Now it is fashionable to talk about the system of totalitarianism as a relic of the past. Like, it used to be, but it doesn’t concern us. However, today’s sad reality testifies to something else. We have known about the systematic violation of the national and cultural rights of peoples in the Russian Federation for a long time, but it will never be superfluous to prove this by the example of specific cases.
On November 28, 1997, Veniamin Nadutkin, a member of the human rights party of the Republic of Komi “Doryam Asnymos” (“Let’s Protect Ourselves”), People’s Assessor of the Syktyvkar Narsud, Commissar Veniamin Nadutkin, filed an application for disciplinary action and termination of the powers of the Chairman of the Syktyvkar City Federal Court N. Belova and judges I.Urban. The mentioned persons organized mass prosecutions of the human rights defender in 1995-1997, and also effectively deprived him of his right to immunity as a People’s Assessor.
The statement was not in vain – the consequences were not long in coming… On April 7, 1998, V. Nadutkin was arrested and imprisoned in the SIZO, and on November 30, 1998, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Komi, having considered the case, ordered a forensic psychiatric examination. Doubts about the defendant’s mental health were caused by the same statement, in which he calls the head of the Syktyvkar city court “heir to the executioner of the Komi people” and “a Pan-Slavic racist”, and also talks about “persecution, oppression of the rights and freedoms of both his and indigenous Komi-Zyryans”. Since V. Nadutkin categorically refuses to undergo a psycho-expertise, he is thrown behind bars again.
For three months, the “mentally disabled” human rights defender, the author of many publications about the rights of the Komi people, was in prison together with the criminals.
In January 1999, a new court session was held. The newspaper Molod Pivnochi reported about him on February 4: “The defendant, 64-year-old Veniamin Nadutkin from Syktyvkar, was found guilty by the Supreme Court of the Republic of Komi, because, as we can see from last Thursday’s sentence, he deliberately spread clearly false opinions that do not correspond to reality “. Due to V. Nadutkin’s advanced age, he was sentenced to one year of imprisonment on a conditional basis and released from the sentence, applying amnesty to him.
This is how the Russian courts deal with those who try to protect the rights of indigenous peoples, the honor and dignity of one or another non-Russian nation that had the courage to pose acute and urgent questions to the federal center. If not the notorious “psycho”, then the deadline.
There is no other way out.
Were the expressions “a worthy heir of one of the executioners of the Komi people” and “a Pan-Slavic racist” “false assumptions”?
Instead of a direct answer, let’s imagine an attempt in court to protect the right to have the native Erzyan language studied to the same extent as Russian (currently, 60-70 percent of children “do not pass” the native language, in the same places where it is studied, it is only taught 3-4 percent of the study time. In addition, the mass media are Russian, the government is Russian, the court is Russian, the police is Russian). The reaction to the statement may be as follows: a) will cause ridicule of the plaintiff; b) the application will simply disappear in the paperwork, or c) — the Sixtyvkar variant — for example a gullible truth-seeker will be classified as insane and sent to a mental hospital or to the bunkhouse. In any case, the judges will defend the interests of the state — by all means condescending to the planting of everything Russian. They cannot do otherwise. They are paid for it, including “foreigners”.
The naïve plaintiff is an Erzian, driven by routine to the point of losing self-control and, not seeing any “obviously false reasoning” here, can say “racist”. He knows: there is no offense here. This is only a statement of an accomplished fact, a thing called by its proper name.
Each judge, when considering national offenses, acts as a worthy inheritor of the destinies of the model of 1937. Indeed, he acts like this because he was brought up, like all the “Soviet people”, in the spirit of great-power chauvinism and unlimited superiority over the Komi, Chuvash, Erzians and other nations. In his view, other peoples with their legal and other needs do not exist within the borders of Russia. Judges are a protective caste that protects the unchanging dominance of the “great” people sent by God. Not a single court in Russia is either for the “father-tsar” or for modern “democrats” did not try to satisfy even a fraction of the rights of non-Russian ethnic groups.
Who are they then, Russian judges? To put the current servants of Themis next to those whose sentences were accompanied by the commands “pli!” can not. Now they are clean, they are even afraid of the smell of blood. But one of their goals is truly Stalinist: the fight against nationalism, communists and others. However, the methods have changed. It was in them that Belov, Urban, Kotlyakov, Pravdina and others took off. The Russian state has become smarter. By closing schools, stopping book printing, turning off radio and television… it achieves much greater success in the Russification of non-Russian peoples than in those previous years. And that’s why they, gentlemen judges, should be tried under two articles at once: for insulting a person and for the barbaric methods of destroying the remnants of the communist intelligentsia. Maybe they, Belov and others, would not subject the pensioner to moral and psychological torture, but the persistence of human rights defender V. Nadutkin and other members of the Doryam asnymos party forced them to show their unbridled “love” for “foreigners”. Human rights defenders managed to show the true Russian spirit without embellishments. It was a rare case when the accused, in fact, judged the accusers, all their racist and chauvinist worldview. This trial was not so much about the Komi native and the Komi people, as much as it was about foreign judges, the colonial government and its policy, and the practice of genocide and ethnocide of the Komi people in particular.
“And who are the judges? Their hatred for free life is unstoppable…” —
as if it was written by a poet not two centuries ago, but today. And, unfortunately, there is no certainty that this situation will change soon. However, as long as the struggle of such truth-seekers continues, we still have hope for the victory of the truth. The Russian regime must know that national movements cannot be suppressed or put to sleep. The oppressed peoples will stand up in full force and force themselves to respect themselves.
An article by Nuyan Vidyaz, published in the independent socio-political newspaper of the Public Fund for the Rescue of the Erzyan Language named after A.P. Ryabov “Erzyan Mastor”, edited by Oleksandr BOHATYRCHUK, information officer of the Youth Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists.
Архів ОУН. - Бібліотека. - Газети.- Шлях Перемоги. - 1999. - 1 грудня. - С.4
