The Russian Totalitarianism. Freedom here and now. Dmitrii Shusharin

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      • 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 СКАЧАТЬ