public calls for extremist activity and separatism) from 12 to 69 people.

In 2015, also increased the number of those who were convicted under Part 2 of Art. 280 of the Criminal Code (the same actions using the media and the Internet). Only four such cases took place in 2014, and in 2015 there were already 19. Also last year, sentences under Article 280.1 (calls for separatism) were passed for the first time in connection with the Crimea annexation.

Increasingly, ordinary citizens fall under anti-extremist articles without much resonance in the media. According to the Sova information-analytical center, the number of people sentenced in recent years to real terms for “extremist” articles, not related to violence and ordinary crimes, has sharply increased. These are articles on offending the religious feelings, participating in extremist groups, calls for extremism and mass riots.

Sova counted up how many citizens were serving sentences under these articles in specific months. Their number is small, but has increased significantly in recent years.

As of December 2013, 20 people were behind bars for these crimes; as of January 2015, there were 29 people. By September 2015 the number has sharply increased to 54. During the same period, the number of people sentenced to deprivation of liberty under art. 280 went up from 6 to 11 people, from 15 to 25 under art. 282 and from 14 to 26 under art. 282.2.

The report presents social portraits of persons convicted under anti-extremist articles 275—284.1 of Chapter 29 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (crimes against the foundations of the constitutional order and state security). The data are also based on the statistics the Supreme Court’s judicial department.

In 2015, 525 people were convicted. 4.6% of them are women. More than half of those convicted are young people under 25; most of the remaining are 25—50 years.

About 19% of convicts had higher professional education, one third had secondary general or secondary vocational, another 14% basic general, 44% are people with no visible means of support. About 23% are workers, about 12% are students.

About 55% of crimes were committed in regional centers. At the time of the trial, 13% of the convicts had unexpunged and outstanding convictions. The share of crimes in the state of intoxication in the group is low, within 3%.

Experts identify several main groups of convicts under anti-extremist articles. First and foremost, these are nationalists, veterans of far-right movements. Another group is spontaneous/casual nationalists. They are not members of nationalist groups. Denounced for their extremist statements they are convicted of instigating racial and national hatred.

The third large group are religious extremists, mostly Islamists. Almost all of them are included in the “Hizbut-Tahrir al-Islami”, banned in Russia. Jehovah’s Witnesses, various non-traditional Christian offshoots, and even atheists also fall under category of religious extremist: in 2015, an Omsk student was sentenced under article 282 for a critical post about “Orthodox activists” who blocked the concert of Marilyn Manson. And, on the contrary, in April of this year a Kuban resident was fined for distributing literature asserting “inferiority of atheists”.

The fourth group, the pro-Ukrainian activists have been sent to prison since 2014 for their harsh statements in support of Ukraine and condemnation of the Russian authorities’ actions in the Crimea and the Donbas.

Among them, for example, Rafis Kashapov from Kazan, accused of calling for separatism in his texts such as “Crimea and Ukraine will be free from the invaders.” Yekaterinna Vologzheninova of Yekaterinburg, a single mother and a housewife, who used to work as a cashier earlier, was accused under part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code in inciting hatred and enmity against representatives of the authorities and “volunteers from Russia who are fighting on the side of Eastern Ukraine militiamen”. She was accused for republishing pro-Ukrainian materials in Russian VKontakte website (similar to Facebook) and sentenced to 320 hours of compulsory work and confiscation of her Notebook along with the mouse. Scandalously famous also the case of the Roofers (urban climbers who scale buildings), accused of hanging out the flag of Ukraine and overpainting the star on the spire on the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment high-rise. One of the roofers was convicted of hatred-motivated vandalism.

After the Crimea seizure, special attention is paid to the issues of the territorial integrity of the country. Now the opposition leaders of the Crimean-Tatar Majlis fall under anti-separatist articles.

In November 2015 in Petrozavodsk under Part 1 of Article 280.1 of the Criminal Code (calls for violating the territorial integrity of Russia) the deputy of Karelian Suojärvi Town Council Vladimir Zavarkin was sentenced to a fine of 30 thousand rubles. At a meeting for the resignation of the governor in May 2015, he jokingly offered to hold a referendum on the secession of the region, unless Moscow hears out the opposition arguments.

