History of ordinary oppression at the time of the regime Putin.
In Russialast April, at institute number 9 of Iefremov, in the Tula oblast, the plastic arts teacher asks his middle school students to draw drawings in solidarity with the soldiers sent to fight in Ukraine. Maria, a twelve year old girl, draws a Ukrainian mother protecting her children from missiles, then draws a yellow and blue flag, below her adds this caption: “Glory to Ukraine”.
The director of the school the complaint. The police storm into the school soon after. The girl takes advantage of the hustle and bustle, manages to slip away, providing a false name. At home, Alexei Moskalev, the father, reassures her, promises that he will resolve the issue the next day. Instead the next day there is no longer the police, but theFsb – the heir to the notorious Kgb. The security services. They come to take Maria and summon her father. At the police station, Alexei Moskalev absorbs long sermons on the education he gives to his daughter. His social networks are painstakingly analysed, the FSB has discovered two biased publications: a caricature of Vladimir Putin and a post about the war, which reads: “Russian Army. The rapists are among us.” Alexei was tried on the same day, sentenced to a fine of 32,000 rubles (400 euros) for “bringing the army into disrepute”.
For this man, who lives off pet bird breeding, the sum is already a bad blow. However there is not only the economic damage. The FSB threatens him: if Alexei Moskalev does not repent and makes amends, Maria will be sent to the orphanage (her mother left her husband and baby when she was three years old), as the law provides for this in the case of children without parents ( if they end up in prison). A classic bullying by the security services and the police, often used against mothers but, as in this case, also against fathers. Maria is traumatized, has anxiety and panic attacks, begs her father not to send her to school anymore. Tremendous months go by.
On December 30, 2022, a dozen FSB agents rush into the Moskalev house. It’s half past six in the morning. They knock, no one answers. So they break down the door and invade the apartment. The search looks more like looting. Everything is turned upside down, computers and mobile phones seized, and with them the savings. The father is taken to the local headquarters of the security services. They accuse him of having found it 3150 dollars. They ask him: “Who is your boss?”. They accuse him of wanting to denigrate the armed forces. They beat him. They bang his head against the wall and the floor. Finally, the administrative case opened in April due to Maria’s design becomes a criminal case: they accuse Alexei of posts on social networks. For the same facts of “discrediting the army” (the accusation of April), Alexei risks the prison sentence. With, once again, the threat of sending her daughter to the orphanage.
In January, Moskalev, 54, did not go to court to answer the summons of the judges. According to his lawyer, it is terrified since his previous stop and search: he preferred to move. However, the decision to talk to journalists makes matters worse. “The security organs don’t like to go outside. There is every possibility that Alexei will be detained until his trial,” he says Vladimir Bilienkothe lawyer, to the correspondent of The world who revealed this ignoble history. According to Bilienko, a dozen families from Iefremov and the surrounding area “who refuse to remain indifferent” have offered to take Maria in and save her from the orphanage.
The case of the Moskalevs is not an isolated one. Since the beginning of the war, eight minors have been subject to criminal proceedings for their anti-war positions. The number of administrative proceedings is much higher, but details on minors are not known. Most of the time, the pressure from the authorities is limited to simple “discussions”, or threats against the parents.
Many of these conflicts concern the children’s participation in a new, compulsory, titled course “Discussions on the essentials”a kind of lesson of civics in which the war in Ukraine and “traditional values” occupy a central place. Gun disassembly demonstrations are also increasingly being organized in schools and kindergartens, just like in the days of the Soviet Union where children at school had to learn how to assemble and disassemble a pistol and then, as they got older, a kalashnikov: “In other cases, parents were summoned to the police because their child dared to ask disturbing questions in class, or refused to write letters to soldiers, or shouted glory to Ukraine!“!
In October 2022, in Moscow, a 10-year-old girl she was taken away by the police while he was in the school playground, and also this time after the complaint of the diligent director. Guilty of having published a pro-Ukrainian avatar on WhatsApp and launched a poll on his class group: “Are you for peace or for Putin to keep killing people?”. So long as Elena Joliker, his mother, refused any intimidation and decided to speak, the family underwent a search and was placed under the surveillance of social services. The mother, it is written in a report, “fails to fulfill her obligations for her daughter’s psychological, spiritual and moral development”, and the child may then be taken away from her.
These are just a couple of cases that we can define iconic, but sufficient to describe the climate of fear that has developed since the beginning of the invasion in Ukraine. In fact, there are many Russians who advise their children to keep their opinions to themselves, and not to repeat what they hear around the house, and this attitude is the result of painful reminiscences, those of the daily precautions that one was forced to take in the Soviet era. When the Soviet dictatorship imposed the dictatorship of resignation and extenuation. When freedom was oppressed and its yearnings deleted.
In recent months, unfortunately, there have been dozens of teachers and professors in Russia denounced by their students for having spoken about pace and mentioned war crimes: they were fired and arrested. Like when the “universal article 58.10” hit the dissidents (I quote Varlam Salamov dai Tales of Kolyma, 2010 BC Dalai editions, of which I wrote the preface) which punished ‘counter-revolutionary’ crimes, i.e. those who did not think as the regime wanted. In the summer of 2009, at the Sakharov Center in Moscow, I saw a wonderful exhibition dedicated to friendly and to the culture persecuted by the Soviet regime. The clandestine tom-tam against oblivion was still – and will always be – the desperate cry of the need to make known, to do not forgetto denounce “what no man should see or know”.
Note: Wednesday 1 March, Alexeï Moskalev he has been arrested late in the morning. During her provisional detention, the duration of which has not yet been fixed, Maria, now 13, will have to remain in the Iefremov orphanage: “This scenario is what I fear most”, she confided a few days ago to the organization for human rights OVD-Info and news site Spektrrecounting his misadventures.
In our hearts stiffen from the swirl of bad information, these little truths are the mirror of the rawness of the historical fact that we are living, and that we do not know how to tame.