At a joint press conference [ru] with his counterpart from Azerbaijan, Lavrov denounced supposed voting irregularities surrounding Russia's representative, Dina Garipova, whom he believes should have earned another ten points from Azerbaijan's voters. Claiming that the points were “stolen,” Russia's chief diplomat called the anomaly “an outrageous act” and promised Russian retaliation. Azerbaijani national security officials have already responded [ru], calling in for questioning several citizens who voted in past Eurovision contests. The uproar has even prompted a statement to Eurovision's organizers, who warned that “any form of political pressure on professional juries” would have consequences.

Dina Garipova performs her song, “What If,” in Eurovision's final round, 18 May 2013.

While Eurovision 2013 is over and Russia's contestant has been defeated, Russian Twitter users continue to find entertainment in Lavrov's bellicose comments. Many juxtaposed the federal government's sensitivity about Eurovision voting to its largely indifferent attitude about election violations in Russia's own, real elections.

Mocking Russia's recently-instituted webcam-monitoring project for polling stations, Oleg Kozyrev tweeted:

В следующем году с целью обеспечения прозрачности голосования на Евровидении Владимир Путин установит в домах всех европейцев веб-камеры

Next year, in order to ensure Eurovision's voting transparency, Putin will place webcams in the homes of every European.

Noting Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko's similar complaints about Eurovision, activist Ilya Yashin wrote:

ЕС заявлял о фальсификациях на выборах в России и Беларуси. Лавров и Лукашенко заявили о фальсификации на Евровидении. Шах и мат, европейцы.

The European Union declared voting falsifications in Russia and Belarus. Lavrov and Lukashenko declared falsifications in Eurovision. Checkmate, Europeans.

Twitter user VRebyata wrote sarcastically:

В ходе Евровидения оказалось, что Российские власти могут проявлять чрезвычайную принципиальность в подведении итогов голосования

In this year's Eurovision, it turned out that the Russian authorities can indeed display special commitment to vote tabulation.

Oppositionist and anti-corruption blogger Alexey Navalny spun Lavrov's comments into an attack on Russia's leading political party, tweeting facetiously:

Глава МИД Лавров заявил, что в ответ на неправильный подсчет голосов на ‘Евровидении', ‘ЕдРо’ получит дополнительные 15% голосов на выборах

Foreign Affairs Head Lavrov has announced that, in response to the incorrect counting of votes for Eurovision, United Russia will receive an extra 15% of the votes in [future] elections.

Billionaire and Novaya Gazeta newspaper co-owner Alexander Lebedev teased Lavrov with feigned congratulations:

Молодец Лавров по случаю Евровидения!Это и есть внешняя политика

Well done, Lavrov, on [dealing with] Eurovision! Now that's what I call foreign policy

Twitter user Stanislav Burdelyov joked that Vladimir Putin's longtime domination of Russian elections affected voters’ behavior, writing:

Дина Гарипова не выиграла Евровидение потому, что россияне по привычке проголосовали за Путина.

Dina Garipova didn't win Eurovision because Russians [everywhere] are used to voting [only] for Putin.

Ridiculing Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev's dwindling political clout, Andrey Girich tweeted:

Надо было Медведева на Евровидение отправить

They should have sent Medvedev to Eurovision [instead of Garipova]

Sasha Grey in Vladivostok, Russia, 15 May 2013, screen capture from YouTube.

Twitter user Bernard Galt tied Lavrov's hostile remarks to Russia's two other ongoing entertainment-news imbroglios: a nationwide road-trip by former porn star Sasha Grey, and Gérard Depardieu's latest police-motorcaded visit [ru] to Chechnya. Galt wrote:

Депардье ездит с мигалкой. Саша Грей читает лекции в Екатеринбурге. Лавров возмущается, что на Евровидении украли голоса. Упоротая Россия

Depardieu drives around with a siren. Sasha Grey is giving lectures in Ekaterinburg. Lavrov is is outraged that they stole our votes on Eurovision. This country is stoned.

With over 300 retweets, the best-loved Eurovision-related quip belongs to a Twitter account called Fake_MIDRF (The Fake Foreign Affairs Ministry of the Russian Federation). That anonymous satirist mocked the country's past attempts to retaliate against perceived slights by foreigners, alluding to Russia's ban on U.S. adoptions (known as the “Dima Yakovlev law” inside Russia):

В ответ на кражу голосов на “Евровидении” у России будет принят закон Дины Гариповой о запрете концертов иностранных граждан в РФ.

In response to the theft of our votes at Eurovision, Russia will enact the Dina Garipova law, banning music concerts by foreign citizens in the Russian Federation.

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J. Otto Pohl wrote briefly [en] about the deportation that took place 69 years ago:

This Saturday is the 69th anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their peninsular homeland on the Black Sea to the deserts of Uzbekistan and the wet forests of the Urals. The NKVD rounded up almost the entire population and took them to rail stations where they were stuffed like cattle into box cars. In three days over 180,000 people had been expelled from their homes and sent on a long and arduous journey eastward. The official reason for the deportation was the false charges of treason brought against the whole population by the Stalin regime. However, the number of Crimean Tatars that fought with the Germans, about 10,000, was quite small compared to a number of other nationalities that were not subject to wholesale deportation. Upon arriving in Uzbekistan and the Urals the Crimean Tatars were placed under special settlement restrictions. On 26 November 1948, the Soviet government decreed the deportations and special settlement restrictions to be forever. The death of Stalin on 5 March 1953 brought about an eventual end of the special settlement regime and on 28 April 1956 the Soviet government freed the Crimean Tatars from these restrictions. They, however, were not allowed to return to Crimea in any significant numbers until 1987 near the very end of the Soviet regime. Even today they still face obstacles to resettling in their homeland and nearly 100,000 still remain in Uzbekistan.

A Crimean Tatar woman at the May 18 commemoration of the 1944 Crimean Tatar deportations. Photo by Andy Ignatov (used with permission).

On Facebook, Oleksandr Starish also wrote [ru] about the tragic events of 1944:

[...] Despite the fact that the Crimean Tatars were fighting in the ranks of the Red Army and participated in the guerilla movement, the basis for their deportations was an accusation of collaboration with the Third Reich.

Deportations began early in the morning of May 18 and ended on May 20, 1944. Over 32,000 NKVD troops were employed in the operation. [...]

Those Crimean Tatars who were fighting in the Red Army units, were also deported upon demobilization: in 1945-46, 8,995 Crimean Tatar war veterans were exiled [...].

[...]

Assessments of the numbers of those who died in this period vary: according to the Soviet official data, 15-25 percent died, and according to the activists of the Crimean Tatar movement, who were gathering the information about the victims in the 1960s, the figure is up to 46 percent… [...]

Starish ended his post with these words in three languages – Russian, Turkish (which is related to Crimean Tatar) and Ukrainian:

[...] I don't know if one can repent someone else's sins… But every person must bow to the memory of the innocents who were murdered… Regardless of one's ethnicity or religion… [...]

Idil P. Izmirli explained the political component of the May 18 rally in this Jamestown Foundation article [en]:

[...] Crimea differs from the rest of Ukraine because it is the only autonomous republic with its own unicameral parliament (with 100 members) and Council of Ministers, thus having a similar institutional structure to that of the Ukrainian state. Under all previous presidents of Ukraine, the planning of this May 18 Crimean Tatar Remembrance Day of Victims of the Deportation event had received considerable support from both the Crimean and the Ukrainian authorities. In fact, during these commemorative gatherings, alongside the Mejlis officials and the mufti (religious authority) of Crimea, a representative of the Ukrainian president, the head of the Crimean parliament, and the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) participated in the ceremonies. In 2013, however, under Anatoli Mogilev, the chairman of the Council of Ministers in Crimea, the governmental attitude to the Day of Remembrance has changed drastically. Mogilev was appointed by President Viktor Yanukovych in November, 2011. Insisting that he was ill, he opted out of the May 18 gatherings in 2012, marking the first time a Crimean leader did not participate in this event. Even before his appointment, Mogilev was well-known in Crimea for his anti-Tatar sentiments, his brutal order of police units (BERKUT) to attack peacefully protesting Crimean Tatar business owners in the Ai Petri hills in 2007 while he was a police chief, and his subsequent Krymskaya Pravda article (2008) in which he praised the Joseph Stalin–era deportation of the Crimean Tatars (http://www.unpo.org/article/10968).

On February 25, 2013, under Mogilev’s leadership, the Crimean authorities announced that the May 18 event needed to be approved by the Crimean Council of Ministers. Consequently, the Simferopol City Council declared that they were going to ban the annual May 18 gathering that has been organized by the Crimean Tatar Mejlis since the early 1990s. This decision of the Crimean authorities was not received well by [Mustafa Cemilev], the head of the Mejlis, who stated that Crimean Tatars will come to the Central Square in Simferopol as a large collective regardless of the ban, and if they are not allowed to hold their remembrance day, then they will block the roads, paralyze traffic, and take their protests to other regions of Crimea [...]. [...]

The May 18 commemoration of the 1944 Crimean Tatar deportations. Photo by Andy Ignatov (used with permission).

