Canada’s First World War: A Centennial Series on ActiveHistory.ca

Active History’s series on the history, memory, and legacy of the First World War launched in August, 2014.  The series is intentionally broad in outlook, including subjects as diverse as the war’s political impact, life on the home front, and commemoration today. It is edited by Mary Chaktsiris, Sarah Glassford, Nathan Smith, and Jonathan Weier, with former editor Christopher Schultz in a consultative role. If you are interested in contributing to this series, please check out our “Call for Blog Posts” and contact us at: nsmith241@gmail.com

• Reflections on the First World War
• In Conversation IV: Preserving and Passing-On the Legacies of Canada’s First World War
• We need to stop talking about Vimy
• Growing Pains: The Great War Veterans’ Association, Early Poppy Day Campaigns, and the Seeds of Commemorative Tradition
• The Dark Side of Disarmament: Ocean Pollution, Peace, and the World Wars
• Remembrance Day 2018 and Canada’s First World War Centennial
• “The town’s gone wild”: Sounds of Victory in Toronto, 11 November 1918
• First World War Postscript: “Fed Up and Tired” in the Months Following the Armistice
• “Tom’s Return” — or A Girl’s Heroic Adventure? Great War Fiction by a Canadian Schoolgirl
• Embodying Anti-German Sentiment during the Great War: An Archival Moment
• Art as Prescience: Reflections on Sarah Beck’s 2001 ÖDE
• Indigenous Veterans, the Indian Act, and the Origins of National Aboriginal Veterans Day
• “The Equal and Respected Companions of Men”[1]: The Female Veteran of the Great War
• “He Will Again Be Able to Make Himself Self-Sustaining”[1]: Canadian Ex-Officers’ Return to Civilian Life
• The Difficulty in Diagnosis: Shell Shock and the Case of Private Dennis R.
• Coming Home: Veterans, Pensions and the Canadian State After the Great War
• In Conversation III: Touring the Battlefields of Canada’s First World War
• Africa’s War: Anti-colonial Movements and Repression in First World War French West Africa
• Art, Religion, & Iconography in the Vimy Memorial: An Overview
• Six Nations Soldiers and British Women’s Activism during and after the First World War
• The Bolshevik: Art, Revolution and Canada
• Canadian Red Cross Sock-Selling: ‘Fake News’ of the First World War
• In Conversation II: Archiving and Accessing Canada’s First World War
• Red Crosses and White Cotton: Memory and Meaning in First World War Quilts
• The Alderville War Memorial: A Bizarre Monument or A Community’s Search for Meaning?
• Atheists in the Trenches: Loss of Faith among Canadians in the Great War
• National Disunity and the Meaning of Vimy Ridge
• Feet of Clay? Canada’s Vimy Ridge
• Peaceable Kingdom or Emergency State?  The Legacy of Canada’s First World War for Security Regulation and Civil Rights
• “You want to put what, where?” Contesting Malpeque’s (Second) First World War Memorial
• Unfit to Fight: The History of Rejecting First World War Volunteers – An Excerpt
• Canada’s History and the First World War Centennial: A Conversation
• A View from the (Editing) Trenches: Summer 2016 and the Challenges of (Knowledge) Mobilization
• “Manna From Heaven” – A YMCA Physical Director at Valcartier and Salisbury Plain
• Vimy Ridge and Canadian Nationalism
• In Conversation: Teaching and Learning Canada’s First World War
• “Deeply regret to inform you”: War and Loss in the Trapp Family
• Performing For War, Hoping For Peace: Canadian Actresses’ Transnational Engagements with World War I
• Golgotha?: D. Y. Cameron’s Flanders from Kemmel
• Marjorie Stinson, the Flying Schoolmarm
• Bleeding Him White: How Canada Stole an Indigenous Veteran’s Identity
• Exploring the Clash of Official and Vernacular Memory: The Great War in Brantford, Brant Country, and Six Nations
• Hidden Messages and Code Words: Bill Alldritt’s Letters as a Prisoner in First World War Germany
• “If ye break faith – we shall not sleep?”
• Further Writing on War, Loss and Remembrance: Reflections on In Flanders Fields: 100 Years
• “Trustees of the Future” and the Echoes of History
• New Archives of Ontario Online Exhibit: Ontario’s WWI Hospital Overseas
• World War One: A Fight for Freedom?
• Soldier-Candidates and the 1917 Wartime Election
• Conscientious Objectors: Fitting Dissent into a Coming of Age Story
• Racist Propaganda and the Shaping of Boys’ Attitudes toward War
• Raising ‘Human Ammunition’: Motherhood, Propaganda, and the Great War
• When writing the First World War comes home: Remembering Pvt. Harold Carter
• Heritage vs. History in the Commemoration of War in Cape Breton Highlands National Park
• A Monument to the Past? The Never Forgotten National War Memorial Project
• A Father’s Grief: The Case of Captain Robert Bartholomew
• The Second Battle of Ypres and the Creation of a YMCA Hero
• “On ‘The Road to 2017’: Reflecting on Canada’s First World War Commemoration Plans”
• The Ideological Work of Commemoration
• Sexing Up Canada’s First World War
• An American Legion in the CEF? Crossing Borders during “Canada’s” First World War
• Passing the Torch: The CBC and Commemoration in 1964 and 2014
• Promises Broken, or Politics as Usual?
• Did You Know the American World War I Museum is in Kansas City?
• New paper – Victory in the Kitchen: Food Control in the Lakehead during the Great War by Beverly Soloway
• 1864 vs. 1914: A Commemorative Showdown
• Podcast – Robert Rutherdale on the Local Responses of WWI
• World War One in Winnipeg – Conscription
• Anti-War Poetry in Canadian Newspapers at the Beginning of the First World War
• Comic Art and the First World War
• A Canadian Observing the Great War Centenary in London, UK
• ‘1914-1918 In Memoriam’: A View from the Grandstand