And in the summer of 2015 in Chelyabinsk, a criminal case was initiated under Part 1 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (calls for separatism via the Internet) against Alexei Moroshkin, the administrator of the VKontakte group. He posted the slogans “Support the embattled Ukraine! Free Urals! Together against evil!”. The former volunteer of the Donbas battalion “Vostok” advocated the separation of the Urals from Russia and the creation of a Siberian federation. As a result of the proceedings, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Another well-known “separatist affair” happened in the summer of 2015, when three Kaliningradians were accused of hanging a German flag over the FSB building.

The Russian concept of “extremism” does not have an unambiguous interpretation, which could be accepted at the international level. The PACE Resolution of 2003 defines extremism as

“a form of political activity that explicitly or surreptitiously denies the principles of parliamentary democracy and is based on the ideology and practice of intolerance, alienation, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and ultranationalism.”

The authors of the report note that at the heart of the Russian interpretation of extremism, the emphasis is on change of the political regime. Russia signed the “Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism”, in which extremism is understood as an act “aimed at forcible seizure of power.” This convention is also signed by Kazakhstan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

In recent years, the siloviki (law enforcement and security officials) have been increasingly monitoring the repots in social networks. The administrative part of the anti-extremist legislation is now regularly applied against publications and outposts in social networks (mainly in “VKontakte”). Siloviki are looking for texts, videos and audio recordings found on the pages of social networks, corresponding to art. 20.29 of the CoAO (Code of Administrative Offenses) (production and distribution of extremist materials). They base their judgment on the federal list of extremist materials.

In the case of article 20.3 of the CoAO, extremist material is anything that fits the definition of “Nazi symbols” or is similar to it “to the degree of confusion”. What is meant by the degree of confusion, is a subject to court decision. In practice, for example, Celtic crosses can fall into this grey area of the Nazi symbolism.

Usually the verdict under these articles is a fine of one to two thousand rubles or a few days of administrative arrest. However, the blocking of accounts by Rosfinmonitoring can be applied with much more damaging effect.

At the same time, the extremism label can often be applied to, for example, the antifascist material. In September 2015, the anti-fascist Julia Usach was found guilty for the post of the Kukryniksy cartoon and a photo from the 1945 Victory Day parade. The representative of the prosecution, according to her, promised “if necessary, we will bring them (Kukryniksy) into this office for questioning”

In April 2015 an activist of the Young Guard of United Russia Maria Burdukovskaya was sentenced to a fine for the use of Grammar Nazi symbols. In March of the same year the journalist Polina Danilevich from Smolensk was fined 1000 rubles for comparing the photo of her apartment building courtyard with a photo of the same place during the German occupation. The siloviki found there a swastika.

In September 2014, a Perm resident Eugenia Vyshigina was fined for having been tagged by one of her VKontakte “friends” in the video with “seaside partisans”. The “E” Center accused her of not rejecting, but confirming the mark on herself in this video. In May 2014 Dmitry Semyonov, a Chuvash activist of PARNAS (Party of People’s Freedom) was found guilty for reposting photographs showing the former “People’s Mayor” of Donetsk Pavel Gubarev in the uniform of the banned “Russian National Unity”, member of which he really was. The same Dmitry Semyonov was sentenced to a fine in September 2015 for having shared an interview Matvei Ganapolsky in VKontakte. The charge was based on the fact that his repost was automatically loaded with an image of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in his papakha fur hat with the inscription “Death to the Russian viper.”

Under the notion of extremism because of he vague formulation of extremism laws and the lack of clear-cut interpretation of the term makes it easy to label any opposition activity of all possible ideological orientations as extremist and be prosecuted as such. People convicted on “extremist” articles cannot participate in elections, and restricted in organizing rallies.

Such cases indicate several tendencies. First, until recently, the sentences handed down to nationalists were against little-known people. Secondly, most recent sentences against members of Islamist groups have been imposed not for participation in banned organizations, but for heavier articles such as preparing a coup, participating in terrorist activities, etc. The share of sentences on anti-extremist legislation based on Internet evidence has recently risen to 90%21.