Simferopol-based journalist Zair Akadyrov wrote [ru]:

Today at the rally in Simferopol, every 100th Crimea resident has pointed Mogilev to the exit. And now imagine if every 100th Ukrainian did the same at Maidan [Independence Square] in [Ukraine's capital] Kyiv, no less… [...]

Kyiv was having its own political rallies on May 18, and even though the turnout at the opposition's event was rather high, it could still hardly match the Crimean Tatar one in genuineness and determination. Kyiv-based journalist Victor Tregubov shared a photo of the Simferopol crowd and wrote this [ru]

[...] They say, there were 35-40 thousand people, and, looking at this photo, I tend to believe this. According to various assessments, there are 270 to 340 thousand Crimean Tatars living in Crimea. It means that every 8th [Crimean Tatar] is present at this rally.

When I saw this photo, I stopped worrying about the [Crimean Tatars'] future. What can some gang [the regime] do to a nation whose every 8th representative voluntarily attends a rally devoted to national solidarity and national revival? A nation like this will overcome any kind of trouble.

As for the Ukrainians’ future, I still worry about it.

***

More photos of the Crimean Tatar May 18 rally – by Andy Ignatov, Volodymyr Prytula, and Smail Tantana.

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Gudkov posted to slideshare.net scans [ru] of the Moscow prosecutors’ official warning, as well as his own public appeal in defense of the Levada Center. In that latter text, Gudkov announced that the application of the “foreign agents” law to the Center increases the odds that it will have to discontinue its work in the near future. In the statement, he insists that foreign funding comprises at maximum just 3% of Levada’s income, and argues that the organization's scientific work does not amount to political meddling.

Russian sociologist Lev Gudkov, 26 January 2008, photo by Andrei Romanenko, CC 3.0.

Specifically, the state accuses the Levada Center of conducting political work between 2009 and 2012 in exchange for donations from a handful of prominent Western institutions, including $150 thousand from the MacArthur Foundation, $290 thousand from the Ford Foundation, and $337 thousand from the OSI Assistance Foundation. (Disclosure to readers: RuNet Echo is currently funded by the Open Society Institute.) Additionally, Levada fulfilled several market research projects between 2010 and 2013 for foreign organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (for $40 thousand) and the University of Massachusetts (for $8 thousand).

Gudkov concludes gloomily:

Следуя логике Предостережения прокуратуры, мы должны были бы прекратить выпуск нашего журнала и закрыть сайт Левада-центра, перестать публиковать, открыто комментировать и анализировать результаты наших опросов в среде специалистов и в публичном пространстве – в СМИ, на семинарах и конференциях, на что согласиться мы не можем.

Following the logic of the prosecutors’ warning, we would have to stop publishing our journal and close the Levada Center’s website, stop publishing, [stop] publicly commenting and analyzing the results of our surveys in both the professional sphere and the public space—in the media, in seminars, and at conferences. We cannot agree to this.

On the Levada Center’s Facebook page [ru], the organization has called on netizens [ru] to disseminate Gudkov’s statement, which refutes the claim that sociological work amounts to political activity. At the time of writing this article, the Center’s Facebook post has attracted 158 “likes” and 1,159 “shares.” Many prominent sociologists have also weighed in [ru], arguing against conflating sociological study and political activism. In a Facebook post [ru] that has 79 “shares” of its own, sociologist Vladimir Magun alluded to Russia’s history of Soviet crackdowns on the autonomy and integrity of science:

Какими бы словами и легалистскими аргументами эта постыдная кампания ни прикрывалась, речь идет о войне против современной науки, и ее организаторы и вдохновители должны ясно осознавать, что их имена навсегда войдут в позорный список безграмотных душителей мысли – таких, как Лысенко, Жданов или Трапезников.

Whatever words and legalistic arguments this shameful campaign is hiding behind, this is a case of war against modern science, and its organizers and masterminds should clearly realize that their names will forever be on the shameful list of crude stranglers of free thought—home to men like Lysenko, Zhdanov, or Trapeznikov.

Political analyst and former Kremlin-insider Gleb Pavlovsky wrote [ru] on Facebook to ask the heads of Russia’s other two major sociological institutes, FOM and VTsIOM, what they thought of Levada’s legal troubles. The latter’s chief, Valery Fedorov, responded [ru] an hour later to report that VTsIOM, too, has received such warnings from state prosecutors.

On Twitter, Russian Internet users competed for wittiest remark about the prosecutors’ warning to Levada. With 132 retweets, activist Ilya Yashin appears to be in the lead, having written:

ВЦИОМ и “Левада” зафиксировали снижение рейтингов Путина и ЕР. Прокуратура зафиксировала снижение шансов ВЦИОМ и “Левады” на существование.

VTsIOM and “Levada” have established a decline in the ratings of Putin and United Russia. Prosecutors have established a decline in the chances that VTsIOM and “Levada” will [continue to] exist.

In another popular post (which now enjoys 20 retweets), oppositionist Alexander Zalessky made light of the fact that Levada’s main competitors, VTsIOM and FOM, are notorious for close ties to the Kremlin:

ВЦИОМ сообщает, что после закрытия Левада-центра рейтинги Единой России за неделю выросли на 35%.

VTsIOM reports that United Russia’s [approval] rating has grown 35% in the week since the Levada Center’s closure.

Not everyone, however, has rallied to Levada’s defense. The predictably pro-Kremlin e-zine politonline.ru posted excerpts of Gudkov’s public statement, tacking on the following question [ru]:

Стоп. Директор “Левада-центра” говорит, что иностранные гранты составляют лишь жалкие крохи – от 1.5% до 3% бюджета социологической службы. Но если это такие маленькие средства – почему же “Левада-центр” не готов от них отказаться и работать дальше без статуса “иностранного агента”? Вместо этого Лев Гудков говорит о “закрытии” центра. Вам тоже кажется, что это нелогично или где-то здесь нестыковка?

Stop. The director of the Levada Center says that foreign grants amount to just a few bread crumbs—from 1.5% to 3%—of the sociological institute’s budget. But if these funds are so small, why isn’t the Levada Center ready to reject them and continue its work without the “foreign agent” status? Instead of this, Lev Gudkov is talking about the “closure” of the center. Readers, does this also seem to you a bit illogical or somehow a bit off?

Stanislav Apetian, another RuNet presence commonly associated with the anti-opposition camp, raised the same questions on Twitter, writing:

Если в доходах “Левада-центра” иностранные деньги составляют 1,5%, то почему нельзя просто от них отказаться? К чему вопли о закрытии?

If in the Levada Center’s income, foreign money is just 1.5%, then why can’t it just reject such funding? What’s the use of bawling about getting closed down?

As most of Russia’s educated, Internet-conscious citizens share their disgust about the crackdown on Levada, the organization could do more to tackle questions like Apetian’s. Is Levada’s defense that it stopped receiving foreign donations after 2012, as its Twitter account indicated in a tweet [ru] earlier today? If that’s the case, why does the prosecutors’ warning mention OSI funding into mid-January 2013, and market research for foreign clients also into 2013?

Most important in the long-run, however, is the likely chilling effect that today’s news will have on Levada’s ability to maintain both clients (and donors) and key groups of respondents for its survey research. Indeed, in an interview [ru] with Kommersant Radio today, Gudkov revealed that clients and respondents alike are already increasingly reluctant to cooperate with an organization that carries Levada’s political baggage.

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Police “detain” a soccer fan, Moscow, 18 May 2013, photo by Sergey Danilov, posted to his LJ.

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Fogle's arrest was filmed by the FSB and shown on Russian television. In the video [ru], Fogle is seen in an unconvincing blond wig and baseball cap, which are then removed by an FSB agent before Fogle is frogmarched into a waiting car. Fogle's “spy-kit” (which included two wigs, sunglasses, a compass, a cheap Nokia phone, an Atlas of Moscow, a Swiss army knife and several envelopes of 500-euro notes) is then displayed for the cameras. Later in the video, Fogle and what appear to be three of his colleagues from the Embassy are given a dressing-down by a pixilated FSB agent. In a manner strangely reminiscent of a school headmaster scolding wayward students, the agent expresses his shock and disappointment at Fogle's attempts to recruit Russian citizens, in light of the recent close cooperation of Russia with American intelligence agencies in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings.

The story catapulted the murky world of counterintelligence into the spotlight of the Russian blogosphere, where the details of the case were dissected with glee. From the start many were somewhat perplexed at Fogle's spy-kit, which seemed to come straight from an early James Bond novel.

User Best_JS [ru] quipped

Парики,черные очки и особенно–компас в Москве.Не хватает только секстанта и астролябии.ЦРУ оснащает своих агентов в магазине 99 центов?

Wigs, sunglasses and especially — a compass in Moscow. He's only missing a sextant and astrolabe. Is the CIA equipping their agents at the 99 cent store?

Tweeter user Timque [ru] also took a dim view of Fogle's spycraft.

Если наша контрразведка способна ловить только шпионов с чуть ли не надписью «ШПИОН» на лбу. То из меня бы вышел отличный агент ЦРУ!