Thinking about Genocide and Mass Murder: How Could it Have Happened in Nice Canada?

   June 10, 2019    on Thinking about Genocide and Mass Murder: How Could it Have Happened in Nice Canada?

By Alvin Finkel

The decision of the Commission on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women to use the word “genocide” to describe past Canadian state policies regarding Indigenous women has occasioned heated debate about whether that word is appropriate for anything short of a conscious state plan to rapidly physically eliminate all members of a defined group or to thoroughly destroy their culture and thus eliminate them as a unique entity. The Commission suggests that in fact the latter has been the goal of Canadian governments all along and that condoning physical violence against Indigenous women has been an unstated side effect of attitudes and policies that deny the right of Canada’s Indigenous people to preserve their millennial cultures.

A Political Cartoon from July 1880 in Grip Magazine

Decisions about what human horror stories qualify as genocide are largely political. There is, of course, consensus that Hitler planned to murder all Jews and managed to kill the majority of them in areas that were under German control at some point during his rule. His murder of Roma was also clearly genocide.

But what about the Holodomor, the murder through famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933? There may have been as many deaths of Ukrainians as a result of Stalin’s maniacal efforts to collectivize and industrialize Ukrainian farming so as to accelerate Soviet industrialization as of Jews in the Holocaust. Many historians and governments view the famine as a genocide, but the Russian government and some historians deny that Stalin, while unbending in his efforts to collectivize peasants’ landholdings, meant to eradicate the Ukrainians as an ethnic group. But claims that he was only involved in misguided class warfare against peasants are contradicted by the Soviet decision to distribute crops seized from Ukrainian peasants not to Ukrainian workers but to workers in other republics, leaving that republic’s workers to share the fate of their peasant co-ethnics.

While most Western scholars seem inclined to qualify the Soviet-induced Ukrainian famine as a genocide, one almost never sees that term employed in discussions about British-induced famines in India and elsewhere. Colonial-era famines began with one in Bengal between 1770 and 1773 that wiped out 10 million lives, a third of all Bengalis. Within a decade another two famines, one in South India’s Tamil region and one in North India, accounted for another 20 million deaths. In all three cases, and many more before independence, the famines were the product of forced monoculture for export purposes and refusal of the British authorities to allow imports of food from areas unaffected by crop failures to the suddenly infertile regions.

Apologists for the British authorities suggest that such famines predated the British and were nature’s way of reducing overpopulation in India. But Indian scholars reject such claims, noting that traditional Indian economies featured a variety of crops as well as gathered fruits and vegetables, irrigation projects, storage of surpluses, and sharing arrangements across wide areas so as to provide insurance for all in case of scarcities. Even during the British raj, the princely states that paid tribute to Britain, but were not incorporated into the area under direct British rule, fared far better than the areas firmly under Britain’s thumb.