To some experts, the persecution of relatively obscure individuals living far from Moscow and St. Petersburg suggest selective randomness in choosing victims. This conclusion seems highly inaccurate. The repressions have their own logic, which is especially noticeable in the persecution of protesters over the results of the 2011 State Duma election, primarily in Bolotnaya Square rally. The authorities demonstrated a firm consistency in the prosecution of those who were seen in rallies and demonstrations. At the same time, repression had one important characteristic. All of the leaders of protest actions, that is, persons from the opposition elite, came out unscathed. It is the ordinary participants who are tracked, caught and sentenced (the present tense is appropriate here). The government spares the opposition elite, feeling comfortable with them; it helps in preventing their renewal and preserving their monopoly on opposition.

All these repressions have an institutional nature. However, totalitarianism in the making also needs the most active use of extra-institutional violence, which was a subject of to the second CEPR report, made public in the summer of 2016.

Assaults on activists who disagreed with the authorities became a characteristic feature of Russian political life after Crimea annexation into the Russian Federation. The center’s experts collected a database of 238 cases of aggression against oppositionists and public figures. The database covers the last four years and analyzes data from the media and other open sources. Conditionally, the term “oppositionists” applies to an extremely wide range of people dissatisfied with the actions of the authorities: from unsystematic politicians participating in elections to environmentalists or urban activists trying to save the children’s playground. According to these data, in 2012 there were 35 cases of attacks on the opposition in various forms, 38 cases in 2013, 60 in 2014 and 50 cases in 2015. In addition, 55 cases were recorded in the first half of 2016.

The authors of the report recorded thematic periods of aggression related to the socio-political agenda. In other words, for each wave of activity of oppositional-minded citizens, there appeared their own pro-governmental or patriotic social movements ready to respond to it with violence. In 2012, many attacks were aimed against those dissatisfied over conviction of Pussy Riot, a group who performed a “punk prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Those who expressed support for the LGBT community in connection with the adoption of the homophobic law banning the promotion of homosexuality were attacked in 2013 by the Orthodox activists.

The authors of the CEPR study attributed the increase in the number of attacks on oppositionists in 2014 to the aggravation of the domestic political situation amid the events in Ukraine and protests in this regard.

It was the time when the organizations that support “Novorossia” with their anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western rhetoric became more active. Finally, during the entire period under review, outbreaks of aggression, especially in the regions, were observed during election campaigns.

Many cases of violence are associated with specific political actions. Among them was a series of attacks on activists in the framework of the Peace March against the Russian policy towards Ukraine in the spring and autumn of 2014. Similar bursts of violence occurred on the eve of the anti-crisis “Spring” march in February 2015, amidst the commemorative actions in 2015 and 2016 with reference to Boris Nemtsov assassination, as well as the anniversary of the May 6 Bolotnaya Square protest rally.

Approximately 25% of attacks are related to the electoral process. In the period of election campaigns there are attacks on candidates, observers, agitators, campaign headquarters, as well as participants in the pre-election meetings. For example, in September 2015, an attack was carried out on the Communist party candidate for the governors of the Irkutsk region Sergei Levchenko and Olga Antyukhina, the Just Russia candidate for deputies of the Kaluga legislative assembly. In November 2014 unknown people beat up Arkady Chaplygin, the leader of the Progress Party St. Petersburg branch.

Another 25% of attacks are associated with specific problems of the local agenda. Most often, these are incidents involving environmental or urban preservation initiatives. Journalists are attacked over their local anti-corruption investigations.

In 2012—2015, only 5—10% of attacks were committed against oppositionists and public figures with a federal level of prominence. In 2016, this share rose to almost 20%. The authors of the CEPR report attribute this to the activities of Alexei Navalny and Mikhail Kasyanov, who announced the nomination of the Democratic Alliance to the State Duma.

Nevertheless, until now most of the attacks have been carried out against ordinary protesters, candidates for elections, members of the party and regional movements, urban preservationists, human rights defenders, environmentalists, etc. Representatives of systemic opposition parties are attacked mostly only in connection with the elections.