If our counterintelligence is only capable of catching spies with the word “SPY” practically written on their forheads, then I could make an excellent CIA agent!

Fogle's alleged spy-kit generated interest for it's “low-tech” nature. YouTube Screenshot. May 17, 2013.

Somewhat surprisingly, a much more charitable appraisal [ru] of Fogle's equipment came from popular Russian tech blogger Eldar Murtazin [ru], who pointed out the pitfalls of using advanced gadgets in the world of espionage.

Начнем с самого противоречивого предмета в глазах обывателей — обычного атласа Москвы и дорог с указанием каждого дома. В век высоких технологий, когда у каждого в телефоне есть навигация и хорошие карты, это выглядит анахронизмом. А теперь давайте представим специфику работы агента, когда он не должен оставлять следов, в том числе и цифровых. Я плохо представляю себе агента, который прокладывает путь к тайнику или месту встречу в Google Maps и затем сохраняет маршрут. Этот агент должен быть конченным идиотом. Равно, как мне сложно представить как сообщить о месте встречи в электронном виде, это дополнительный риск [...] Поэтому можно долго ворчать, что разведчикам чужды новые технологии, но это не так. Эффективный способ не оставлять следов, не использовать программы навигации.

Let's start with the most controversial item in the eyes of the average person: the common Moscow road atlas with the adresses of all the buildings in it. In the high-tech era, when everyone has a phone with GPS and good maps, it seems like an anachronism. But now consider the specifics of an agent's work, when he can leave no traces, including digital ones. I can't picture the agent who looks up the way to a secret location or a meeting place on Google Maps and then saves the route. That agent would have to be a complete idiot. Similarly, it's hard for me to imagine sending information about meeting place in electronic form, this is an additional risk [...] So you can whinge all you like about intelligence agents shunning new technologies, but it isn't the case. An effective means of leaving no traces is not to use GPS.

Blogger and social media guru, Anton Nossik [ru], on the other hand, laid the blame at Americans’ inability to work with agents in human intelligence. Referencing an interview [ru] with famous Soviet defector Viktor Suvorov, Nossik claimed:

По мнению Суворова, у ЦРУ просто очень хреново поставлена агентурная работа. Потому что, с одной стороны, львиная доля разведданных собирается с помощью техсредств (спутниковая съёмка, перехват коммуникаций), а не от живых людей. С другой стороны, самые эффективные агенты на службе Америки — иностранцы, шпионящие в своих собственных странах. Которых не нужно учить маскироваться, гримироваться, носить парики, потому что их главная маскировка — реальная биография и занимаемая должность.

According to Suvorov, the CIA is simply bloody awful at working with agents. This is because, on the one hand, the lion's share of intelligence info is gathered by technical means (satelite photos, intercepted communications) and not from living people. And, on the other hand, the most effective agents in the service of America are foreigners working in their own countries, who don't need to learn to disguise themselves, apply make-up, wear wigs, because their main disguise is their real biography and the work they do.

Nossik went on to claim Fogle's alleged letter [ru] (written in awkward if grammatically correct Russian) looked like “Nigerian spam run through Google translate”.

Of course, as usual, some RuNet users saw the invisible hand of the Kremlin at work in the entire episode. As one commentator [ru] sarcastically put it

Ну, да — накладные усы, парики, шифры и прочая хуета. Почти как в кино. Не верю я в это лицедейство! Компас меня убил окончательно. Надо было еще словарь англо-русский добавить. И детскую порнографию.

Oh yeah, fake moustaches, wigs, codebooks and similar bullsh*t. Almost like in the films. I don't believe this charade. The compass was the last straw. They should have added a Russian-English dictionary. And some child porn.

Interestingly, while Fogle's competence (or lack there of) as a spy has been a hot topic of conversation, almost no attention has been paid to the potential fallout from the expulsion of a US diplomat for spying. Similarly few have bothered to speculate on why the Kremlin chose to expel Fogle now, when the Kremlin and the US are in high-level talks about Syria and intelligence-sharing. It is telling that what should normally be a major diplomatic incident now barely registers as more than an amusing anecdote for Russian netizens.

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It is unsurprising that this intolerant climate and increasingly hateful rhetoric would finally give rise to actual hate crimes. This is precisely the connection that many Russian bloggers made after learning that the three Volgograd men who were arrested for brutally murdering their drinking companion, the 23 year old Vladislav Tornovoi, on the night following the May 9th Victory Day celebrations, apparently admitted that they did so because he told them he was gay. Boris Vishnevsky blogged [ru] on the Echo Moskvy website:

Убийц, хочется верить, накажут. А кто накажет их идейных вдохновителей? Который уже год абсолютно безнаказанно разжигающих в обществе (в том числе, с использованием парламентской трибуны) вражду и ненависть по признакам сексуальной ориентации? Принимающих безумные законы о запрете «пропаганды гомосексуализма»?

I want to believe that the killers will be punished. But who will punish the ideological instigators? [Those who] for many years have, with impunity, (and with the use of a parliamentary pulpit) spread hate and enmity based on sexual orientation? [Those who] adopt insane laws banning “propaganda of homosexuality?”

One of Tornovoi's murderers (on right) describes to the police how exactly he committed the crime. YouTube screenshot, May 17, 2013.

The homophobic motives for the murder are seemingly supported by the fact that after brutally beating Tornovoi the men undressed him and forced empty beer bottles into his rectum, leading the journalist Alexander Timofeevsky to comment [ru] on his Facebook account:

Интересно, понимают ли депутаты Госдумы, шумно, с пиаром моральной позициии принимающие сейчас закон против пропаганды гомосексуализма, что эти пивные бутылки – “две вошли полностью, а третья лишь частично” – подброшены, в сущности, ими?

I wonder, do the State Duma deputies, who while noisily advertising their moral position are right now passing a law banning the propaganda of homosexuality, understand that these beer bottles – “two entered fully, and the third partially” – were basically given [to the murderers] by them?

Others blamed the murder not on Russia's homophobic parliamentarians, but simply on the homophobia endemic to Russian society, according to one theory mainly as the result of a large former inmate population and the associated stigma of homosexuality. DemVybor's Deputy Chairman and prolific blogger Kirill Shulika wrote [ru]:

Гомофобия? Может быть, но только связана она с тем, что собутыльники этого гея сидели. В России вообще гомофобия связана с тем, что полстраны сидело или знает тех, кто сидел. [...] Гомофобия Мизулиной и Милонова имеет совсем другую цель. Она рассчитана как раз на активистов протестного движения [...] с целью отвлечения их внимания от реальных проблем.

Homophobia? Maybe, but it is tied to the fact that the drinking buddies of this gay person were former inmates. In general, in Russia homophobia is tied to the fact that half the country has done time or knows someone who's done time. [...] Mizulina and [St. Petersburg deputy and champion of the original bans on propaganda of homosexuality] Milonov's homophobia has a completely different goal. It is geared towards activists of the protest movement with the goal of distracting them from real problems.

A similar point was made by journalist Andrey Gromov [ru], and publicist Pavel Sviatenkov [ru], who also blamed prison culture where homosexuality is widely practiced, and yet homosexuals are considered to be a lower caste. Because such conduct is often part of power relations in prison society, Sviatenkov says:

С точки зрения блатной философии, позорно быть пассивным гомосексуалистом, «петухом». Зато активный гомосексуалист воспринимается как «настоящий пасан».

From the point of view of criminal philosophy its is shameful to be a passive homosexual, a “rooster.” But an active homosexual is considered a “real man.”

Vladislav Tornovoi's VKontakte photograph.

The question of what constitutes homosexuality was at the forefront of reporting on Tornovoi's death, especially after bloggers found his VKontakte page [ru]. Tornovoi appears to be a fairly regular guy, and a fan of the popular rap group Kasta, which led Anton Krasovsky, a TV personality who recently came out on television and was summarily dismissed from his position, to note that he was a “common gopnik” [in modern Russian the term gopnik [ru], the etymology of which is contested, is closest to the British chav in meaning]. Tornovoi's friends were also quick to jump to his “defense” [ru] on YouTube, claiming that they “didn't notice” anything homosexual [ru] about him. In an article [ru] published several days after the murder in the Echo Moskvy affiliated online newspaper Publicpost, these friends claimed that because Tornovoi “liked girls” and because he never had an erection while visiting the public baths with them, he simply could not be gay.

These claims were picked up on by nationalist/conservative blogger Natalia Kholmogorova, who insinuated [ru] that it was the murderers who were gay:

Несколько мужчин набрасываются на одного, имитируют извращенный половой акт с ним, совершают садистские манипуляции с его половыми органами (пардон за подробности), затем убивают. [...] Это не “гомофобы поймали и замучили бедного гея” – это группа садистов совершила над своей жертвой гомосексуальное насилие.

Several men attack one, imitate a perverse sexual act with him, sadistically manipulate his sexual organs (sorry for the details), then kill him.  [...] This isn't “homophobes caught and tortured a poor gay” – it's a group of sadists who perpetrated homosexual violence on their victim.