The last of the Bengal famines occurred after the Holodomor. In 1942-3, though Bengal produced a bumper crop of rice, two to three million Bengalis died of famine as the British authorities exported most of that crop to reinforce the war effort. Again, it was a decision not to feed people rather than a lack of food that resulted in Indian deaths. In short, what India experienced for much of the colonial period was a kind of economic genocide that paralleled the Holodomor but under capitalist conditions.

Similarly, though we tend to think of the “Irish famine” of 1846, which resulted in at least a million deaths and two million Irish fleeing their country, in terms of the failure of the potato crop, Ireland produced enough food that year to easily satisfy the food requirements of all of the Irish people. But British policy insisted upon the export of most of the crops out of Ireland, leaving Ireland’s poverty-stricken masses, to whom London offered minimal relief, in hunger.

Certain Irish stereotypes create the notion that the potato growers created their own fate because they focused on one crop and an unreliable one at that. In fact they had little choice since the English had much earlier dispossessed them of the better lands on their island, leaving them to attempt to survive in the marginal areas where the potato was about the most reliable crop they could grow. Like the Indian farmers, the Irish were victims of Britain who were stereotyped as the authors of their own misfortune.

Across Africa and Asia, the various European countries imposed regimes of quasi-slavery that left millions dead. The armies of Belgian’s King Leopold II, forcing the Native people of the Congo to supply limitless ivory and rubber, slaughtered between six and ten million of the 20 to 30 million people estimated to be living in the Congo basin.

“Economic genocide” also best describes the fate of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas who were conquered by Spain and Portugal. While the numbers of people in the Americas in 1500, as European colonization began, are calculated as from anywhere from 20 million to 100 million, there were only 1.5 million Indigenous people across the two continents by 1650. While European germs killed many, populations did spring back if they were largely left in control of their lands and their labour as was the case in the fur trade. But for the most part that did not happen. In Potosi, in Bolivia, as many as 4 million miners died in the silver mines over several centuries. The Spanish mineowners forced Indigenous men into the mines to work until their death without ever seeing daylight again and then replaced the dying with slaves still alive.

Because of the fur trade, the early Canadian story of European-Indigenous relations seems tame compared to the Spanish American story. But as settlement replaced the fur trade, dispossession of Indigenous lands, and then efforts to destroy their cultures and break their spirits came to British North America and then Canada. The dispossession was arguably less violent than in the United States not because the Canadian authorities were gentler than because the American experience showed Canadian Indigenous people that it was impossible to fight people who had so little regard for human life as Europeans. In any case, what followed was a horror story that still has not ended despite many Canadian politicians expressing fine words completely disconnected from their actions.

Like the British—and like the Americans, whose record in slaughtering Indigenous people, Latinos, and Asians also counts in the millions—Canadians like to think of themselves as civilized folks whom no respectable person can accuse of genocide or even racism except for the most common-garden variety. Stephen Harper as prime minister famously said that Canada had no history of colonialism. But those who study Indigenous-colonial relations know better, and whether or not we want to use the term “genocide” to describe a long history of racism and sexism towards Indigenous peoples, we need to come to terms with our nation’s savagery towards the first inhabitants of our continent. And we need to act on what commissions like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and now the Commission on the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women have recommended. Or we will never get beyond wordplay as opposed to implementing social justice.

Alvin Finkel is the author of Compassion: A Global History of Social Policy. He is professor emeritus of History at Athabasca University, president of the Alberta Labour History Institute, and co-author of the two-volume History of the Canadian Peoples, now in its 7th editions.

A&W GOES FOR PAPER STRAWS
I got a A&W Diet Root Beer in a wax paper cup the other day and lo and behold it had a paper straw. They have eliminated single use plastic straws. Good for them but at the same time could they also not eliminated the plastic cap.

Ivan Golunov: Friends celebrate partial victory after Russian courts release journalist on house arrest

Oliver CarrollSt Petersburg @olliecarroll



vmestemedia.ru/Reuters

Friends and colleagues of a Russian investigative journalist arrested on drugs charges are celebrating after a court unexpectedly defied prosecutors’ recommendations to incarcerate him.

The decision to instead release Ivan Golunov under house arrest is highly unusual for a system that rarely operates in reverse gear. Almost certainly, the move is in response to spirited protests that have broken out following news of the journalist’s detention on Friday. But Saturday’s ruling is also far from the final word on the matter, with police officials and state TV launching a spirited defence of the prosecution.

