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By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Memorial Society of Russia, which was declared a "foreign agent" and liquidated by the authorities, is continuing their long-standing annual tradition, "Return of the Names," where they read out the names of Stalin's victims. Originally, they started just with the 30,000 in Moscow alone they could document; there are tens of millions and they continue to add to the list, even as the generation dies out and archives are now closed.
This public witness marks the weekend of "Day of Rembrance of Political Prisoners," a tradition actually begun on October 30, 1974 by Kronid Lubarsky, astronomer and other political prisoners in the Soviet-era labour camps, who made a list of demands, including commemoration of the day.
The date was the day of Kronid''s sentencing and not specifically because it is close to Western Christianity's Halloween (October 31), All Saints' Day (November 1) or All Souls' Day (as I once naively thought myself). Russian Orthodoxy does not celebrate All Souls' Day; All Saints' Day is at a different time of year. Perhaps that is understandable given that Orthodoxy stresses the continual presence of both the living and the dead in the Body of Christ, but I'm not an expert. Even so, the "Festival of the Dead" following the end of the harvest is celebrated in many world cultures.
In Russia, the grim reaper scythes through those active enough to protest the regime, stand up for others, or simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Remember when the woman arrested gave her occupation as traktorist (tractor driver) in Russian, and some official thought she said Trotskist or "Trotskyite".
The post-coup Russian government formalized the holiday, causing the concept to shift, as former prisoner of conscience Aleksandr Podrabinek explains.although for some reason he leaves out Kronid's role, which is well documented).
The live coverage is from different cities in Russia.
By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Reuters and other major news outlets have excerpted the interview published on Telegram and other Russian media sources today, June 26, 2023, with Vladislav Surkov, former presidential advisor:
Here is the full text of the interview by Alexander Chesnyakov of the Center for Current Politics with Surkov:
Chesnakov: How do you see the reasons and possible consequences of Prigozhin's rebellion?
Surkov: It's fashionable now in Russia to dig around in history. So here's some history for you: in 1980 in Leningrad [St. Petersburg], a woman was walking along the street. An ordinary woman. Three gopniks [low-class street thugs] jumped her. One of them came at her from behind, grabbed her by the neck and began to strangle her. He squeezed her neck until she fainted. Then the gopniks tore off her earings and -- note this! -- her boots. These beasts were then arrested and tried. The one who grabbed the woman from behind and strangled her was named Yevgeny Prigozhin. That's all you need to know about Prigozhin. Nothing more. Nothing else matters.
Of course, the rhetorical question arises: "but wait, how was he able to serve in pest control?" [A reference to the Russian satire by Mikhail Bulgakov, "Heart of a Dog," which roughly means, "But he was catching bad guys, how can he be a bad guy himself?--trans."
Fortunately, rhetorical questions do not presuppose answers.
Chesnakov: What is needed to normalize the situation?
Surkov: Lots of things. But the main thing is to secure undivided authority. And for that, we have to think seriously -- why do we need private military companies, really?
As is known, I believe Russian democracy to be sovereign. The main feature of this approach is that you cannot blindly copy foreign institutions. Some things must be borrowed; others, not. It is critically important to consider the special features of national culture and psychology in constructing a political system.
What is a private military company (PMC)? It is a direct borrowing from Western practice, or rather, from American practice. And this will be more western than any West will be. Now, talk has sprung up again about a law on PMCs [they are still not legalized in Russia--trans.]. But should an institution be legitimized, which in Russian real terms is essentially anti-Constitutional in nature? They'll pass the law, and a string of enthusiasts will be drawn to high office. And they'll persuade people to permit them to create a private army. And many will be persuaded.
How can a military detachment be private, in our understanding? This does not correspond at all to Russian political, management, and military culture. You can't have your own private nuclear station, for example, in Russia. But you can have your own private assault division? Why? "Private armies" emerged in Russia only during the Time of Troubles and the Civil War. If a law on PMCs is passed, no matter how good it is and well conceived, no matter how precisely it is drafted, that the PMCs are subordinate to army command, and are part of the army and so on, such a law will create a dangerous prospect of turning our country in the future into some sort of Eurasian "tribal zone".
We don't need that. We have a contract system in our Armed Forces. You can make it more detailed, you can make it more flexible if needed, but don't play around with the PMCs any more.
After all, PMCs were created to take part in proxy wars. Why do we need them today, when we are openly taking part in the battle for Ukraine? This isn't a proxy war; this is a special military operation. The army must be strengthened not only with armaments, but with unity of leadership.
