
The terror-assault is a nasty mix of the strategic power-play of Machiavelli, the mafia-cruelty of Goodfellas and the downright depravity of drunk football goons in a dark alley all rolled into one. By terrorizing a few, in a particularly sadistic and humiliating manner, all get the message: Stop criticizing Putin; stop trying to change Russia; just conform to the Kremlin line, or you’re be mercilessly abused and hounded out of the country. Terror and collective fear have a long and tragic past in Russia. The word “terror” defines whole eras of Russian history, from Ivan the Terrible’s Reign of Terror to the Bolshevik’s Red Terror and of course Stalin’s Great Terror. Russians and others still are inclined to reserve this word to discuss some of the most horrific atrocities in history, involving the deaths of millions. The unfathomable bloodshed and untold scores of victims on Russian soil have been so tragic, I don’t think many are prepared to view the psychological effects of actions in Russia today as a serious form of terror. But Russians do feel the terror. They just use other words. Russians seem more comfortable using the word “мучение” (pronounced “muchénie”) to describe their sense of being abused by these terror-assaults. Muchenie is a noun that combines elements of hardship, torment, torture, punishment, and suffering. It can also describe the feeling of being besieged by forms of cruelty, though not necessarily by an agent. Sometimes, it describes a kind of fatalistic condition, i.e., that’s just the way life is. Criminal procedure as a weapon. Russian authorities do their share of making dissidents suffer. For example, Russia’s dissidents are regularly and repeatedly subjected to government searches and raids conducted at ungodly hours. Often there is a pretext of a criminal investigation. Ilya Yashin has commented on the feeling of dread just hearing noises outside one’s door in the wee morning hours. Raids are also even conducted at the homes of parents and relatives of dissidents. Imagine the panic one feels getting an early morning phone call from an elderly parent saying their apartment is being searched because the authorities don’t like you. After several such experiences, dissidents begin to feel terrorized and under siege. Another recent incident of what is unmistakably a terror-assault appeared as a video post on Instagram. Two prominent politicians, former government minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Open Russia coordinator Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. were in Strasbourg, France, to testify before the International Criminal Court about the assassination of their colleague Boris Nemtsov. Within days after their trip, a terrifying video of the two of them in Strasbourg went viral. It showed the two men with friends being watched and secretly filmed through a sniper’s scope atop a barrel of a gun. It was posted by Putin appointee Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Chechnya, who has been a prime aider and abetter and likely perpetrator of terror in Russia. There are also many cases of Russia’s judicial system being used as a weapon against dissidents. Not only are dissidents targeted for criminal prosecution, but there is an additional element of menacing unpredictability hanging over many because they can be charged and arrested on bogus charges at any time, even for events that took place years ago. Just in case he had any notions of returning to Russia, the politically active Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent 10 years in prison as a political vendetta, was again charged in December 2015 in a 1998 murder case. Four years after the mass protests on Bolotnaya Square, people are still being brought up on criminal charges. Many dissidents simply find themselves targets of criminal witchhunts for their political activity. Alexei Navalny has had to defend himself in court against false criminal charges and fabricated evidence in public trials more than once. These fabricated cases of fraud and embezzlement are then used on state-run media and pro-Kremlin social media to portray Navalny, the guy who uncovers criminal corruption, as a criminal and thief himself. All the while his family is made to worry about his fate and theirs should he be sent to prison. In one telling incident, Navalny arrived in court on the day of his sentencing on carrying a full backpack, fully expecting to be found guilty and taken to prison straightaway after the verdict. Hundreds of protesters came to court to show their support. After hours of monotone reading of the verdict (think Leviathan), Navalny suddenly learns his sentence has been suspended and he was going to be a free man. But he couldn’t even savor the miracle victory or enjoy a moment of joy or peace, because a moment later, the judge announced she was condemning his brother Oleg to 3 1/2 years in a labor camp. Just like that, in a fleeting moment, Alexey went from joy to horror. His response to the court that day was pure agony: “Why are you torturing me like this?” (He used the word “muchit’.”) I was immediately reminded of Russian literary giant Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ordeal of being subjected to a mock execution as a young man. Dostoevsky belonged to the Petrashevsky Circle, a group of writers and intellectuals whose arrest was ordered by Tsar Nicholas I. Among other charges, Dostoevsky was accused of conspiring to produce anti-government propaganda. After the trial, he and others were sentenced to death by firing squad. They were led out into a courtyard and tied to pillars to await their execution. The order to fire was given, and then immediately another order followed to stop the executions. A messenger had arrived stating that the Tsar had commuted the death sentences to hard labor. Importantly, this was not simply a fateful moment, but a deliberate act of cruelty and terror, so intended by the Tsar who specifically instructed that his message be read at the last possible moment before they were shot. Dostoevsky survived this act of terror, but not unscathed. He was haunted by the trauma for the rest of his life. It’s impossible not to carry the scars of psychological abuse and deliberate acts of violence.Moreover, these provocations entail morally repugnant behavior intent on causing psychological harm. They are designed to harass and intimidate, but are so much more than mere harassment and intimidation. They are spiced up to show off to others; they accent public humiliation and add a twist of sadistic torment aimed to elicit a fear response not only to break the victim’s spirit but also to use that fear to teach a lesson to all the other potential victims not ensnared by the assault itself.