That a behind-the-scenes battle was developing in government was clear from the unexplained delays that accompanied the start of proceedings in Moscow’s Nikulinsky Court. Mr Golunov appeared in court, inside the bare metal cage designed for defendants only after 8 pm, a full 11 hours later than scheduled.

In emotional scenes, the journalist waved at his colleagues, who shouted messages of support. At one point, he broke down in tears.

“I never thought I would attend my own funeral," he said.

Earlier on Saturday, state investigators formally charged him on drugs offences, alleging that 5.37 grams of cocaine were found in Mr Golunov’s Moscow apartment. The amount was just enough to be considered under a serious drugs charge and a tariff of 10-20 years imprisonment. They had pushed for him to be kept incarcerated while awaiting trial.

Friends and colleagues have described the charges as an outrageous set-up.

In a joint statement, Mr Golunov’s editor and publisher at Meduza, a liberal online publication, said they had no doubt that their journalist was innocent.

“We know Ivan received threats in the last months,” they wrote. “We know in connection to which text, and we can guess from who. We will find out who is behind this and we will make the information public.”

Friends told The Independent that they had never seen Mr Golunov taking drugs.

“His only drug is curiosity,” wrote former colleague Leonid Bershidsky on Twitter. “In Russia that’s against the law.”

Read more

Russian investigative journalist detained for ‘drug dealing’


One of Russia’s most conscientious investigative journalists, Mr Golunov has a reputation for probing some of the country’s most dangerous fields.

His recent stories have uncovered corruption and malpractice in local government and in the loan shark business. But The Independent understands that he was most likely targeted in relation to his muckraking around Russian funeral services — a particularly corrupt sphere controlled by mafia groups and high-ranking state officials.

On Sunday, it was revealed that the journalist was working on an investigation linking the head of the Moscow division of Russia’s security agency to corrupt funeral service schemes. Meduza has promised to release the investigation shortly.

Mr Golunov's arrest has been accompanied by an an unexpectedly strong show of solidarity from Russia's journalistic community and beyond.

Even usually cautious voices like Vladimir Pozner, a veteran of Soviet and Russian television, criticised his arrest in strong terms.

“The arrest of Ivan Golunov to spit in the face of every Russian journalist,” he said. “I don’t like it when people spit in my face.”

Several stars of state TV added their names to a petition demanding Mr Golunov’s release. But by Sunday morning, state news broadcasters had reverted to a more traditional position, airing a new “documentary” in support of the police investigation. Mr Golunov had, they alleged, been caught pushing drugs in Moscow clubs. He was also drunk when arrested — a statement that was completely incompatible with images of medical reports they broadcast that actually showed the opposite. Later, the channel was forced to apologise.

Mr Golunov lawyers insist that police broke the law at every stage of his detention. For several hours, they say, police denied the journalist his rights to see a lawyer. They refused to test journalist's fingers to indicate if had even touched the drugs assigned to him. They refused to take fingerprints of the bags themselves. And they searched his apartment without witnesses present.

Soon after Mr Golunov’s arrest, police officials published four photographs purporting to show a drugs laboratory in what they said was the journalist’s apartment. Later, a spokesman rolled back those comments, and said only one of the photos was, in fact, taken there. At the same time, the spokesman insisted Mr Golunov had some unstated connection to the drugs laboratory depicted in the other pictures.


There are strong suspicions that Mr Golunov has been beaten while in police custody with the aim of obtaining a confession. 

Read more

Russian journalists' murder 'pre-planned', say private investigators


On Saturday afternoon, following two ambulance visits, Mr Golunov was transferred to Hospital no. 71 in the West of the city. An official statement confirmed he had been preliminarily diagnosed with a concussion and fractured ribs.

That statement was later disputed by the hospital’s head doctor, Alexander Myaslakov, who said there was no way of knowing how Mr Golunov had received his injuries.

Only afterwards was it revealed that Doctor Myaslakov might not have been well placed for an objective assessment of his patient. A regular contributor to propaganda talk shows on state TV, Dr Myaslakov was also, it transpired, an official representative for President Vladimir Putin during his last campaign. Eventually, Dr Myaslakov admitted to having “no sympathy” for the journalist. “As is well known, I’m a conservative man (and a Soviet one as well),” he wrote on Instagram.

That statement added to the sense of scandal around Mr Golunov’s detention, with hundreds risking arrest to protest outside police stations and courtrooms.