Do you remember why the strategic industrial branches of the USSR collapsed? They were destroyed by the law on cooperatives. At each state enterprise, numerous private cooperatives sprang up. Profit then accrued to the cooperatives which was controlled and eaten up by the state enterprise management. But the expenditures and losses were bucked to the state. The result was bankruptcy, and the collapse of machine-building and extractive industries. How many years and how much cash was needed to restore them!
The PMC is, after all, a cooperative attached to the army! The army has to absorb all the "losses" -- both material and reputational. But the PMC gets the cash and the glory. Yes, there are many heroes among the PMC fighters. But are there really less of them among the "ordinary" paratroopers, infantry, tank drivers, and gunners?! If this is not stopped, the result will be devastating.
Chesnakov: Progozhin made the statement that the special military operation is profitable only for oligarchs?
Surkov: Right. Oligarchs like him. What is an oligarch, from the perspective of political science? It's a businessman who makes money from state purchasing orders (for example, delivering food and kamikaze soldiers for the Ministry of Defense, as Prigozhin does [a reference to Prigozhin's rounding up of prisoners and raw recruits and sending them into battle where they are killed in large numbers--trans]); who has media resources (as he has); corrupt ties with government agencies (as he has); and political ambitions (as he has). Prigozhin is an oligarch. If Berezovsky had been given a tank, he would have turned out like Prigozhin. It's profitable for him.
But the battle for Ukraine began and will end not for the sake of profit. But for the sake of victory.
Russian source is here.
Explanatory Statement - with identifying information blocked by the author in Ukraine's colours.
The detention in the metro of Asya Kazantseva, a Russian science journalist and author, as she was trying to get home, has been covered by the media, but she posted her own story on Facebook as there has been some mis-reporting.
The operative point is that facial recognition technology was used to make the detention of dozens of Russians. Kazantseva was not anywhere near a demonstration and was on her way home, although as she notes, she had been detained in the past.
Translation
A flood of insane sensations have been spreading through the news, taking on distortions along the way!
I was detained in the metro, after being recognized by the cameras; the metro police themselves couldn't explain the reason; then the police at the station explained that it was because I had gone into the metro on Russia Day, and accordingly, the point of the detention was so that I didn't go to the center of Moscow and didn't stage any anti-war protest. Since I was headed in a direction away from the center, and not the opposite, and it was already evening, I was held for a relatively short time (I was detained at 19:00 and was already released at 21:30). I was treated politely and with some embarrassment; I was released without a record of a misdemeanor, since none had taken place, but I did have to write an explanatory note.
Here is the explanatory note:
"On 12.06.22 at approximately 19:00 I was at the Fili Metro Station, waiting for the train, so as to go home, but police officers came up to me and asked me to follow them to the office. After a little while, police officers came and took me to the Filyovsky Park Police Precinct in Moscow. The reasons for being taken to the precinct are not known to me. I had not committed any illegal actions. I would also like to add that I am pregnant and the detention caused me stress, which is harmful for the baby, according to modern data in the science of neurobiology, a subject in which I am an expert with a degree. In addition I would like to explain that I was not headed in the direction of the center of Moscow. A prophylactic conversation was conducted with me about how people who have administrative detentions in their pasts ought not to go in the metro on Russia Day. This is a true copy of my statement."
Kazantseva added on her Instagram account:
Today Nikolai and I celebrate the 10th anniversary of our meeting.
This is how we spent our romantic evening: Nikolai snapped a photo of how the police escorted me to the toilet.
The thing is, today is Russia Day, and as it was explained to me by the keepers of the peace at the precinct, on this day, if someone is undesirable, they must not go in the metro. Such a person is preventatively detained so that they do not express their civic position.
Honestly, I had not in fact planned that today, but now that it has come to this, I will state that the war with Ukraine is criminal, and destructive even for Russia as well, and should be immediately halted.
There were 9,323 likes on this post, and many messages of encouragement, but also some nasty swipes at her personal life -- an example of what women who take public positions endure online, particularly in Russia.
READ the closing statement of Alla Gutnikova, one of the editors of the Moscow student journal DOXA, who are all facing prison sentences for "inciting minors to take part in illegal opposition protests”. But the speech is about so much more. (The translation was adapted from that of Michelle Panchuk.) Listen to Alla’s original here: https://doxajournal.ru/lastword-alla
“I am not going to speak of the case, the search, the interrogations, the volumes, the trials. That is boring and pointless. These days I attend the school of fatigue and frustration. But before my arrest, I had time to enroll in the school of learning how to speak about truly important things.
I would like to talk about philosophy and literature. About Benjamin, Derrida, Kafka, Arendt, Sontag, Barthes, Foucault, Agamben, about Audre Lorde and bell hooks. About Timofeeva, Tlostanova and Rachmaninova.
