Russian Prisons Won’t Change Until Russia Does, Karetnikova Says

Russian Prisons Won’t Change Until Russia Does, Karetnikova Says

            Staunton, Oct. 4 – Anna Karetnikova, who worked as a Memorial human rights defender between 2002 and 2023 with particular attention to conditions in Russian penal institutions before fleeting the country after being threatened with arrest, says that Russian prisons won’t change until Russia as a whole because penal institutions inevitably reflect what society is like does.

            She describes her work in a new interview (cherta.media/interview/tyurma-ne-izmenitsya-poka-ne-izmenitsya-strana/) as well as in a book which the Russian authorities are now removing from libraries (The Route. Social Control of Penal Institutions: Eight Years without the Right to Stop (in Russian; Moscow: Memorial, 2018, 268 pp., full text at memohrc.org/sites/all/themes/memo/templates/pdf.php?pdf=/sites/default/files/marshrut_s.pdf).

            In both, she makes important points about the way in which prisons in Russia today reflect not only the broader society but also a Russian past that the jailors do not feel any need to get rid of and that many others do not understand how it continues to inform what happens in that country behind bars.

            Specifically, Karetnikova points out that Memorial divided its work into two parts, historical and human rights defense. “I underestimated the role of the historical direction,” she says. “For me, it was always a little boring: why should we be talking about what happened in 1937 all the time?”

            “But now I have understood. If those events had been understood, if sentences and punishments of those responsible had been possible, then, a greater part of our society would have developed an immunity to the impact of television. This is very important work, but unfortunately, it was missed.”

            She suggests that rights activists should have known better given how important the Kremlin views such activities and tries to block them

Repression of Spontaneous Protests in 2018-2019 Cost Moscow and Magas Trust of the Ingush People, Mutsolgov Says

            Staunton, Oct. 4 – For almost all residents of the Russian Federation, Oct. 4 this year is the 30^th anniversary of Boris Yeltsin’s use of force to suppress the Russian parliament, an action that returned the country to the authoritarian path that has achieved fully flower in the regime of Vladimir Putin.

            But for Ingush, this date is being remembered as the fifth anniversary of spontaneous popular protests against the decision of the Ingush leadership at the time with Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov to give away ten percent of the country’s smallest republic (fortanga.org/2023/10/godovshhina-nachala-ingushskogo-protesta-kak-eto-bylo-i-k-chemu-privelo/).

            Participants and opposition leaders are recalling three things in particular: First, that the Ingush people despite years of repression went into the streets in the tens of thousands to protest what the Moscow-imposed leaders had done to them and continued to do in the course of the nearly year-long protest movement.

            Second, that the leaders of the opposition were caught off guard by the rise of the protests and many who took part in the demonstrations were upset by the willingness of those opposition leaders not behind bars at the time to negotiate with the powers that be rather than take things to the end.

            And third, that the protests against the border agreement quickly overcame all divisions within society and allowed the previous largely quiescent population to take to the streets and organize itself rather than rely on activists of any kind, a pattern that the Ingush and others hope can be repeated.

The response of the authorities in Moscow and Magas was repression which quieted the streets of Ingushetia but at a terrible price. According to one opposition figure, Magomed Mutsolgov, “as a result, Ingush society finally lost trust in the regional and federal powers.” Five years on, as repression continues, that has not changed.

Yeltsin’s Use of Force against Parliament in October 1993 Set Stage for Rise of Putin, Gromov Says

            Staunton, Oct. 4 – With each passing year, it becomes more obvious that the events of the end of September and beginning of October 1993 when Boris Yeltsin used force against the Russian parliament and essentially solidified presidentialist rule in Russia were “one of the key turning points in present-day Russia,” Andrey Gromov says.

            Indeed, the Russian journalist suggests, they more than anything else set the stage for the rise of Vladimir Putin, an outcome that few of those in Russia or in Western governments who backed Yeltsin at the time really wanted or understood would be the result (cherta.media/interview/sobytiya-1993-putinskij-rezhim/).

            Thirty years on, Gromov continues, it is clear that what happened then was “the main tragedy of post-Soviet Russia” and that it is completely accurate to describe what happened then as “the birthday of the Putin regime,” an ironic consequence because the defenders of the Russian White House mostly consisted of people who back what Putin stands for.

            Those who attacked the White House said they were doing so to strengthen Russian democracy but in fact they undermined it in critical ways by showing their lack of respect for the institutions of democracy which require that all parts of the government work together rather than one dictating the outcomes for all.

            Gromov says that he still believes that the Russian Supreme Soviet was conducting a destructive and irresponsible policy and that Yeltsin and his team were defending necessary reforms. “But for the future of Russia, it wasn’t this that turned out to be important.” Rather it was the concentration of power in the hands of the president.

            “But even this was not the most important thing,” the journalist continues. “Up to October 3, there were numerous attempts to find a compromise” with representatives of both sides meeting together. But then Yeltsin decided to end them by the use of tanks, precisely what has become “the model of the Putin regime.”