Regardless of such loopy, homophobic opinions, if Tornovoi was not actually gay, then his murderers had to have made up the fact that he told them that he was. This worries Alexander Timofeevsky, because it might mean that Russian homophobia is even worse than we thought:

Это обозначает, что, на их взгляд, гомосексуальность жертвы является смягчающм, если не извиняющим, мотивом. Типа, пидаров убивать сам Бог велел. Вот и депутат Елена Мизулина, важная женщина из Москвы, по телевизору говорит, что им нет оправдания.

This means that they think that homosexuality of a victim is a mitigating, if not exonerating, motive. As in, killing fags is the natural order of things. Look at deputy Elena Mizulina, an important woman from Moscow, who says on TV that their [the homosexuals'] behavior can't be excused.

Written by Andrey Tselikov · comments (4)
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Maria Baronova at a Moscow protest, 17 April 2013, photo by Nickolay Vinokurov, copyright © Demotix.

Sexism, locked and loaded

This week has been unusually cruel to women on Russian Twitter. In addition to the wave of sexist jokes that washed up after the RuNet learned about film star Angelina Jolie’s preventative double mastectomy, many Russian netizens took Baronova’s sexual revelations as an invitation to attack her specifically and female public figures more broadly.

Some of the insults came from the usual suspects, like tabloid editor Ashot Gabrelyanov, who proposed [ru] on Twitter that Jolie auction off for charity her removed breasts on eBay. Also joining the fun, however, was one of Pussy Riot’s lawyers—the infamously unpleasant Mark Feygin—who mused in a (now deleted) tweet:

Кстати сказать, насчет сисек Джоли, может это она операцию по изменению пола прикрывает. Трансгендеры отрезают. А чо?

By the way, regarding Jolie’s tits, maybe she’s using this to cover up a sex change operation. Transgenders slice off. Hey now.

Indeed, Feygin was on a roll. Commenting on Baronova’s open letter just a day before, he wrote in a tweet (that he has not deleted):

По поводу одного широко обсуждаемого сейчас текста, маленькая ремарка: …и это, пожалуй, всё, чему она научилась…

Regarding a certain now widely discussed text, [I have] one tiny remark: … this [fellatio], if you will, is the only thing she learned…

Lev Sharansky (a satirist personality run anonymously) quipped with open-ended sexism:

Вчера Баронова, сегодня Джоли. С ужасом жду завтра.

Yesterday Baronova, today Jolie. I await tomorrow with horror.

Others decided to broaden their aim and take shots at different prominent Russian women. Anna Veduta, opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s press secretary, found herself in Twitter user berdnikov’s crosshairs:

Анна Ведута более воспитанная девушка, чем Мария Баронова, поэтому она не расскажет нам чему она научилась у Алексея Навального

Anna Veduta is a better-raised young woman than Maria Barnova, therefore she doesn’t tell us what she’s learned from Alexey Navalny.

One of the many demotivators that appeared, following Baronova's open letter.

Demotivators soon popped up online, such as an image [ru] featuring Limonov above the text: “He taught Maria Baronova to suck dick. And what have you done today?” Another popular mash-up (see image to the right), which Baronova herself retweeted, included a photo of her riding a scooter below another picture of a blonde woman sitting in an expensive convertible. The caption is the Karl Marx quote: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” (The joke is that Baronova’s “ability” only earned her a scooter, rather than a sports car.)

Bringing in Baronova’s one-time boss, Duma Deputy Ilya Ponomarev (who himself retweeted [ru], rather strangely, Baronova’s line about masturbating in the shower), Twitter user fuckdaoutlaw asked:

Почему Пономарев Илья не научил свою помощницу Баронову сосать х%й?

Why didn’t Ilya Ponomarev teach his assisant Baronova to suck d**k?

Twitter user rusrusdada expanded the attack on Baronova into a jibe at the entire protest movement, writing:

На самом деле, Баронова из всей Болотной тусовки вызывает уважение. Она единственная честно призналась, что сосет. Другие тоже, но скрывают

In truth, Baronova, apart from the whole Bolotnaya [oppositionist] clique, deserves respect. She alone has honestly confessed that she sucks. The others suck, too, but they conceal it.

The LJ cesspool

On LiveJournal, where an absence of character limits accompanies the bravery of online anonymity, commentary was more substantive, but no less harsh.

A May 14 post [ru] by music critic Artem Rondarev functioned as a sort of beacon for Baronova’s critics, many of whom argued vociferously that politics is no place for raunchy women. In the comments to his post, Rondarev explained [ru] his position on Baronova’s lack of sexual modesty in her public prose, interpreting her lewdness as an endorsement of anarchy:

[…] в случае с Машей я всего лишь попытался объяснить ту простую мысль, что нельзя жить в обществе и быть свободным от него. Оно может не нравиться и все такоэ, но дилемма простая – или в обществе с конвенциями, или в Сомали. Потому что, видите ли, завтра у вас над головой сосед ночью врубит рэп на полную катушку, а когда вы ему придете предъявлять, скажет, что это его способ самовыражения, а вы ханжа, которая спит по ночам, в то время как все свободные люди слушают рэп. Ну и?

[…] in the case of Masha, I just tried to explain the simple idea that it’s impossible to live in society and [simultaneously] be free from it. One might not like everything about it, but the dilemma is simple: it’s either society with its conventions, or you’re in Somalia. Because, you see, tomorrow you’ll have an upstairs neighbor blasting rap music all night long at top volume, and when you go up to confront him, he’ll say that this is his means of self-expression, and you’re just a prude who sleeps at night, while all the free people listen to rap. Well?

In another comment [ru] on Rondarev’s post, LiveJournal user pervert_tanuki called Baronova “a furious attention whore,” to which Rondarev responded [ru] less than charitably:

Опять-таки – я не ищу тут мотивацию Маши, она очевидно лежит неглубоко […] Понятно, что девушке хочется трахаться; меня интересует, грубо говоря, почему подобным девушкам все время хочется именно трахаться, а не книжки читать.

Again—I’m not searching for Masha’s motivation. She’s obviously shallow […] It’s understandable that a young woman wants to screw; I’m interested, to put it crudely, in why similar girls always want precisely to screw, and not to read books.

Several bloggers have concluded that Baronova’s vulgarity damages any chances she has at a career [ru] in politics. In separate posts on LiveJournal, user haeldar [ru] and Google+ user mc project [ru] proposed a scenario thirty years in the future, where Baronova is now a Duma deputy serving a post-Putin Russian democracy. According to the plot, the now stately Baronova proposes some piece of moralist legislation (for example, banning sex robots), only to remind the public that “Maria Baronova in her youth was not above getting fucked in every hole.”

Even Kirill Goncharov, leader of the youth wing of Russia’s oldest liberal political party, joked on Twitter:

Я так понимаю, сегодня Маша Баронова публично закончила заниматься политикой?

So, as I understand it, Masha Baronova today publicly ceased to be involved in politics?

Twitter user VRebyata also resonated the idea that Baronova’s bawdiness causes problems for women in government, writing:

Баронова всколыхнула твиттер. Теперь самым популярным вопросом к женщинам – политикам будет вопрос об их отношении к книгам Эдуарда Лимонова

Baronova stirred up Twitter. Now the most popular question to female politicians will be the question about their relationship to Eduard Limonov’s books

In one comment thread [ru] on LiveJournal, a group of netizens even thought it fair to compare Baronova’s talk of oral sex to Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s participation in a public orgy. They even connected Baronova and Tolokonnikova to Cicciolina, the famed pornstar and member of the Italian parliament in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Baronova’s guile?

Not everyone deplored Baronova for her letter to Limonov, however. Many bloggers seemed willing to accept that her use of vulgarity was a cunning, if shrewd, ploy to gain an audience. Indeed, Norway-based Facebook user Andrew Voronkov observed [ru]:

Если бы она про это не написала, то многие бы и не прочитали бы статью.

If she hadn’t written about it [fellatio], then many people would not have read the article.

Poland-based LJ user Andrei Karatkevich enumerated [ru] four justifications for Baronova’s scandalous word choice:

1. Содержимое текста отнюдь не сводится к сосанию хуя, хотя все цитируют именно эту фразу.
2. С другой стороны, девушка, очевидно, понимала, что цитировать будут именно это.
3. …как из романа “это я, Эдичка” чуть менее чем все помнят сцену сосания хуя негру… и ничего больше.
4. А научил-то он её вещи нужной и полезной…

1. The contents of the text cannot be reduced just to sucking dick, though everyone is quoting exactly that phrase.
2. On the other hand, the girl obviously understood that everyone would quote exactly that.
3. [Limonov’s] novel “It’s Me, Eddie” is remembered more than anything for the scene where he sucks the dick of a black man … and nothing more.
4. And he [Limonov] taught her things necessary and useful…

Even some of Baronova’s critics felt compelled to acknowledge her letter’s publicity success. In a long response [ru] published the day after Baronova’s text, Pavel Zherebin (a member of Limonov’s NatsBol movement) offered the following measured praise:

Статья эта станет знаменитой, ведь Мария применила нехитрый прием – эпатаж с отсылками к сугубо сексуальным вопросам. До сих пор политическая публицистика была свободна от подобных методов форсированного продвижения своих идей. Поэтому Марии можно только поаплодировать – она храбрый новатор, которая решилась не просто на то, чтобы наполнить свою статью до краев женской гендерностью, но и на то, чтобы эту гендерность выразить прямым текстом в самых искренних и волнующих выражениях.