Another 15% of incidents are attacks on journalists, with the largest share of such cases recorded in 2014. So, in May 2016, Oleg Kunitsyn, deputy editor of Vologda newspaper Minuta Istiny was wounded with a pistol shot by unknown assailants. In March 2016 in Kaliningrad, Igor Rudnikov, the editor of Noviye Kolesa and the deputy of the Duma was assaulted by unknown people with knives.

In approximately 80% of the cases the attackers are unidentified persons or people without a clear connection with a particular agency. Much of the attacks (especially violent ones) are carried out by unknown persons in building entrances or on the street near the victim’s house. In such cases, one can only make assumptions about political motives and the mastermind. Sometimes employees of private security companies involved in the attacks (about 5—6% of cases for the period under investigation). These people usually attack environmental or urban preservation activists, if their protests affect someone’s commercial interests.

However, in recent years, the percentage of attacks on oppositionists by activists openly acting on behalf of their organizations has been growing. Since 2012, this share has almost doubled, to 22% in 2016.

These organizations represent different kind of “protective” movements of diehard conservatives. The CEPR report mentions National Liberation Movement, Yevgeny Fedorov, the United Russia deputy, Cossack associations, Orthodox organizations (Union of Orthodox Citizens, People’s Council, Sorok Sorokov), and the SERB organization.

CEPR experts note that the era of confrontation between Nashi (“Our Guys”) movement or similar pro-Kremlin youth organizations and the opposition is a thing of the past. Nashi was replaced by new organizations: less centralized, not so obviously connected with the authorities, but acting with its tacit approval. The pro-government attackers “Nascists” (in the oppositionists’ lingo) have been replaced with Nodovtsy (National Liberation Movement) and the “anti-Maidan” crowd.

According to the CEPR report, almost two-thirds of cases of violence against the opposition are carried out by direct physical impact. Attackers often use weapons that not only can cause severe damage to health, but also kill: knives, brass knuckles, clubs, iron bars, pipes, etc. Sometimes they resort to firearms and traumatic weapons.

In addition to the murder of Boris Nemtsov in 2012—2016, there were several more attacks on the opposition with letal outcome.

Igor Sapatov, who fought against abuse of protected environmental zones, was shot dead in July 2013 in the Kamsk-Ustinsky district of Tatarstan. In November 2013, in Nizhny Novgorod, the oppositionist Nikolai Savinov was beaten to death. On February 9, 2012, the anti-fascist Nikita Kalin, a member of the Fair Elections movement, was killed in Samara.

Victims of violence are often seriously injured. For example, in April 2015, during the elections in Balashikha, Stanislav Pozdnyakov and Dmitry Nesterov the Golos (Russian word both for Vote and Voice) observers were beaten by eight unknown persons. The attack occurred after the ballot stuffing was found out by the observers. Folowing the attack, Pozdnyakov had his spleen surgically removed. In June 2015, in Magadan, unidentified men attacked Navalny’s supporter Dmitri Taralov and knocked his teeth out. Approximately 10—15% of cases of attack entail damage and destruction of property: burned cars, broken windows, etc. Another 20% of cases are associated with intimidation, insults, and lesser physical effects.

About 35% of all recorded attacks on the opposition occurred in Moscow or St. Petersburg, the rest in the regions. In St. Petersburg, two peaks of violence were identified: in 2014 and 2016. In 2014 it was due to the election and aggravated situation in Ukraine; and in 2016 following the publication of a blacklist of Whoiswho social network users.

Since most of the attacks are carried out by unknown persons and outside of public places, the police cannot prevent these incidents for objective reasons. However, when an attack occurs in public places or directly under police supervision (for example, in protest actions), law enforcement officers often turn a blind eye to the actions of obvious provocateurs.

CEPR experts note that often in the event of conflicts at public events, the police detain representatives of both sides of the conflict. And sometimes, as a result, the attackers who provoked the conflict are quickly released, but it is the victims of the attack who are accused of wrongdoing.

