“Catching up with Stalin”: Tatarstan became the absolute record holder of the Volga region for “discrediting” the army

The Project publication published a study on the repressions that marked Vladimir Putin’s next term in office. For the first time, journalists came to the attention of not only criminal but also the rich administrative practice of reprisals against undesirables. Project journalist Ekaterina Reznikova told Idel.Realii, among other things, about the “leading figures” of repressions in the Volga region. Thus, Tatarstan, according to her, set an absolute record among the regions for being brought to justice for “discrediting” the army, and Chuvashia turned out to be the leader overall in being brought to administrative responsibility for repressive articles in “per capita” terms. In general, the researchers’ conclusions are disappointing: repressions in Russia are becoming more severe, according to this indicator, Putin has already surpassed Brezhnev and Khrushchev and is catching up with Stalin. Most importantly, the research, Reznikova noted, allows us to see only part of the picture: as in the years of Stalin’s terror, the perpetrators are trying to hide information about the victims of repression and the details of the accusations.

— Ekaterina, why did you choose for your research the penultimate six-year term (March 2018 – end of 2023, minus the first three months of 2024) of Vladimir Putin’s reign?

“Already at the preparation stage, it became clear that we had to study a very large number of administrative cases. These are just some statistics on criminal matters that are kept by human rights activists, although they are, of course, also very selective. The same “Memorial” and “OVD-Info” try to pay special attention to evidence that this or that case is political. Plus, a large layer of cases is hidden from them – these are cases against those who, due to ignorance, inaccessibility, remoteness of the region, or other reasons, did not contact human rights defenders. That means people do not turn to human rights activists, they do not have any media fame – and they are left alone.

“Then the question arises, how did you find these cases?” And why were you sure that these were precisely repressive cases?

“We weren’t sure and decided to just hit squarely.” We realized that in our study, administration is important, it was never assessed in general. There are some articles, for example, “discrediting” the army, widely promoted, or administrative “foreign agency” articles – some research has been done on them. But to take all the articles that can be used as repressive and see what happens there – no one has ever done this. However, under these administrative articles, a huge number of people (approximately 105 thousand people) went through trials.

We realized: that if we take an earlier period, we will drown in the number of cases. Therefore, we decided to limit ourselves to Putin’s last term. It started in 2018, this is the time of the World Cup. It seemed that the regime had somehow cooled down, like democracy and everything seemed to be fine; even in 2019, it continued to appear that everything was still not as scary as it looked in 2024.

We took from the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation those articles that are somehow related in meaning to freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and so on. From the Criminal Code – those articles that are most often used as repressive – “extremism”, “justification of terrorism”, “treason” and “espionage”, “insulting the feelings of believers”, “rehabilitation of Nazism”.

But our complex studies did not include economic and violent articles – although they can also be used as repressive ones.  Alexei Navalny was tried for the first time specifically on economic charges. But we cannot estimate what this number of cases is.

– What about “slander”, for example?

— A small practice, almost invisible; compared to the “justification of terrorism” it does not exist.

— So it’s easier for the authorities not to accuse someone of slander, but to hit them with more weighty articles at once?

– Certainly. They give a longer period, plus the stamp itself works. Call a person an extremist or a terrorist – and you don’t have to worry, not a single journalist will ever want to ask what he is actually being tried for.

“THEY JUDGE PEOPLE FOR SUBJECTIVITY”

— In my opinion, journalists from liberal publications show interest precisely in such cases.

— If we are talking about regions, then no. Especially when it comes to national republics. If we are talking about Crimean Tatars, Bashkirs, and people from various Muslim republics of the Caucasus or Central Asia, then we see a huge number of cases against Islamic “extremists”.

But when you start studying these cases, you see that there was no whiff of extremism there – they simply judge people for any subjectivity. A person does not have to be a religious fanatic to be labelled as such and called an extremist.

I’m from Crimea, and after the annexation, the following thing was very clearly visible: if a person is an obvious pro-Ukrainian activist, freely expresses his views, or works as a journalist or activist, he will most likely be prosecuted for some kind of “treason” or “sabotage”, they’ll just throw [ something ]. We have a lot of cases where journalists were simply thrown something into the trunk of a car and told that they were preparing to blow something up. And if you are a Crimean Tatar, then you are [ even more ] unlucky – that’s it, you will become an “Islamic extremist.”

— Are they recognized as a follower of Hizb ut-Tahrir?

– Yes. Regardless of whether you belonged or not, whether anyone knows about it or not – [ there will be] two classified witnesses in your case who go from one criminal case to another for years, these are the same people. All lawyers and local human rights activists know them well.