This article will become famous because Maria used an ingenuous approach—a shocking tone that touches on extremely sexual issues. Until now, political journalism was free from promoting its ideas by such methods. Therefore, we can only applaud Maria—she’s a brave innovator who decided not just to fill her article to the edges with female genderness, but also to express that genderness in plain speak, in the most sincere and exciting expressions.

Maria Baronova, Moscow, 25 August 2012, photo by Anton Nossik, CC 2.0.

In a comment [ru] on Rondarev’s blog, Baronova herself confirmed that she consciously employed gender as a means to generate a larger dialogue (about both Limonov and women in contemporary Russian politics):

Цель письма – получить от общества реакцию и расшевелить его, это общество. По большей части реакционное и консервативное. Цель вполне достигнута. Тонны говна и хихиканий: “ПИПИИИСЬКА” – получены. Дальше люди обсуждают. Дисскусия возникла. Каждый, в итоге придет, к чему-то своему. И мне от того, что люди поймут что-то важное (и каждый глубоко свое), будет приятно. End of story

The purpose of the letter was to get a reaction from the public and rattle it up. This society is mostly reactionary and conservative. My goal has been reached entirely. I got tons of shit and chuckles: “WEEEENIE.” From there, [though], people discuss. A discussion arose. Eventually, everyone comes to something all their own, and for me it’s nice that people will realize something important (and something deeply their own). End of story.

Not everyone is a hater

Many bloggers, of course, refused to attack Baronova, and some rallied to her defense. Journalist Arina Kholina, for instance, credited her in a Facebook post [ru] with capturing the collective experience of a generation of Russian women:

Не знаю, зачем все ругают Машу Баронову. Она была честна. Книга Лимонова про Эдичку, правда, была одним из сексуальных переживаний подросткового возраста. Особенно после СССР. Маше хватило смелости написать об этом. Пусть немного коряво. Может, конечно, особенно взрослые или умные читали совсем о другом, но мне было лет 16 и я думала про секс. И да – в каком-то смысле она была учебником. Наверное, если бы Маша написала, что книга научила ее шить кружевные рубашки, все бы умилились. А она, вот бесстыдница, про минет.

I don’t know why everyone is ripping into Masha Baronova. She was being honest. Limonov’s book about Eddie, it’s true, was one of the sexual experiences of adolescence. Especially after the USSR. Masha had the courage the write about it. Okay, it turned out a little clumsy. Maybe, of course, particularly mature or intelligent people read about something entirely different, but when I was 16-years-old, I was thinking about sex. And, yes, in a sense, it was a sort of textbook. Probably, if Masha had written that the book taught her how to sew a lace shirt [another part of It’s Me, Eddie], everyone would just melt for her. But she, without shame, wrote about blowjobs.

Opposition activist Ilya Yashin tried to relocate the focus of RuNet mockery to government officials, tweeting:

Надеюсь, депутат Бурматов никогда не будет писать открытых писем Вячеславу Володину. Не хочу знать, чему он его научил.

I hope [Duma] Deputy Burmatov never writes an open letter to [First Deputy Chief of Putin’s Staff] Viacheslav Volodin. I don’t want to know what he [Volodin] taught him.

Vera Kichanova, one of the opposition’s youngest figures, tweeted innocently:

А меня Лимонов только матом ругаться научил.

Limonov only taught me to curse [in obscenities].

Russia after blowjobs

One day after publishing her open letter, Baronova granted an interview [ru] to Daria Yausheva of jourdom.ru, where she addressed the backlash to her explicit sexual language:

Как сегодня написал Евгений Фельдман: «Лимонов научил сосать х** Баронову, а Путин – всю страну». Опять же, мужчина может писать о сексе достаточно свободно, а для женщин в России это по-прежнему – полузапретная тема. Тем более, если ты вовлечена в политику, то должна все время соблюдать некие рамки в которых, на самом деле, уже давно никто не живет.

It’s like Evgeny Feldman wrote [ru] today: “Limonov taught Baronova to suck d**k, but Putin taught the whole country.” Once again, a man can write about sex quite freely, but for women in Russia it’s still a semi-prohibited topic. Especially if you’re involved in politics, [you, as a woman,] must at all times observe certain confines, within which, in fact, nobody has lived for a long time.

Baronova identifies a cultural contradiction that is hardly unique to Russia. Certainly, the perseverance of sexist “confines” plagues societies the world over, no matter how developed or humane the civilization. The Internet response to Baronova’s talk of sex, whether one reads her text as a raised fist to patriarchy or a frivolous attempt at self-promotion, reveals that prejudices against freewheeling women enjoy widespread popularity among Russian netizens. That said, Baronova’s own audacity over the last 18 months—and the prospect of decades more to follow—promises to keep Russia’s male chauvinists busy indeed.

Written by Kevin Rothrock · comments (3)
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At the center of the feds' probe [ru] is Duma Deputy and anti-Putin protest movement leader Ilya Ponomarev, who earned a surprising $750,000 [ru] for his outreach (see below) and planning work for Skolkovo between 2010 and 2012.

In the last two months, Ponomarev’s Skolkovo income has attracted growing national media attention, but the issue has been percolating [ru] on the RuNet since last year. On September 23, 2012 (in response to a scandal involving registration fees for elections to the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition), Ponomarev first addressed the large sum of money he earned from Skolkovo, writing [ru] on LiveJournal:

Про доходы. Моя декларация есть в открытом доступе. Я никогда не жаловался на доходы. За последний год я получил как депутат около 2 млн. рублей, и еще около 7 млн. получил как гонорары за поддержку инновационных проектов по линии Фонда Сколково.

About my income. My declaration is accessible to all. [See here for Ponomarev's 2006-2012 records.] I’ve never wanted for earnings. In the last year, I made 2 million rubles as a Duma deputy, and I earned another 7 million rubles ($225,000) in honoraria for supporting the Skolkovo Foundation’s various innovation projects.

Suspicious minds

Many bloggers reacted to these figures with suspicion. Vadim Skvortsov, for instance, highlighted Ponomarev’s apparently unique advisor position under Skolkovo President Viktor Vekselberg, writing [ru]:

Что-то мне подсказывает, что такие денежки идут частенько прямиком на финансирование антипутинских акций “болотной” либерально-анархической оппозиции.

Something tells me that such money goes directly toward financing the anti-Putin demonstrations of the “Bolotnaya” liberal-anarchist opposition.

Earlier that year in March, a Lithuania-based blogger named skolkovo_eu also raised the idea [ru] that Vekselberg was financing the opposition through Skolkovo, linking to an article [ru] in the online tabloid wek.ru titled “Viktor Vekselberg Funds Ponomarev’s ‘Million Man March’?”

An artist's impression of Ilya Ponomarev's radical politics. Remixed by author from Alberto Korda's iconic 1960 photo of Che Guevara.

On April 19, 2013, a day after police raided the offices of Skolkovo’s management, the Investigative Committee opened [ru] a criminal case against the fund’s senior vice president, Alexey Beltiukov, for embezzling money through Skolkovo’s contracts with Ponomarev. Over the next twenty-four hours, the story developed in several directions online, focusing mainly on (1) continued suspicions about Ponomarev’s large honoraria, and (2) a debate about whether or not Skolkovo serves as a funnel for state sponsorship of the opposition. Much of the controversy surrounding the high income is that almost half ($300,000) was compensation for just ten lectures, meaning that Ponomarev earned roughly $10,000 for each talk, some of which lasted less than twenty minutes. Investigators even allege [ru] that he may not have attended one of these presentations in Tomsk in October 2011 (though there is photographic evidence to the contrary, and Ponomarev did “check-in” from the event’s location, using Foursquare).

Ponomarev & friends fight back

On April 20, writing on LiveJournal, Ponomarev responded [ru] to investigators’ accusations, defending the size of his contracts and arguing that the state saved money by hiring him instead of outsourcing the labor to private firms. While his Skolkovo deal formally concerned a lecture series, Ponomarev insists that far more was included in the work:

Мероприятий было гораздо больше, но меня Фонд изначально предупредил, что надо отчитываться небольшим количеством из них, которые проходили в открытом режиме, и каждое из которых смогут подтвердить свидетели в ходе неминуемых проверок.

There were far more events, but the Foundation from the start warned me that we needed to give an account of [only] a small number—the ones open to the public, so witnesses could confirm each of these events during inevitable [future] audits.

On April 19, another Duma deputy on LiveJournal, LDPR’s Igor Lebedev, posted scans [ru] supposedly containing excerpts of Ponomarev’s Skolkovo contracts. (Ponomarev says the scans are fake.) What Lebedev published accounts for about 80% of the $750,000 work, which Ponomarev allegedly described in a March 2011 letter to Beltiukov as “scientific research.” On the subject of qualifications, questions remain about Ponomarev’s academic credentials, given that he had not completed his higher education at the time of the contracted work. (He returned for a degree in 2011, after a 14-year hiatus.)