As noted in the CEPR report, cases of attacks on oppositionists are usually qualified as hooliganism or as violence with no specific motive of hatred, even when the facts indicate it. In most cases, if the legal proceedings are initiated, the investigation is delayed, and the responsibility for the attack shifted entirely on the executors, but not the organizers.

When prosecuting oppositionists themselves, investigators, in their turn, often bring cases under extremist articles, even in controversial circumstances. As a result, the extremist articles work in a one-way fashion22.

The build-up of institutional and extra-institutional repressions is a consequence of planned, systematic and thought-out lawmaking, comparable to Hitler’s. Hitler swiftly passed laws on racial purity, Putin has been forming a system of laws securing inviolability and irremovability of power gradually and deliberately. Nuremberg’s laws isolated part of the population from politics on the basis of race. Putin’s laws isolate the entire population denying it all participation in power. This is akin racism, but racism applied socially and indiscriminately. Like Hitler’s policy, the new order is being established in the name of the nation. As a direct appeal to the masses, the new totalitarian movement is established: the All-Russian People’s Front, designed to gradually replace the party system.

The crude interpretation of totalitarianism comes down to the total control of the state over all aspects of society. However, it is the state in its positive meaning that suffers losses. The state submits itself to a complete deterioration of its most important functions, as can be seen in today’s Russia. Totalitarianism is not the nationalization of all aspects of life, but the destruction of a democratic, new European state. Here are the Russian examples of this phenomenon:

Cheka/KGB and the successors have always been and remain both a punitive and myth-generating bodies. The organization is busy inventing and manufacturing monsters, foes, and demons for their demonstrative punishment.

The army is the mechanism of initiation, leveling of the individual and an institution of forced labor. This refers to the conscription part of the army. But the hired troops leading a hybrid war are difficult to call an army. The so-called “polite people” are fighting without documents and insignia, and when captured, they declare themselves retirees. And the decorated ones who wear epaulettes, are fighting for the irremovability and solid permanence of the people in power who made the state their property.

Education is designed to prevent the development of educated people. In the past, similarly worked the campaign of the elimination of illiteracy in conditions of total censorship.

Health care is always ready to rid society of populations deemed to be a burden, which is what is happening now. A detailed and temporarily deferred draft law on euthanasia was ready in 200723.

It goes without saying that the courts are subservient tools. Previously they worked to replenish the number of slaves. Now they help in asset-grabbing and political terror.

Penitentiary system is the habitat and breeding ground for replenishment of the underworld. It is used to be the economic commissariat and now one of the state corporations.

You can go on down the list. But the main thing here is the one formulated by Hannah Arendt: the state is destroyed by totalitarianism as a representative of the interests of all social groups. “All” is the key word here.

And it happens on the basis of consensus, I would add. This consensus leads to the conclusion that it is impossible to reduce totalitarianism to a single act of demolition. Demolition is the mopping-up of the construction site. Then a new structure is to be built. Not lack of culture, but a different culture, not immorality, but a new morality. Not lack of spirituality, but a new spirituality.

Which means that to expect a stagnation of Putinism is a great misconception. It’s an exact opposite phenomenon. Putin does not return the country to Brezhnev era, that is, to a developed totalitarianism, but to Stalin time, to an early and very dynamic stage of totalitarianism.

Stagnation means only where development is prohibited or stalled itself. In all other respects constant changes and innovations are happening: in the legislation, property redistribution, personnel policy. After all, the Gorbachev coined term “stagnation” is not really adequate definition. Under Brezhnev, there was social development, which gave rise to perestroika. And it is precisely this development that Putin, like Stalin, will not allow.

The Russian public has one dream that cannot come true. Some people admit, and some do not, that most would like to live in glorious Brezhnev times. But this is hardly possible.

Brezhnev’s stability and prosperity is the GULAG transfigured. Nobody was going to create Belle époque on the basis of petrodollars. There is no economic and, what is more important, social base for the new belle époque. Those social strata that have formed over the past thirty years are subject to elimination, if not physical, but in all other aspects of their social existence, proprietary, morally, and legally. Belle Époque is for the new generations.