— How are you sure that these are the same classified witnesses?

— Because a very small community, a very small number of human rights activists and judges work on these cases – and those lawyers who defend these people are faced with the same testimony over and over again. After all, the Crimean Tatars are not that many people, 300 thousand people. Therefore… The earth is full of rumours.

– Were they simply identified?

– Yes. By the way, under the articles “extremism” and “justification of terrorism” they usually show scary videos about arrests: they came in, broke them down, put them face down on the floor, and the detainees were allegedly preparing something like that… But, as a rule, not a single person involved in this has an article related to the preparation of a terrorist attack, with the storage of weapons or the manufacture of explosives.

In our study, we removed those people who were accused of violent crimes. That is, if something happened, if a terrorist attack happened, if someone was killed, beaten, someone was attacked – we removed all these crimes (including attempts on the life of a police officer). But they left “complicity” because, based on the political cases that are known to human rights activists, complicity sometimes takes incredible forms. The person was in a general chat – and he was accused of “encouraging” in complicity. Or people who are accused of preparing a crime. Again, what is meant by preparation in an extremist case is not clear. Why? Because most often in these cases information is hidden, we do not know not only the accused, do not know a single fact about the crime unless lawyers and human rights activists spoke about it.

— Sergei Davidis from the Memorial Human Rights Centre said in 2021 that  Russian Muslims began to be imprisoned for participation in the extremist organization At-Takfir wal-Hijra. This is a radical religious organization that existed half a century ago in Egypt – but completely ceased to exist in the late seventies. In 2021, security forces began to declare those Russian Muslims who do not go to mosques, but conduct religious ceremonies at home, to be involved in this organization. Are these cases included in your research?

— I did not specifically study “Islamic extremism” as part of this study. Perhaps it included isolated cases of “At-Takfir wa-l-Hijra”. But in our study, there is article 5.26 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation – “Violation of legislation on freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and religious associations.” There is a whole set of laws on religion; they were tightened, including during the adoption of the widely known “Yarovaya package.”

What are they being tried for under Article 5.26? Because people preach their religion – any religion – outside of churches. According to the Yarovaya package, which was adopted in 2016, the ban also applies to the Internet. Interestingly, when analysіng court decisions under this article, I did not see a single Orthodox person convicted of disseminating information about his faith outside the church. Although, as we know, priests go to both the army and schools.

“And even the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, does not hesitate to preach anywhere and anytime.

“They preach anywhere.” And they judge, for example, Buddhists, those who profess Islam, and all kinds of Protestants. Unfortunately today in Russia even the very case when people gather at home to pray is an offence. Or when they posted materials about God on the website of a Protestant church on the Internet. It’s paradoxical: you can come to church, you can pray there, but you can’t invite new people through the Internet. It is also an offence to send a postcard via WhatsApp chat that contains congratulations on some Protestant Easter.

“But you can congratulate everyone on Orthodox Easter.”

– Yes, it turns out to be such an interesting distortion. This is a direct infringement of freedom of conscience, it seems to me. This article was included in our research.

“WAS AND DIES”

— In the Volga region there are republics with a large number of Muslims. First of all, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. How are things going with “Islamic extremism” there?

— In general, more than 11 thousand people were charged under repressive criminal charges during the penultimate presidential term of Vladimir Putin (the study covers March 2018 – the end of 2023, excluding the first three months of 2024).

In this figure, in addition to those convicted under traditional repressive articles and those who were added to the list after February 24, 2022, there are military personnel who were convicted of refusing to fight in Ukraine, that is, these are articles of the Criminal Code – “Unauthorized abandonment of a unit or place of service,” “Failure to comply with an order,” “Desertion,” and “Evasion of military service duties by feigning illness or other means.”

— And there were many such military men?

— Of the 11,442 people convicted under repressive articles of the Criminal Code, 4,500 are “deviators.”

The Volga region accounts for 911 cases in our study. The most common region is the Saratov region, with 115 cases. Then come: Perm Territory – 99 cases, Tatarstan – 94 cases, Penza Region – 81 cases and Volgograd Region – 79 cases.

If we take the same number and break it down by region per capita, it turns out that the most repressive region in our country is the Penza region – almost 8 cases per 100 thousand people were initiated there over 6 years. Tatarstan is in fifth place from the bottom; 3 cases are initiated there per 100,000 population. In Bashkortostan, there are 2.23 cases per 100 thousand population.

There is also Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, “Justification of Terrorism,” under which people are tried in military courts. Over six years, 1,560 people were convicted under it and about a quarter of the cases were in the Volga region.

