Paul Goble
Staunton,
November 4 – Nearly three out of four Russians told Levada Center pollsters
that the first they had heard about torture in Russian prisons was when the
sociologists asked them about it, and more than one in three – 35 percent – said
they accepted the mistreatment of inmates as something normal.
On
the one hand, Denis Volkov of the polling agency says, these results highlight
the reality that even when something is covered in the best media outlets in
Moscow, a large share of Russians don’t follow it because they rely on other
sources where the story either is ignored or played down (rbc.ru/politics/04/11/2018/5bdafb3d9a79475fbbb5cd38?from=main).
And on the other,
they reflect public attitudes not just about torture but about any negative
phenomena. Russians are ready to accept reports about individual problems but
not to generalize on the basis even of repeated stories about what is going on,
a disturbing echo of Soviet media practice where criticism was permissible but
generalization was prohibited.
Other experts with
whom the RBC journalists spoke have a different take. Asmik Novikov, the head
of research for the Public Verdict Foundation, says that “torture is a very
narrow them and to expect the overwhelming majority to be up to date on it is
incorrect. This isn’t something which disturbs everyone.”
“Our society,” he
continues, “still shows a high level of tolerance to force and tortures.”
Individual cases may attract attention and criticism but the broader phenomenon
remains unexamined and unconsidered.
And Bulat Mukhamedzhanov of the Zone
of Law Organization adds that not only do the official media not cover such
things but the prison system itself does everything it can to hide what is going
on from the outside. There is no public control
over the prison system, and that is exactly how the jailers want it to remain.
The RBC news agency said it had
asked the federal penal authorities for a comment but hadn’t gotten a response.
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