The Brezhnev era is exactly the opposite of Stalin’s, it was Khrushchev’s continuation. Contrary to the common point of view, it was Brezhnev who carried out de-Stalinization, allowing horizontal ties within the elite. He became head of the party exactly due to a horizontal conspiracy, not a palace coup. Without a hundred of benevolent governors, known then as Obkom (regional) secretaries, he would not be allowed to take the reigns. And the growth of interest and sympathy to Stalin by the end of Brezhnev’s rule was already a search for an alternative.

Slowly and gradually it is becoming clear that what is happening in Russia requires deciphering, that the logic of the civilized world is impossible to apply to this country, that there is a certain mechanism of goings-on there that needs to be identified.

The most important thing is understanding that the only goal of all actions of the Russian ruling elite is the securing of their lifelong irremovability in power. Part of this is Putin’s projected lifetime presidency, possibly combined with the rotation of people in the elite. Or Putin’s replacement with a more acceptable figure. There are many different options, but all within the framework of one political culture.

This goal must be achieved at all costs. No economic, political, humanitarian catastrophes can stop the government in this determination.

Games around the appointment/election of governors, elections based on party list or partial withdrawal from them, the emergence of a “tandemocracy” that wipes out the institution of the presidency, the revision of the Constitution for the extension of the presidential term and its direct violation by the law restricting the jurisdiction of the jury, as well as broadening the notion of “high treason” – all this and many other significant alterations did not cause any reactions of the society.

These developments definitely look like signs of an institutional crisis. Observing them and their evaluation, one can judge about the legal self-identification of the authorities. In the public-law dimension, these actions reduce their legitimacy. But in an archaic way of thinking it looks like reinforcement. Similarly absurd is the reaction to any manifestations of independence in public and cultural life, campaigns against corruption, ban on the adoption of Russian orphans by Americans, then legal harassment of NGOs or homosexuals, the historians and even smokers.

The destruction of civilized statehood shows the way into the stage of the formation of a totalitarian quasi-state entity, in which, like in Soviet times, the concept of “crisis” becomes quite different. In order for the crisis to become visible, serious changes are needed in the established power balance, redistribution of spheres of influence, significant personal changes in power.

Any public manifestation of the crisis, even mass unemployment, inflation and hunger, is not considered a crisis in this political system. Moreover, all these phenomena can be provoked and even organized by the authorities themselves for the purpose of their own strengthening, tightening, and also in connection with the principles of intraspecific competition.

It is useless to project the methods of crisis description and analysis applicable to developed countries to the current Russia. Market mechanisms are probably similar, and even identical, but the actors in Russia are quite different.

The notion that terrorism is one of the destabilizing factors of the crisis is highly inaccurate. Major acts of terrorism coincide with the stages of the formation of Putin’s political system formation. The authorities, which have demonstrated their purposefulness and ability to complex multi-stage combinations in the Yukos affair, in the cancellation of the gubernatorial elections and party-parliamentary reform, in carrying out the policy of destabilization in neighboring states, when using force against them, have not done anything to protect peaceful citizens from terror. Moreover, sometimes these citizens do not know who is causing them greater harm – terrorists or anti-terrorist actions. Such perplexity is felt by many residents of Chechnya, Ingushetia, other North Caucasian republics, victims of “Nord-Ost” and Beslan.

And the question arises whether the government cannot suppress terrorism or does not want to do it. In any case, one must admit that the main difference between the present Russian state and the model that it pretends to conform to is that terrorism in modern Russia is part of the political system, and not directed against it. It is systemic, not anti-systemic.

There is an extreme point of view, which is concisely formulated in the title of the well-known book “The FSB is blowing up Russia.” This, of course, is one of the equally plausible versions, indirectly confirmed by the absolute mortality of those who were related to this issue. And also by the prohibitory injunction on this book in Russia as extremist. It is appropriate to recall that the symbiosis of terrorism and security services has a tradition in Russia, traced back to at least to the time of Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) movement. The eventual merger of terrorists and security forces occurred under totalitarian Cheka/KGB and GRU. But the very existence of such a version is also in a certain sense useful to the authorities. Their opponents and denunciators can’t recognize, that any demonization of the current government plays into its hands and adds more intimidating ammunition to it.