According to Proyekt, an investigative publication with good sources in government, the unexpectedly strong civil response has created unease among Russia’s leaders. On the one hand, police authorities are pushing the Kremlin hard for a custodial sentence. On another, it is unclear the Kremlin is ready for such a radical turn.

Anton Kobyakov, an advisor to Vladimir Putin, told state news agency TASS that the Kremlin had decided to take the case under special control.

Mr Kobyakov was unusually critical of the police decision to present photographic evidence as if it was taken in Mr Goldunov’s apartment.

“Deception and manipulation of facts are covered by articles in the criminal code,” he said. “Those responsible will be made to answer.”

Three of Russia's leading newspapers took the unusual step on Monday of publishing identical front page headlines to protest over what they suspect is the framing of an investigative journalist on drug charges.

Russian media, celebrities protest against investigative journalist's drug bust

The 'Straight Pride' flag is just one endless meme

Andy Gregory in news

'The flag actually appeared in Canada in October 2018, where it was flown in a small New Brunswick town for one day before being taken down due to widespread public outrage.'

UPVOTE

Tommy Wu/iStock/Twitter

The idea of a “Straight Pride” parade was widely mocked when it emerged that a group called Super Happy Fun America had applied for a licence to hold such an event in Boston this August.

Thousands of people took to the internet to deride the entire concept.

The group of thinly-veiled homophobes were then left without a celebrity mascot, after Brad Pitt threatened to sue, leaving their website looking like this.

But by far the funniest thing to stem from the whole debacle is the “straight pride flag”.

The flag actually appeared in Canada in October 2018, where it was flown in a small New Brunswick town for one day before being taken down due to widespread public outrage.

However, it raised its ugly head back into public consciousness as the news of Boston's "Straight Pride" event broke.

Almost iconic in its monochrome blandness, it invites comparisons both physical and metaphorical to all sorts of undesirable things, and now the memes are endless.

MORE STORIES

Trump’s former deputy freaks over a fake Nintendo account tweeting Mario kissing Luigi

UPDATED
Straight people are "oppressed," apparently. 🤔

Some dude is planning a ‘Straight Pride’ parade in Boston

This woman’s hilarious video about ‘straight pride’ is so funny even straight people are sharing it

SUSANNA REID THANKS PIERS MORGAN FOR ‘MANSPLAINING’ WOMEN’S FOOTBALL

Susanna Reid sarcastically thanked Piers Morgan for "mansplaining" women's football during a heated discussion about the Women's World Cup on Good Morning Britain.

During Monday morning's show, Morgan explained that on Sunday, he had tuned into the Women's World Cup and seen four female pundits discussing the tournament.

"All women! Funny that," Morgan stated. "Equality. Great thing until you actually have to do it yourself."

Reid then asked Morgan whether he was suggesting that the four pundits commentating on the England versus Scotland match weren't good.

"Doesn't matter. It's the optics, isn't it," Morgan replied. "If it was four blokes, you'd all be screaming."

The talk show host continued, explaining how – in his opinion – women aren't trying to create gender equality, but are trying to make it "unequal again", but in their favour.

Good Morning Britain newsreader Charlotte Hawkins then chimed in, stating that having four female football pundits is a case of "redressing the balance". "Swing the balance the other way, and then bring it to the middle," she said.

To back up his argument, Morgan presented a tweet that had been shared by Rebekah Vardy, wife of England footballer Jamie Vardy, about the four female pundits.

"Umm what happened to equality..." the tweet read, alongside a picture of the pundits on BBC Sport.

"Very good question," Morgan stated in response. "Because it's not about redressing the balance or being equal, it's about being just as unequal as the system you claim is so unfair for the last hundred years."

After Morgan added that he thinks having four female pundits commentating a match is "sexist", Reid said: "Thank you, for mansplaining women's football to us."

Several Twitter users criticised Vardy over her tweet.

"Congrats on having the worst take of #FIFAWWC," one person wrote.

"Understand your point – having an equal panel will allow male and female sports to integrate. However, a balancing of the scales is in order," another stated.

"It's been all men for a long time, and now is the time for the female pundits to be given the platform they deserve."

