Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 25 – Even though
denunciations have not yet received a legal or even generally agreed upon
definition, they have become a dominant fact of life in Putin’s Russia because
now it is possible to give “a clear answer” to an updated version of Yury
Dovlatov’s infamous question, “who will write 40 million denunciations?”
The answer, Irina Lukyanova says in
an article in “Novaya gazeta,” consists of Russians who because of the messages
of the authorities about what are “thought crimes” and the ease of reading
posts on the Internet are now flooding
the authorities with denunciations of one kind of another (novayagazeta.ru/politics/73943.html).
In order to trigger an explosion of
denunciations, she says, the powers that be simply had to “create the
corresponding conditions: to adopt laws criminalizing thought crimes, to
frighten citizens about living in a ring of enemies … to direct their attention
to ‘a fifth column’ and to give signals that ‘you are being heard and measures
are being taken.”
That environment has been created,
and Russians have responded with enthusiasm, Lukyanov says. The are now “specialists
on letters to officials containing demands to
ban books, concerts, puppets, street actions, exhibits and theatrical
performances,” in show to ban anything that in the view of the authors could
harm the nation.
She gives two recent examples: a
demand by the Urals Parents Committee to ban various books and social networks
and to cancel an Elton John concert, and calls by Novosibirsk activists to ban
Tannhauser and other performances the Popular Assembly as it styles itself
objects to.
Their denunciations are typical of
what is becoming a pattern: First, they complain about some public action they
don’t approve of; second, they cite this or that law that it supposedly
violates, and a speech by Putin that makes that clear; and third, they “compare
their opponents to whatever the main political enemies of the moment.”
In all cases, however, the goal is the
same: to shift a real conflict over this or that question “into the political
realm,” so that the powers that be will feel compelled to act. Often those
filing denunciations hope to add to their influence by complaining that lower
level officials have failed to do just that.
To make their denunciations
credible, their authors have to provide “evidence,” and today, Lukyanova says,
the easiest and best way for them to do so is to look at social networks
online. Indeed, “to troll thorugh Facebook in the search for compromising
materials is simply good tone” in Russia today.
Sometimes, those searching for this
fasten on the content of articles their targets have posted, other times they
consider what they have reposted or liked, and at still others, they have
fastened on who is on their list of friends or contacts. And in the latest evolution of this: these
searchers now complain about what those they don’t like haven’t done.
If people post something about
Ukraine, the question these people now ask is why haven’t they focused on
something else, perhaps famine in Africa or the war in Syria. With that, the
possibilities for using anything in social networks as a denunciation expand
exponentially – and that is what is happening.
Thus, the current wave of
denunciations, fed by new federal laws on thought crimes and easy accessibility
of social networks, seems set to surpass anything that occurred in Stalin’s
time, a development that likely will further undermine any possibility of
social cohesion and leave Russian society more anomic than it has ever been.
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