Such acts are also regularly used to create the conditions for the state to initiate criminal proceedings against protesters. This is essentially how anti-protest law Article 212.1 has become an easy means for the state to pick off dissidents. Remember Ildar Dadin was arrested after he was harassed by others, turning an ostensibly legal one-person picket into an illegal public rally. He was tried, convicted and serving more than 2 years in prison. Proxy perpetrators. Many of the terror perpetrators see themselves as Russian patriots, soldiers for Putin, not unlike far-right nationalist vigilante groups like the Hitler Youth. Pro-Kremlin groups like NOD, SERB, and Nashi consider government critics like Navalny and other opposition members and dissidents as prime targets for terror-assaults because these citizens have been routinely labeled throughout the media as traitors to Russia. Putin himself has even promoted using Stalinist rhetoric including infamous notions such as “enemy of the people” and “fifth column” to refer to his political opposition. Putin has also openly condemned opposition figures as foreign agents whom he accuses of trying to undermine Russia, doing the bidding of foreign governments, and financed, invariably, by the CIA and the US State Department, goes the propaganda.Today, cruel and unusual menacing acts of psychological and physical violence in Russia are more often carried out by non-state actors while being tacitly condoned and sanctioned by the state.
This isn’t a recipe for the healthy development of a country. For a country to prosper in the global economy, which Russia surely wants, independent citizens and critical thinkers should be prized not terrorized. But Russia is not a normal country, not in any Western sense. It’s still suffering from Soviet deprivation and post-Soviet trauma, and now it’s suffering the trauma of Putin’s lurching Russia back onto the world stage. The Kremlin has its own idea of what normal is, and in a characteristically top-down fashion, brutal and otherwise, it has both reflected and disseminated its narrow view of normal. Before you scream “Russophobia,” let me assure you that this is a sentiment shared by many inside and outside Russia. There are very serious abuses and inhumanity going down in Russia today, unimaginable and often indescribable to people who live in Western countries. Kseniya Kirillova wrote a brilliant essay on what this has meant for Russians in the past as well as today. She argues that this is essentially Russia’s curse: a deep moral failing of the government to develop a basic normal society where people are allowed to live normal lives, to be decent human beings who are neither forced to conform nor punished for not conforming to the Kremlin’s narrow view of normalcy. And so every news day seems to bring a new low and a new twist to the terror-assaults suffered by Russians. Anti-corruption blogger and opposition leader, Alexey Navalny who regularly exposes the corruption of Putin and his circle of “crooks and thieves” gets more abuse than most. The attack on him this week is particularly emblematic of the kind of sinister abuse and psychological terror that’s become common in Russia. Since the assault was recorded and uploaded to YouTube, as many of these are in order to spread the terror message of humiliation and fear on social and state media, it provides an excellent opportunity to discuss some of the most disturbing aspects of these modern morally repugnant terror “provocations” against dissidents, updated to fit the social media and disinformation age. Below is a summary of an in-depth analysis I made in a separate post of the assault at the Anapa Airport on May 17. The full analysis helps Westerners get a feel for what opposition figures like Navalny and their families go through in Russia. Even the title of the video is an attempt at humiliation, sarcastically titling a grueling ordeal and vicious attack “Navalny Was Escorted Out of Anapa with Milk.” With everything happening so quickly, it’s nearly impossible to understand the stress and terror dissidents are subjected to without stopping to look frame-by-frame at the scene and the progression of violence, physical as well as psychological. The faces of the victims display the grim impact of the terror. Similarly, the faces of the perpetrators display satisfaction with their own cruelty. As the video begins, Navalny’s group of a dozen or so people, workers and volunteers from the Anti-Corruption Foundation and their spouses and families, are seen walking toward the Anapa Airport terminal carrying luggage and large backpacks. They are returning from a 4-day camping trip, a team-building retreat, as Navalny called it, to get away from Moscow and regroup for a few days of rest in the country. The group is walking in a column with their heads down, and eyes looking down toward the ground. Clearly they see trouble is around them, and their body language expresses their instinctive reactions to the tense and stressful atmosphere. There are in fact dozens of men, approximately 40, outside the airport terminal entrance staring at the group, following alongside them, and taunting them. The menacing men are dressed both in paramilitary camouflage as well as ordinary clothing, some wearing the characteristic sheepskin hat of the paramilitary Cossacks. You might remember that it was a group of Cossacks who whipped Pussy Riot members in Sochi during the Olympics in 2014.Such groups may seem superficially patriotic, in that they support their president, but they do so at a tremendous cost. That cost isn’t borne by them now, under Putin. But they are essentially solidifying the power of an already authoritarian, aggressive, lawless, and corrupt regime. And they do so with tremendous cruelty and inhumanity, undermining civil society, civic institutions and the moral fabric of their own society.









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