Because of Skolkovo’s mysterious recordkeeping, the public is free either to take on faith or reject Ponomarev’s claim that his work for the government was honest. Skolkovo’s puzzling approach to contracted labor seems to have stemmed from fears that a more straightforward, transparent approach would make it vulnerable to state inspectors. Ironically, it’s the absence of a clear paper trail that now incriminates the project.

Some bloggers have tried to piece together the various input costs that Ponomarev would have incurred in his travels inside Russia and abroad (he visited a dozen foreign countries in connection with Skolkovo work). On April 20, 2013, California-based software engineer Yuri Panchul (a self-confessed admirer [ru] of Ponomarev) estimated the likely costs of the Skolkovo-related business trips throughout the United States, concluding [ru] that any Silicon Valley executive would not have taken the contract for less than $1 million. Regarding probable travel and hospitality expenses (which Ponomarev claims to have paid using his honoraria), Panchul argues that costs were as high as $700,000, meaning that Ponomarev’s real salary was only about $50,000.

Clan warfare then & now

Others on the RuNet have been less inclined to believe that Ponomarev’s income was all lost to unreported expenses. On April 22, 2013, Kremlin-sympathetic blogger Nikolai Starikov tried to connect Ponomarev’s Skolkovo work to foreign political interference [ru], implying a plot [ru] between Westerners and certain government insiders:

Нас еще ждут отставки и весьма интересные повороты сюжета. Ведь наша «оппозиция», а вернее говоря, их западные друзья и кураторы были уверены, что им удастся не допустить прихода Путина на пост президента. А, значит, все эти «шалости» останутся покрытыми тайной и туманом. И тот факт, что государственные структуры оплатят протесты против государства, так никто и не узнает.

Но вот эту правду про истинное назначение денег Илья Пономарев никогда не скажет. И предпочтет выглядеть банальным жуликом и вором.

We can look forward to resignations and some quite interesting plot twists. Indeed, our “opposition”—or better said, our opposition’s Western friends and sponsors—were sure they’d succeed in stopping Putin’s return to the presidency. That means that all these “antics” will remain covered in secrets and mist. And nobody realizes the fact that state structures are paying for protests against the state.

But Ilya Ponomarev will never reveal this truth about the money’s real purpose. He’d rather look like a common thief.

In July 2010, when Russian politics was still caught in a feverish debate about whether Medvedev or Putin would run for president in 2012, LiveJournal user _iga taunted Ponomarev on his blog, arguing [ru] that the Skolkovo project amounted to a retirement plan for Medvedev, sealing his fate as a one-term president. Ponomarev disagreed, writing [ru]:

думаю, строго наоборот – этот проект является заявкой Медведева на второй срок

I think it’s exactly the opposite. This project [Skolkovo] is Medvedev’s bid for a second term.

Almost three years later, in the immediate aftermath of the Investigative Committee’s raids on Skolkovo, Ponomarev’s thoughts about the innovation center’s place in Russian politics have changed. Whereas Skolkovo was Medvedev’s executive calling card in July 2010, Ponomarev now sees politics as an intrusion on the project:

Я не склонен оценивать происходящее как борьбу Путина с Медведевым. Но думаю, мы являемся свидетелями борьбы консервативного клана (условного кооператива Озеро) с условными либералами в правительстве. Мне не нравятся они оба. Но второй клан хотя бы что-то делает, чтобы разорвать зависимость России от нефти и газа. Первый клан устраивает статус кво, и он сознательно рушит все начинания, которые могут его поколебать.

I’m not inclined to see events as a battle between Putin and Medvedev, but I do think that we’re witnessing a battle between the conservative clan (your Ozero co-op) and your various liberals in the government. I don’t like either of them, but the second clan is at least doing something to break Russia’s dependence on oil and gas. The former clan is satisfied with the status quo, and it consciously destroys all endeavors that might shake it.

Written by Kevin Rothrock · comments (1)
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Bilozerska's victory turned sour and a scandal ensued in the UaNet soon after Ukrainian journalist Mustafa Nayyem, a member of The Bobs’ international jury panel this year, announced [uk] the results of the contest on his Facebook page. Andriy Manchuk, editor-in-chief of the left-wing Ukrainian online publication Liva.com.ua, contacted [ru] Nayyem almost immediately, alerting him to Bilozerska's views on certain political and social issues, and expressing concern that she had been chosen “to represent Ukraine at ‘a global blog contest'.”

A screenshot of Olena Bilozerska's award-winning blog entry at the Bobs website.

Manchuk claimed that Bilozerska was using her blog to cover the activities of Ukraine's ultra-right activists and organizations, and that she herself shared ultra-right views. In his letter to Nayyem, Manchuk quoted from Bilozerska's blog [uk] to support his claims.

• On the ultra-right activists’ torchlight procession against foreign students (mostly Arab, Chinese, and African) studying at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (2008):
  

  [...] I consider the action correct and necessary. I am not sure if, as a result, some of the foreigners will understand that they are guests here, that they do not own the place, but maybe they will, at least, give it some thought.

• On “internationalism” (2007):
  

  [...] [Jedem das Seine!] Seriously and without jokes, though, about my attitude to [black people] – it's all simple. I am neutral to those of them who don’t live in Ukraine. Those who live here are a real threat to Ukraine. But at the present stage of historical development, this threat is far from being the main one. When a bear is pushing its way into your house, it is not time to poison the mice.

• On Hitler (2009):
  

  By the way, I'll say something provocative now: monuments to Hitler will be erected. Of course, not in Kyiv, but somewhere in Berlin.

A well-known Ukrainian left-wing activist Oleksandr Volodarsky (aka shiitman; more on him in this GV post) supported Manchuk in his blog post [ru] entitled “Liberals, Bloggers, Nazis”:

[...] One must not collaborate in any way with Nazis and racists, even with “moderate” racists. [...] And even a blind and deaf idiot knows that Bilozerska has earned her journalistic capital by being a mouthpiece for the ultra-rights. [...]

On May 11, Manchuk launched a web petition [ru], urging Deutsche Welle to revoke Olena Bilozerska's victory at The Bobs:

[She] advocates racist and other anti-democratic discriminatory views, which is strictly forbidden by [the contest’s rules] and offends Ukrainian bloggers and other Internet users.

So far, nearly 460 people have signed this petition.

Bilozerska’s supporters have started an alternative web petition [uk], which now has nearly 380 signatures:

[...] two or three people, who have been biased against Olena for a long time, have launched a dirty online campaign against her [...]. [...] Olena vehemently opposes the current regime, she works for the revival of independent Ukraine, and the information agency “Next to You,” which she heads as the editor-in-chief, collaborates with well-known human rights organisations in Ukraine. [...]

Nayyem wrote [ru] that he had already contacted Deutsche Welle about Bilozerska's case and the official position would be announced as quickly as possible.

Bilozerska herself noticed the scandal only on May 10 and posted this response [uk] on her blog:

[...] Obviously, they hope that I will start making excuses now. There's no way I will, of course. I state clearly who I am in my LJ profile: “An independent journalist with right-wing views, who is not affiliated with any party or organization.” I have never changed or hidden my views. Naturally, I'm neither a Nazi, nor a fascist. Moreover, I believe that either there are no Nazis or fascists in modern Ukraine – or I know nothing about their existence. [...]

Later, Bilozerska added a few words about Manchuk and the rest of her opponents:

[...] The rats are late! They must have ratted on me earlier, when my blog just got into The Bobs finals.

Now I am the winner, no matter what happens next.

If the DW management decides not to annul the contest’s results, the rats will eat dirt and understand that they have done some [promo] work for me gratis.

If they do decide to annul, the reputation of the contest's organizers will suffer, whereas mine won't. Because those who know and read me will continue to know and read me, and there'll be even more of them. Another loud scandal will take place, and journalists will write about it, and I will not pay a penny for [the publicity] again :) [...]

One of the problems with Bilozerska's case is that for the past three years she has been something of a Ukrainian freedom of speech suppression symbol. She features regularly in journalists’ rights statements on Ukraine, including those issued by the Reporters Without Borders and GV's Threatened Voices project. The Ukrainian media, too, use Bilozerska's reports relatively often. All this makes it more difficult to find the right solution for this right-wing journalist/blogger's case.

Written by Oleg Shynkarenko · comments (6)
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A previous attempt to organize a gay pride parade failed in May 2012, when the event was cancelled shortly before it was to begin and one of its organizers, Svyatoslav Sheremet [ru], was beaten by a group of masked men. Judging from the online reactions that began to appear as soon as the upcoming Equality March was announced [uk] in the Ukrainian media at the end of April, things may not go very smoothly this year as well.

On Facebook, the pro-Equality March event [uk, ru], created on April 30, has slightly over 120 users who have signed up to attend, whereas one of the anti-March events [uk, ru], created on May 10 by a member of one of the parliamentary opposition parties, already has 195 potential attendees.