RUSSIAN WHITE NATIONALIST SKINHEADS

Skinhead vigilantes attack hipsters on Moscow’sstreets to ‘uphold Russia’s moral code’

Armed with pepper spray and punches, gang members prey on anyone perceived to be engaging in ‘vice’

·       Oliver Carroll Moscow @olliecarroll

‘Leo against’ gang members are ‘cleansing Russia’ of all ‘immoral behavior’ ( youtube.com/user/lionversusSmoking )

Known locally as “the pit”, the amphitheatre at Khokhlovsky square is a jewel in Moscow’s regeneration crown. Built around a fragment of the old city wall, the contemporary space is everything that the capital usually isn’t – simple, generous, public and free. Ever since it appeared in 2017, it has acted as a magnet for Moscow’s trendiest to gather and make merry.

But last Friday, the capital’s hipsters came face to face with a very different side of contemporary Russia. 

At approximately 10pm local time, a group of shaven-head, thick-built and tracksuited young men arrived at Khokhlovsky square. They admonished the revellers for drinking alcohol in a public space. Then scuffles broke out, and bottles began to be thrown. Almost as quickly, the sportsmen produced pepper spray from their pockets. They targeted those who offered resistance, and then sprayed more generally. 

Social media footage from the incident shows victims holding their eyes and stamping the ground in agony. Some five people were treated for burns. 

When police arrived, they arrested at least one of the victims and led another dozen off to write witness statements. None of the tracksuited men were arrested.

Anti-Putin protests: hundreds of demonstrators arrested in Russia

Show all 22

Unbeknownst to the hipsters at the time, they had become the latest target of a group of “healthy living” vigilantes, going by the name of “Leo against”.  

The brainchild of a neo-Nazi called Maxim Lazutin – the name come’s from Lazutin’s Zodiac sign – the group’s idea is as primitive as it is ironic: protecting Russia’s public and moral order by attacking anyone they see smoking, drinking or using foul language. 

Their methodology is as well-worked as it is well-monetised. The group film their “public order” raids, which usually end in punches and pepper spray. Then, they post their videos on YouTube, earning significant advertising revenue from their nearly two million subscribers in the process. The group have been active at some level since 2014, but in recent months they have stepped up their operations. 

On Sunday, The Independent became an accidental witness to the latest of the group’s raids. The target this time was a gathering of homeless men and women drinking near Kazan station in central Moscow. 

With cameramen in tow, at least four tracksuited men attacked the gathering. Initially, the men tried to forcibly confiscate alcohol. Their victims offered tepid resistance, which was was followed by pepper spray, delivered directly into the eyes. Two of the homeless men retaliated using whatever weapons they could get hold of: a metal bin, then vodka bottles. 

When police eventually arrived, they showed no interest in arresting the attackers. 

“Leo against” is by far from the first vigilante project of its kind to hit Russian streets in recent years – or indeed the first to feature founder Maxim Lazutin.

For several years, Lazutin collaborated with Maxim Martsinkevich, a fellow neo-Nazi going by the name Tesak (“Hatchet”). Together, the two men carried out dozens of honeytrap operations, luring gay men into liaisons with teenagers. The videos Tesak and Lazutin produced under the banner of “anti-pedophilia” were shocking – as much for the extreme violence and humiliation they dished out to their victims. 

Around the time Tesak was arrested in Cuba on extremism charges in 2014, Lazutin switched to another vigilante operation with links to the Kremlin. Translating awkwardly as “Stop Rudeness”, Stopkham was inspired by former members of the defunct pro-government youth movement “Nashi”. Its activists played the role of vigilante traffic police, attaching difficult-to-remove stickers to cars parked illegally. They caught leading politicians and celebrities, and their videos, often accompanied with violence, were viral sensations. 

Now, as then, there is more than a hint that Lazutin and his fellow vigilantes enjoy the protection of at least part of Russian officialdom. No action has ever been taken against “Leo Against” activists, despite evidence of unprovoked attacks. Police officers have even accompanied their raids. On at least two occasions in 2014-15, the group received government grants totalling 12m roubles (roughly £150,000) for “social control” over Russia’s anti-smoking laws, according to official government records. Lazutin denies receiving this money. 

The Independent attempted to reach Lazutin and members of the group for comment via a number channels, but requests went unanswered.  

A former member of the group, Dmitry Udarov, told a local media station that the vigilante group had “hyped” itself out of control. An obsession with monetising YouTube advertising revenues, he said, had radicalised them to violence: “They’ve begun to behave outrageously, provoking people who just happen to be standing by.”

After initially agreeing to talk, Mr Udarov also turned down the offer to contribute to this article. 

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