I do not claim that terrorist attacks are pleasant to them, but it is beyond doubt that the government benefits from them. The material accumulated since the nineties, allows us to draw a conclusion that terrorism is the most important means of legitimizing power. The post-Beslan reforms had nothing to do with the fight against terrorism, but the terrorist attack created the necessary information background. The authorities take full advantage from everything that increases fear in society; fear in general, any kind, regardless of its source.

The final session of the State Duma in the summer of 2016 was marked by the adoption of laws, in which the fear of terrorism is manifestly used to strengthen the repressive component of the regime. The case in point is “the antiterrorist draft of legislation”, introduced by representative Irina Yarovaya and Senator Viktor Ozerov. It involves dozens of Russian laws, bringing changes that will have the most serious impact on Russian population.

As of July 20, 2016 non-reporting of a crime became a criminal offense. Under the threat of imprisonment for up to one year, people will have to report to the authorities the suspected preparation of a terrorist attack, armed insurrection and some other kinds of offences against the law, the list has more than a dozen entries.

Appeals to terrorism and its justification on the Internet were equated with similar statements made in the mass media. Responsibility for such statements has become tougher: citizens will be held responsible according to the same norms as the media. The maximum penalty is seven years of imprisonment.

Now the mobile communication providers are required to store all call records and any messages exchanged by users within six months. Within three years they must store meta-data, that is, not the very content of conversations and correspondence, but information that such a conversation or such an exchange of SMS messages took place on such and such a date at such and such an hour. This also applies to “organizers of the dissemination of information on the Internet”.

Another important amendment is applied to “the organizers of the dissemination of information”: if an Internet service – an instant messenger, a social network, a mail client or just a website – supports encryption of data, the providers are under the obligation to help the FSB decrypt any message that the security forces need. A penalty is imposed for refusal; for legal entities it is from 800 thousand to one million rubles.

The document gives an extremely broad definition of “missionary activity”, which only registered organizations and groups allowed to be engaged. In this respect, any missionary activity outside the specially designated premises is prohibited. Violations are subject to a fine of one million rubles. The law began to be applied immediately to non-Orthodox Christians, who are fined for sharing the Bible in private apartments. There is no freedom of conscience in Russia anymore24.

The “antiterrorism package” contains amendments that increase the punishment for what is called extremism. Fines and terms of imprisonment are raised. In some cases, the changes are very significant. For example, the funding of extremist activities (282.3 CC), the maximum prison term is raised from three to eight years.

A new item in the Criminal Code article on mass disorders reads that “inducement, recruitment or other involvement in terrorist organization” is punishable by imprisonment of five to ten years.

For some crimes in Russia the age of 14 has been established for criminal responsibility. “Yarovaya package” increases the list of such crimes to 32 (before it was 22). Among other things, it includes participation in terrorist communities and in riots, as well as failure to report a crime.

A new article on international terrorism is added to the Criminal Code. Committing or threatening to commit acts of terrorism outside of Russia, in which Russian citizens were killed or injured is now liable to prosecution. This article imposes life imprisonment as a maximum punishment.

Now the Russian Post and private postal companies should check the parcels for anything illegal, for example, weapons, drugs or money. Responsibility for this is entrusted to the postal operators. In Russia, the correspondence privacy is eliminated.

Two unconstitutional amendments failed to pass. Before the second reading, the deputies rejected the idea of stripping the citizenship of people who committed terrorist acts or extremist crimes, as well as those who cooperate with international organizations. In the first version of the draft law, it was proposed to ban the exit from Russia to people who received a warning from the FSB or the prosecutor’s office about the inadmissibility of committing illegal actions, which is a motion out of court. As a result, the parliamentarians decided to abandon this rule altogether25.