I would like to speak about poetry, about how to read contemporary poetry. About Gronas, Dashevsky and Borodin.
But now is not the time nor the place. I will hide my small tender words on the tip of my tongue, in the back of my throat, between my stomach and my heart. I will say just a little.
I often feel like a little fish, a birdling, a schoolgirl, a baby. But recently, I discovered with surprise that Brodsky, too, was put on trial at 23. And, since I have also been counted among the human race, I will say this:
n the Kabbala there is the concept of tikkun olam - repairing the world. I see that the world is imperfect. I believe, as wrote Yehuda Amichai, that the world was created beautiful for goodness and for peace, like a bench in a courtyard (in a courtyard, not a court!). I believe that the world was created for tenderness, hope, love, solidarity, passion, joy.
But the world is atrociously, unbearably full of violence. And I don’t want violence. In any form. No teacher’s hands in schoolgirls’ underwear, no drunken father’s fists on the bodies of wives and children. If I decided to list all the violence around us, a day wouldn’t be enough, nor a week, nor a year. My eyes are wide open. I see violence, and I don’t want violence. The more violence there is, the stronger I don’t want it. And more than anything, I don’t want the biggest and the most frightening violence.
I really love reading. I will now speak with the voices of others.
At school, in history class, I learned the phrases “You crucify freedom, but the soul of man knows no bounds” and “For your, and for our, freedom”.
In high school, I read “Requiem” by Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova, “The Steep Path” by Evgeniya Solomonovna Ginzburg, “The Closed Theater” by Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava, “The Children of Arbat” by Anatoliy Naumovich Rybakov. Of Okudzhava’s poems I loved most of all:
Conscience, honor and dignity,
There’s our spiritual army.
\
An important new Buryat anti-war movement has begun that deserves attention.
Free Russia reports, with relevant background:
Since the Donbas war, ethnic Buryats from Siberia have been dubbed as the “Putin’s Buryat warriors.” It all began with the Donbas war, where the Kremlin, advancing its Novorossiya project sent Russian armed forces posing as local Donetsk separatists. And while a soldier from Pskov was visually difficult to discern from a Donetsk miner, Buryats with their clearly Asian appearance, really stood out from the local population. This is when these Buryats were humorously called the Donbass Indians.
In Spring 2015, a 20-year-old Buryat tank crew member Dorzhi Batomunkuev, who had been severely burnt in combat in Logvinovo, gave an interview to the Russian Novaya Gazeta newspaper, in which he characterized Russian President Vladimir Putin as an insidious man who asserts to the entire world that “our military is not there,” and in reality, is pulling a fast one on the sly. Dorzhi confirmed that there are, in fact, Russian soldiers in the Donbas.
In Summer 2015, a Kremlin-backed project “The Net” released a video on behalf of “Putin’s Buryat warriors,” featuring several young men and women who attempted to contest reports in the media that Buryat soldiers participate in the military conflict in Eastern Ukraine. The crude video address is perhaps most memorable with its assertion that “the Ukrainian economy is free falling into the European pubic area of Concita Wurst,”—amplifying the Kremlin’s narratives tying European values to its supposed moral decay as manifested in acceptance of LGBTQ+ communities.
Members of the Kyiv Buryat community published a civilized counter, but lacking the hype, it did not go viral.
Then:
Buryats who are not thrilled with being appropriated as “the Russian World” mascots, launched a campaign, releasing a new video each week, featuring Buryats who demand for the war to stop.
Due to the absurd new Russian laws, according to which even uttering “No to War” is interpreted as “discrediting the activities of the Russian military”— a transgression that comes with a real and lengthy prison sentence, the videos mainly feature Buryats who live outside of Russia.
Dozens of Buryats have already recorded videos, including Buryats born or living in Ukraine. The campaign’s authors have collected enough materials for a series of videos.
At this point, Buryats are the only ethnic minority of Russia who has initiated this type of campaign.
Read the full piece here.
The Interpreter reported on the pro-Moscow Buryats fighting with the DNR and LNR, one of whom, Dorzhi Batomunkuev, was severely burned in a tank battle at Debaltsevo, and another who raised the LNR flag after the Russian victory at Debaltsevo. It's vital to see there are also anti-war Buryats.
"Local coal miner and tractor driver raise the Novorossiya flag over Debaltsevo" https://t.co/1hNz1czsoI @SputnikATO pic.twitter.com/FiGitIlQCy
— The Interpreter (@Interpreter_Mag) February 18, 2015
A Buryat editor who reported critically on a variety of topics, including the war in Ukraine, was beaten and hospitalized.
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