Informers Matter Less in Russia Now than They Did in the Past, Shelin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 8 – Even in Stalin’s times, the police and the judicial system had mixed feelings about informers, Sergey Shelin says. On the one hand, they were glad to make use of them to spread fear throughout society; but on the other, they often ignored such reports because those in power overruled them.

            Vladimir Putin’s regime has encouraged people to turn in others in violation of this or that repressive law, the Rosbalt commentator says; but even more than its Soviet predecessor, its minions are of two minds as to how much credence to give to such reports and as to whether they should be acted upon (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2020/01/08/1820321.html).

            Under Stalin, he says, officials often decided to ignore denunciations because they had other goals in mind. Now, under Putin, the regime has even taken to giving officials guidance on what kinds of denunciations they should pay attention to. (On that, see rg.ru/2019/10/10/mvd-raziasnilo-kogda-nuzhno-zavodit-delo-ob-oskorblenii-vlasti.html.)

            “The past year has shown that this approach works not as well as it did earlier,” that denunciations may be useful to the authorities but they may get in the way by being contradictory or leading officials to take actions that they would have been better advised to avoid, as in the case of the Novoye velichiye prosecutions.

            In other cases, denunciations worked as intended, when they matched what the powers that be wanted to do in any case.  But that suggests that the relative importance of snitching by the population at large is declining as compared to reports by specialized and expert audiences who know better what is wanted.

            If people see this trend, they may be less inclined to serve as informers – and in that case, the authorities will lose the collateral benefit such actions have, the spread of fear throughout the population that everyone is being watched and can be reported on at any time with potentially serious consequences.