This last detail is very revealing. If deprivation of citizenship can hardly be considered a serious punishment, the ban on going abroad would affect the way of life of a significant number of government critics. It is not by chance that this proposal was given much attention in social networks, where it was regarded as a blow to the “most advanced part of society”. It was also a distraction from the fact that these amendments were going to strike the whole IT industry, leading to a significant increase in prices for cellular and other types of communications26. We are dealing here not only with expanding the repressive powers of the authorities, but also with the damaging impact on social cohesion, on further atomization of society’s everyday life. This development creates obstacles to joint social activities and encumbers ordinary communications between individuals. Clearly obvious that the authorities, which have mastered modern IT technologies, obstruct their further advancement. However, it is more accurate to speak not of slowing down the development of information technologies, but of hindering their social spread and utilization. The law has its own beneficiaries – the producers of equipment for eavesdropping and storing information. In this respect, experts directly point to the head of Rostekh Sergei Chemezov, one of Putin’s inner circle figures27.

While part of the society, which calls itself advanced, discussed the prospects of ban on going abroad, a law was quietly adopted, which not only subjected the entire society under police surveillance, but also amalgamated the power and society under unifying police control, essentially introducing the principle of citizen’s loyalty as a condition of safety at the discretion of not only the state, but also the members of society. This is the law “On the Basics of the Prevention of Law Offenses in Russia”28. It introduces the concept of “antisocial behavior”, which is defined as” the actions of a physical person, not liable to the administrative or criminal responsibility, but violating the generally accepted norms of conduct and morality, the rights and lawful interests of others.” Therefore, there is a category of actions identified as “violating the generally accepted norms of behavior and morality.” The new law gives the right to employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to collect data on citizens who were not previously held liable for any offence. And it opens wide opportunities for the public to cooperate with the police in this matter. Morality and law merge into a single system of control of power and society over individuals. And we should add to this the law that allows banks, that is, private institutions, to collect debts using the Federal Bailiff Service as their enforcement, without a court decision29. The situation is unthinkable in a civilized state: imagine US federal marshals acting without a court decision upon request of some bank. But such a breakdown of institutional relations is normal for a totalitarian structure. As well as the fact that the Russian federal marshals are being assigned to the collection business. Similarly, the same thing happened with the newly created Russian Guard directly subordinated to the president, formed on the basis of Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Taking over the security business of the ministry the Russian Guard was vested with a wide mandate30.

The Ministry of the Interior is all but destroyed. Long before its economic (including shadow) and power components were taken away. Currently it is reduced to FSIN (Federal Service for Execution of Punishment). The creation of the Russian Guard took away from the Ministry of Internal Affairs its security business – both legal and protection of private security firms, and not only PSFs, the ministry lost all its more power resources; the SOBR (Rapid Deployment Force) is no more, gone are the OMON (Special Designation Police Detachment) and Internal Military force. All these developments show not only an intraspecific competition, but also a new place for the police in the emerging socio-political structure: an executive department, designed to protect the population, is deliberately weakened and humiliated; public security of the citizenry becomes a matter of low priority.

Summing up the results of lawmaking during Putin’s reign, one must admit that it has a totalitarian character, destroys the state-society dichotomy, replacing it with the unity of power and society. First, there was isolation of society from power, denying it the participation in decision-making, and then, on the contrary, the society began to get recruited in a controllable governance process – from participation in extra-institutional violence to the collaboration with punitive institutions.

It is ridiculoIus to condemn Absurdistan for absurdity. Criminal cases against physicists, bloggers, ordinary people, suddenly caught up in politics, are built on the principle that the more absurd the better. Wood carvers were fined for an element resembling the swastika, a motive normally found in ancient folk ornaments31. Roskomnadzor (Federal Supervision Agency for Information Technologies and Communications) blocked the retelling of the 1837 satirical publication “How to take bribes correctly” on the educational site32. The purpose of all this is to let people know that they are not subject of prosecution for something they have done, but because of the authorities’ innate necessity to prosecute, and they will do that for sure – who cares about justifications! This is not an absurdist play, but a criminal and mean method of management. Therefore, it is incorrect to characterize what is happening as absurdity, stupidity and idiocy. This is just plain evil, crime and meanness. And you must call things by their proper name: evil is evil, a crime is a crime and meanness is nothing but mean.