Paul Goble
Staunton, Mar. 4 – Aleksandr Larintseva, a Kommersant journalist, says that “lists of enemies of the people” are beginning to show up in Russia. They are posted online anonymously but undoubtedly are being encouraged by the authorities to intimidate anyone critical of what the Kremlin leader is doing in Ukraine.
Up to now, such lists have appeared most frequently about people in the North Caucasus, possibly as a test to see what the market will bear (kavkazr.com/a/vragi-naroda-na-kavkaze-sostavlyayut-spiski-protivnikov-voyny/31735694.html). But because of the way in which such lists were used in Stalinist times, even this small beginning is most worrisome.
So far, what is occurring appears only to be an act of intimidation, but it is likely to become more than that if it spreads. On the one hand, individuals either driven by their own passions or a desire to curry favor with the powers that be may take things into their own hands and attack such dissidents, confident that the state will back them and not their victims.
And on the other hand, there is the risk that such lists will be used by the state itself, first of all to cost people their jobs, as has already happened in a few cases and then, following the conventions of revived Stalinism to visit draconian punishments on them involving imprisonment or worse.
That has not happened yet to anyone on such a list, but no one can be sure that it won’t in a country ruled by someone who appears to believe that anyone who opposes him is a traitor and that he is justified in using any means to counter them.
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