The latter event – “Let's Stop ‘Gay Propaganda'!” – is the initiative of Oleksandr Aronets, a Kyiv-based member of VO Svoboda (which, ironically, translates as the All-Ukrainian Union “Freedom”). This far-right party won over 10 percent of the vote in the Oct. 28 election, becoming the fourth largest political force represented in the Ukrainian Parliament, with 37 seats (a GV text about it here).

On April 30, Aronets began his anti-Equality March campaign with this Facebook post [uk]:

“The equality march in defense of the gays” will not take place in Kyiv! Very soon, Ukrainians will start preparing to resist the attempts to impose these perversions on us! Resistance will take place on all fronts, physical as well as intellectual! Politicians as well as public figures, writers, the clergy and ordinary Ukrainians will stand up against it, arriving from all over [Ukraine] to Kyiv to defend the traditional family values! Liberal fascism shall not pass! [...]

Nearly two weeks later, the discussion of Aronets’ post still continues. There are now over 700 comments, and while many of them are about the upcoming Equality March, there are plenty of those that address VO Svoboda's aggressively paternalist stance as well. Below is a small selection of these comments.

Ivan Spryn wrote [uk]:

[...] Aren't you sick and tired of shouting slogans left and right? “Shall not pass!”, “liberal fascism!” [...] These constant cliches and slogans aren't doing you any good, but are instead equating you to the communists who never did anything but yell, “let's fulfill the five-year plan in three years!” It's time to outgrow demagoguery and start doing your job quietly.

Igor Nezgodnyj mentions [uk] VO Svoboda's recent legislative initiative to ban abortions in Ukraine (GV text is here):

I've noticed one thing: the worse the situation in the country is, the more [VO Svoboda] is attacking women – proposing to send them to jail for seven years for abortions – as well as gays and lesbians and others – those who aren't as scary and dangerous as [President Viktor Yanukovych]. [...]

Andrew Gizhko wrote [uk]:

One should defend family values in one's own family. If they are endangered by a peaceful gay rally, then they are not values, but an imitation [of values].

Olena Skripka wrote [uk]:

And why aren't you saving Ukrainians from drug addiction and alcoholism? Are gays really Ukraine's biggest problem?! And in general, are they a problem to anyone? Maybe it would be better if you set up sports facilities [in Kyiv's districts of Troyeshchyna and Borshchahivka]? Or you could at least come over [to these districts] to see how many young people are ruining their lives. [Instead], you act like thugs.

Viktoriya Kozlova wrote [uk]:

[...] Don't you feel you're wasting the trust of those people who voted for you in the last election? There are enough real problems in the country, but you, just like the Russian government, are re-orienting the public attention to gays… [...]

Timur HappyBoy Levchuk wrote [uk]:

Looking at the comments, I have only one question: doesn't [...] VO Svoboda realize that most voters expect truly high-quality and useful actions from them [...], not some pathetic populism?

Nataliia Mamitko wrote [uk]:

Ukraine faces many problems in various areas (medicine, economy, education), corruption and chaos are everywhere, and yet VO Svoboda has decided to fight the country's greatest evil – the gays… You didn't have to go to Parliament for that, let alone the fact that it's a violation of human rights.

Aronets chose to reply this [uk] to Mamitko:

[...] Propaganda of various perversions is a violation of human rights!

Viktoriya Kozlova attempted to reason [uk] with Aronets, reminding him that he was making statements on behalf of the political party that many Ukrainians put their trust in last fall, and Aronets, in his turn, reminded her [uk] that VO Svoboda had never been a gay-friendly force in the past:

Viktoriya, where were you one, two or three years ago? Every year we put up resistance to perverts, and we aren't making a secret of it! So don't tell me that “some people put their trust in us”…

Journalist Kateryna Avramchuk wrote this [uk] about VO Svoboda's choice of opponents:

Don't you think that the real perversion is when people like [President Yanukovych, First Vice PM Serhiy Arbuzov and PM Mykola Azarov] are in power, and not homosexuality? You'd be better off if you paid a visit to [Yanukovych at his Mezhyhirya residence] and “put up resistance on all fronts” to that pervert who is hiding behind the fence there… [...]

Aronets replied [uk] to Avramchuk, rehearsing the points he later elaborated on in the lengthy manifesto [uk] posted on the anti-Equality March event page:

First, they'll “just take a walk,” the way it was in Europe, too…, then they'd like us to give them the right to get married, then the right to adopt children, then they'll be setting churches on fire! (the way it was in Norway), and then they'll be filing criminal lawsuits, the way it happened with one priest who was reading the Bible… I don't know what will happen next, but I don't want them to “just take a walk” in Ukraine…

Aronets’ comments sound almost tolerant compared to some of what people write on the anti-Equality March event page. But since it's an open venue, peaceful voices are heard there as well every now and then. Olha Chayko wrote this [uk], for example:

Why beat anyone? I've always suspected that overly aggressive people, who condemn something [theatrically], definitely have something shameful about themselves to conceal… [And those tools that can be turned into improvised weapons would serve much better at summer houses in the countryside.]

Written by Veronica Khokhlova · comments (2)
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While it is commonly assumed that Surkov fell from grace a year earlier, when he was replaced as the powerful Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration by Vyacheslav Volodin, and given a post many viewed as a demotion, he was also thought to still be immune to political travails. And so, the RuNet reacted to his resignation with equal parts of disbelief, glee and worry.

As illustrated by this meme, Surkov is often credited with creating Russia's current party system — a set of false alternatives to United Russia. Anonymous image widely distributed online.

The glee is easy to explain — to the opposition Surkov is the architect of Russia's repressive political system, in short, a villain. Other Russia's Eduard Limonov was particularly ecstatic [ru]:

Нацболы радуются падению этого типа, поскольку с 2005 года он возглавлял гонения на нас (возможно и раньше,но в феврале 2005-го он создал организацию “Наши”, основной целью которой определил борьбу против Национал-Большевистской партии). [...] то что наш  заклятый враг в настоящее время лишился власти, – отлично. [...] Сегодня мы  выпьем за его уход. Гип-гип-ура!

The natzbols are happy for the fall of this guy, since he has headed our persecution from 2005 on (maybe even earlier, but in February of 2005 he created the NASHI organization, the main purpose of which he made the struggle against the National Bolshevik party). [...] the fact that our sworn enemy is currently out of power, is great. [...] Today we drink to his leaving. Hip hip hooray!

But then, why the worry? As Afisha's editor-in-chief Ilya Krasilshchik quipped [ru]:

вот и дожили до момента, когда увольнение суркова воспринимается как что-то плохое.

and so we've lived to see the moment when Surkov's firing is construed as something bad.

The reasons for this are a bit more complex. Many of those indulging in kremlinology assume that Surkov was fired after pressure from the Investigative Committee, a worrisome idea because it would mean that the siloviki are currently winning their battle against the “liberals” in the government (roughly speaking Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his allies, who Surkov has supposedly joined). For Pavel Pryanikov, of ttolk.ru, the situation is reminiscent [ru] of the role the security apparatus had in the Soviet Union:

[...] Следственный Комитет сегодня – это аналог НКВД 1936 года, суперведомство с суперполномочиями. Ну и скорее всего теперь следует ожидать окончательной зачистки во власти сислибов [...]

[...] the Investigative Committee today is analogous to the 1936-era NKVD, a super-institution with super-powers. And, more likely than not, we should expect a final purge of syslibs [system liberals] from power [...]

If true, this is especially troubling news for Alexey Navalny, who has recently been incessantly harrying Investigative Committee head Gen. Bastrykin for the past year. Maksim Kononenko, a Kremlin supporter and a big fan of Surkov, was despondent [ru] for similar reasons:

Версия о том что теперь Маркины главные, конечно, наиболее вероятно, но лично мне о ней вообще не хочется думать.

The theory that now the “Markins” are in charge, is, of course, the most probable one, but personally I don't even want to think about it.

Instead, as a long shot, Kononenko is hoping that dismissals are simply one way for Putin to distance his most trusted allies from Medvedev's government, because he is planning to dissolve it some time soon. Kononenko's one-time boss, Marat Gelman (currently a modern-art promoter and gallery owner, Gelman used to be a political spin-doctor), was less optimistic [ru], thinking that the attack on Surkov signals a shift in the ruling paradigm:

Бояться должны все. Сначала вычистят сурковскую клиентелу, потом Медведевскую, потом Сечинскую.

Everyone should be afraid. First they'll purge Surkov's clientele, then Medvedev's, then [current RosNeft chairman] Sechin's.

Surkov's troll-face is his true face. Anonymous image widely distributed online.

DemVybor's Kirill Shulika agreed [ru], referring to Surkov's style of “governance through deception”:

Раньше были разводки, теперь они заменены уголовными делами и тюремными сроками. Сурков, как бы к нему ни относиться, во-первых, политический эстет, который не будет бить горшки молотком

Before there was trickery, now it has been replaced with criminal charges and prison sentences. Surkov, whatever you may think of him, is, first of all, a political aesthete, who won't break pots with a hammer

Boris Nemtsov had a similar idea, saying [ru] that Surkov's light propaganda touch is not needed any longer:

ПУТИН взял курс на репрессии и посадки. Сурков ему в этом деле помочь не может. Бастрыкина достаточно.