As an example of how the repressive machine works to “justify terrorism”, one can cite the Zhlobitsky case  (on October 31, 2018, 17-year-old anarchist Mikhail Zhlobitsky committed a self-detonation in the building of the regional FSB department in Arkhangelsk, as a result of which he died, and three FSB officers were injured –  “Idel.Realii” ).

It turned out that after his act, more than 50 people were subjected to criminal prosecution and more than 100 to various other types of persecution: administrative sanctions, searches without criminal liability, and so on. All those brought to criminal responsibility were passed as “justifiers” of Zhlobitsky’s act. The repressive machine has opened a huge number of cases throughout the country – from Kaliningrad to Khabarovsk.

For example, a man blew himself up in Arkhangelsk, and for “justifying” his act, people were tried in the Perm region and the Nizhny Novgorod region, the Samara region (three cases) and in the Astrakhan region – this is just what we found in Volga region. Not a single accomplice, instigator, or person who helped him – people are simply judged for their words.

We were able to count these people only by mentioning them in the media; they did not get mentioned anywhere except in the media. There is some kind of press release from the FSB, which is reprinted by TASS and Interfax, in which they indicate that a person was detained under this article for “justification” – and nothing else is known about him. We tried to find these people and found no one.

Such a case happened in Chita. A man was detained there, but neither local lawyers, nor lawyers, nor human rights activists, nor activists, no one knew what kind of person he was. He was convicted and given a longer sentence than the article of the Criminal Code as a whole suggests, but it was not possible to find him. He was and died. The worst thing in these cases is that there is no verdict and there are no accused.

— How long did it take you to do this research?

About six months, I think. There was a rather tedious procedure for collecting all this data. In Russia, there is a unified GAS system “Justice”, where all cases and documents on them should be accumulated – but, unfortunately, for some time, from the second half of 2022, it began to work incorrectly. There, many cases, especially those related to repressive articles – even such, in general, simple ones as “discrediting” the army – simply stopped being published. Therefore, we had to collect all cases from the websites of individual courts.

This is important to note, because, for example, an article such as “Vandalism,” which has recently also been used as a repressive article, is considered in the magistrate’s court, there are small punishments, and there are more than 7 thousand magistrate’s courts in Russia.

— Is there even more extensive practice under administrative repressive articles?

— 16 thousand administrative cases in the Volga region alone, and a total in Russia — 105 thousand cases. Of these, of course, the most popular in the Volga region, as elsewhere, are “rally” articles (5,800 cases) and Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation “Discrediting the Army” (1,437 cases). In our study, we separately highlighted articles of the so-called military censorship introduced in 2022.

“THERE IS AN ASSUMPTION THAT THIS IS  A RUN-IN”

— Which regions of the Volga region were among the leaders in “rally” articles and in “discrediting”?

The leaders in “discrediting” the army are Tatarstan, 196 people. Next come: the Perm region (153), Nizhny Novgorod region (131), Samara region (129) and Bashkortostan (115). They were most rarely brought to trial for this in Mari El. If we are talking about “rally” articles, then Tatarstan is also in first place here – 1,300 people. Next come: the Nizhny Novgorod Region (817), Samara Region (553), Saratov Region (500) and Perm Territory (425). That means, in the Republic of Tatarstan there are three times more people convicted under this article than in the Perm Territory.

— And if we count it per capita?

— For all administrative items included in our study, Tatarstan, oddly enough, was only in 3rd place (96 people per 100 thousand). And in Chuvashia – 101 people per 100 thousand.

—Does that mean, in per capita terms, Chuvashia is in first place in terms of repressive administrative articles?

Yes. Then Mordovia – 97.5 people, Tatarstan – 96 people, Ulyanovsk region – 93.5. Rarely in Bashkortostan – 30 people per 100 thousand.

–  But you simply didn’t have time to include the same “Baymak case” in the study?

Yes, recent events could slightly adjust the numbers. But in general, this is the picture.

— What general conclusions did you draw from your research?

The main conclusion we are talking about is that we are catching up with Stalin. We have already overcome the Brezhnev and Khrushchev indicators  (back in the fall of 2022, experts from the Memorial Centre for the Protection of Human Rights compared the situation with the suppression of dissent in Russia with the scale and practices of the Brezhnev era; as the Project’s study shows, to overcome this bar and get closer to Stalin’s indicators, Putin needed less than a year and a half –  “Idel.Realities” ).

“We returned not to 1937, but to 1973”: how Putin’s mechanism of repression works 

The second conclusion is that we know practically nothing about our repressions because many verdicts are closed, they are not discussed, we most often do not know the accused, people receive huge sentences and disappear.