PUTIN has taken a course for repressions and prisons. Surkov can't help him with this. Bastrykin is enough.

The nationalist publication Sputnik&Pogrom took an all too familiar tack with its borderline racism when commenting on the story, but ended up making the same basic point [ru]:

[...] противостояние русского европейского образованного класса и советской азиатской рабоче-крестьянской власти более невозможно маскировать томными чеченоевреями, пишущими романы и рассуждающими про «дискурс», пытающимися примирить белых европейцев и советских монголов.

[...] the conflict between Russian-European-educated classes and the Soviet-Asian-worker-peasant government can no longer be masked with languid Checheen-Jews [Surkov is half-Chechen on his father side], who write novels and talk “discourse”, and try to reconcile white Europeans and Soviet Mongols.

Others are worried for a different reason. Surkov's political acumen is of such mythical proportions, that people have trouble believing his dismissal isn't simply the latest in a long series of grifts. The poet Igor Karaulov, for example, joked [ru] that Surkov will be sent to subvert the protest movement from the inside:

Через месяц на Болотной. Навальный (громко, призывно): “Кто мы”? Публика, хором: “Мы – сурковская пропаганда!”

In a month, on Bolotnaya Square. Navalny (loudly, invitingly): “Who are we?” The Public, all together: “We are surkovian propaganda!” [a play on the phrase "you are surkovian propaganda" used by opposition members, sometimes ironically, to label government supporters]

For some, there is a seed of truth in the joke. Alexander Artemyev, a journalist, tweeted [ru] that Surkov will soon be standing in the opposition ranks, along with another former Kremlin stalwart Gleb Pavlovsky, who became a fixture at anti-government events over the last year. Olga Romanova tweeted [ru] the same prediction. In a bit of a twist on this meme Yevgeny Levkovich, another journalist and opposition activist, darkly hinted [ru] at a new Kremlin project to create an American style two-party system, and thought that Surkov is perhaps being moved to this project.

We may never know the real reasons for Surkov's leaving, but the story is in all likelihood rather mundane. Which is why the theory [ru] put forth by Kirill Shulika on his blog is particularly attractive: Surkov simply did not like his job, which, unlike his creative policy-based position at the President's Administration, saddled him with heaps of bureaucratic work and late hours:

Получилось так, что в Кремле его сожрал Володин, а на должности, которую ему дали в качестве компенсации, он просто себя не нашел.

So it turned out that at the Kremlin he was consumed by Volodin, but at the position assigned to him in compensation [for the old one], he simply couldn't find himself.

Or perhaps the reason is even more simple, suggests Stanislav Yakovlev:

Почему ушел Сурков? Да заебали вы его.

Why did Surkov leave? He's just f*cking tired of your sh*t.

Written by Andrey Tselikov · comments (0)
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Demonstrators through the sanctioned opposition rally on Bolotnaya Square in downtown Moscow, 6 May 2013, photo by Alexander Chernavskiy, copyright © Demotix.

After months of preparation and weeks of wrangling with the Moscow authorities for permission to hold the protest, a tragic fatality marred the event before it could even begin. When the rally's start was just six hours away, a falling speaker crushed to death 25-year-old Maksim Melkov, a volunteer helping to set up the stage. When police declared the stage area a potential crime scene, it seemed possible that organizers might have to cancel the entire event. Shortly thereafter, however, the Mayor's office announced the demonstration could continue without the stage. Amidst the confusion, anti-opposition spambots flooded Twitter with messages bearing the hashtags “sick of protests” [ru] and “the opposition has faded away” [ru].

Twitterbots simultaneously tweeting the hashtag “the opposition has faded away”

Such tactics failed to distract Ekho Moskvy journalist Serguei Parkhomenko, who quickly took to Facebook, where he tried to coordinate alternative logistical arragements in a post [ru] that attracted over 130 “shares”:

Друзья, пожалуйста, прекратить битья головами об углы и причитать,”какой кошмар”. Да, случилось ужасное несчастье. Но именно потому, что оно ужасное, сейчас не истериковать нужно, а очень слаженно работать, чтобы в создавшейся ситуации ситуация не пошла вразнос.

Ситауция таков: поскольку трагедия случилась в самом начале работ, сцены нет, и звука нет. Место монтажа оцеплено полицией. Организаторы (не я) продолжают переговоры с мэрией о том, как быть дальше [...]

Итак, нужны:

1) Большой грузовик с откидывающимися бортами
2) генераторы
3) мощные динамики
4) усилители
5) пульт
6) кабели для всего этого

[...]

Если кто-то может помочь – немедленно пишите мне в личные сообщения.

И пожалуйста, не истерите здесь больше. Не накачивайте друг друга, не орите истошно. Просто помогите.

Friends, please stop beating your heads against the wall and proclaiming “what a disaster.” Yes, a horrible accident has occurred. But, exactly because it is horrible, we don't need to get hysterical. Instead we need to work as a team, so the situation doesn't get away from us.

The situation is this: insofar as the tragedy happened at the very beginning of the work, there is no stage and no sound. The rigging is cordoned off by police. The organizers (not me) are in talks with the mayor about how to continue. [...]

And so we need:

1) A large truck with removable sides.
2) generators
3) powerful speakers
4) amplifiers
5) a mixing board
6) cables for all of this

[...]

If someone can help, quickly get in touch with me.

And please, no more hysterics about this. Don't work yourselves up, and don't lose your heads. Just pitch in.

Some oppositionists were keen to turn Melkov into something of a martyr. User social_hipster[ru] tweeted:

Максим Мелков – жертва режима!

Maksim Melkov is a victim of the regime!

Pro-regime netizens were less impressed by oppositionists’ handling of the tragedy. Twitter user xstazik was happy to take the opportunity to troll the protestors:

погиб человек, а этим лишь бы помитинговать #6мая #ОппозицияСдулась

A person has died, but these guys just want to have their rally #6may #TheOppositionHasFadedAway

Blogger alekssidor [ru] also disapproved:

Организаторы готовят аппаратуру к митингу на крови

The organizers are setting up the equipment for their protest on blood

While organizers did manage to acquire a truck and a sound-system, a lack of adequate amplification plagued the event's speeches. Journalist Oleg Kashin, perhaps given the circumstances, decided to forgo a speech. Instead, he sang an a capella version of seminal Soviet punk band Grazhdanskaya Oborona‘s best known song, “Everything is going to plan” [ru], to the apparent bafflement of many in attendance.

The confusion was shared by others online, as well, including those who enjoyed it. LiveJournal user langobard wrote [ru]:

сказать откровенно, я Кашина после вчерашнего зауважал.

Хотя один мелкий обывательский вопрос все равно мозолит мозги. Все-таки он бухой был или нет? Ну чего уж, ну принято интересоваться про это в таких вот случаях.

I can honestly say that I respect Kashin after what happened yesterday.

Just one little parochial question all the same pops into my head. Was he wasted or what? No big deal, it's just interesting to know in such cases, that's all.

Kashin, of course, is an extremely prolific tweeter [ru] and occasionally posts entire song lyrics, 140 characters at a time. SimonKostin [ru] noted the collision of the journalist's online and offline personae.

Похоже, Кашин перенес свои принципы ведения твиттера в реальную жизнь

It's as if Kashin has carried his tweeting principles into real life

The event finished with a speech from Alexey Navalny, who appeared onstage alongside his wife. In a straightforward address, which Navalny himself admitted contained “nothing new,” he promised to continue to fight the criminal charges against him and the corruption and excesses of the government. He closed with “Russia is our country! Russia will be free!” The crowd repeated the slogan in a shout, and Navalny's speech was over.

Though the final attendance of the event (estimated to be around 27,500) was much smaller than the mass demonstrations of December 2011 and early 2012, the turnout does testify that that there are still people in Russia willing to come out on an unseasonably cold day and make their displeasure known to the regime, despite accidents, soundsystem failures, and the ever-present fear of arrest and provocation. Despite its setbacks, the opposition has not faded away, which—a year on from Putin's reinauguration—could be an achievement in and of itself.

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There are doubts, however, about the fairness of the upcoming vote. To help monitor the violations of the electoral process, Bulgarian activists have created several online tools.

• Аз Гласувам ["I Vote"; bg] was created by Institute for Public Environment Development (IPED), a nonprofit organization supporting political and social change in Bulgaria. IPED works to increase citizen participation in the Bulgarian government, limiting the influence of the mafia in politics, securing a fair electoral process, and combating corruption and abuse of power. The platform's goal is to promote the rights of voters in Bulgaria, to answer most frequently asked questions about the upcoming election, to assist in reporting violations of the electoral process, and to aggregate election news published in the media.

• За честни избори (“For Fair Elections”; bg] is an Ushahidi-based crowdmapping platform, which will help gather reports of violations (text and photos submitted via Facebook, Twitter and email).

• Public Campaign Against Buying and Controlling the Vote is a site that collects news, updates and advice on how to combat vote-buying and other violations.

On Twitter, netizens can report violations and post updates using these hashtags: #bgizbori2013, #izbori2013, and #izbori (izbori means ‘elections’ in Bulgarian).

Written by Ruslan Trad · comments (0)
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