The third conclusion that lies on the surface is that repression is becoming more severe.

Since 2022, after the start of the war, a huge number of repressive articles have been introduced. If we take only the “package of military censorship” – these are new “crimes”, which include “fakes” and “discreditation” introduced after 2022 – then 8,797 people were convicted in Russia under these articles alone in 2022-2023. It turns out that new articles are introduced – and they are immediately judged by them. It wasn’t like that before; Previously, an article could be entered, and it might not be used for a very long time.

A very important article of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation is 20.3 (“Propaganda or public display of Nazi paraphernalia or symbols, or symbols of extremist organizations”). It is just being tested, and most prisoners are judged by it. For taking off a T-shirt, and there was some kind of tattoo similar to AUE symbols, they are given another one and a half to two years of imprisonment – for such an innocent, one might say, violation. Moreover, this can happen when the regime requires you to take off your shirt (for example, in the shower) – and the person is given a prison term for “demonstration”.

We have an assumption that this is all a run-in. Because now extremist symbols include the symbols of FBK and the symbols of the LGBT community. And this is now a criminal offence. Once he showed it, he got a fine, the second time he showed it, he got a sentence.

THRESHOLD OF “VIOLENCE AGAINST POLICE”

— Do I understand correctly that new repressive articles are being written right along the way against those who demonstrate any dissatisfaction with the authorities?

– Yes. Moreover, interestingly, they introduce articles directed against other wartime phenomena. For example, for looting, for surrendering, for refusing to fulfil a state defence order… But for now, this is a gun hanging on the wall, which is unknown when it will fire; these articles are not yet used at all, and there is zero practice there…

There is an opinion that repressions concern a specific layer of society, some liberal-minded activists, journalists, and “enemies of Russia,” as they are called – but in reality, it is already clear that cases are being initiated against those who approve of the war in Ukraine, we know all these cases.

In addition, we see an increase in the number of cases for “crimes” against security forces – Art. 318 of the Criminal Code “use of violence”, Art. 319 of the Criminal Code “insult”, Art. 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses “disobedience to the legal demands of a representative of the authorities.”The threshold in the case of “use of violence” against police officers is constantly decreasing. That means, if we were talking about really beaten police officers, then now we see a steady increase in the number of cases for verbal threats of violence. That means he didn’t hit or even try, but simply said, for example: “Get away, otherwise I’ll kill you.”

—  There was also the famous plastic cup. This case is also included in Putin’s penultimate term, isn’t it?

— It was the plastic cup that served as the starting point for us. We started thinking, what’s going on with this “violence against police” threshold? We saw that the number of those convicted for simply verbal threats, for attempted crime (there is such an article 30 in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) is growing – they are also being tried for this, and there are quite a lot of such cases.

–  Roughly speaking, the policeman said that he saw how a protester swung at him – and this is now a criminal article?

– Yes. The man is imprisoned. In the Volga region, the largest number of cases of “violence” against police officers are in the Orenburg and Kirov regions.

– In connection with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the “sanitary” block of affairs has somehow become forgotten. Did anti-COVID restrictions in Russia also almost immediately begin to be used to combat unwanted people?

— It is known for sure that during Covid, cases of “mass riots” were opened, which were included in the study. True, it was the anti-Covid protests that we left out of the equation because there really was such a problem, there was an epidemic and a lot of people were sick…

But we looked at what happened after most regions lifted sanitary restrictions and saw that people continued to be tried for violating anti-Covid restrictions in both 2022 and 2023. True, in 2023 the number of such cases dropped to almost zero, but the phenomenon exists. For example, in mid-August 2022, a resident of Magadan returned home from Turkey, and almost a year later, in June 2023, she was fined for not filling out a form at the State Services, which is filled out before returning to Russia before boarding a plane. Fine – 15 thousand rubles. There are a lot of such cases, there is another article – “violation of sanitary measures”, all these masks, and there is also a huge number of cases, although the fines are small.

We took 1 Apri 2022, as the cutoff threshold, because most regions lifted COVID restrictions in early March of that year, some even in February, but there is a certain time lag for implementation, force of habit. We gave this time lag, a month so that the authorities could change the rules for treating their own population.

But we see, first, 159 thousand people across the country were fined after April 2022. And secondly, anti-Covid restrictions still apply in the regions, and they are used as a political tool. That is, if it comes to United Russia rallies and some kind of celebrations where thousands of people gather, then there is no Covid. But if we are talking about a rally by the wives of mobilized women, then they are banned en masse throughout the country precisely under the pretext that it is impossible to hold a rally during Covid.

Andrey Grigoriev