Mariia Menshikova
Speaker: Mariia Menshikova (DOXA) Conference theme: Russian anti-war opposition
Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine, almost 20,000 people have been detained. Some of them were beaten and tortured. One can be sentenced to prison after 3 detentions.
After the invasion began, the Russian information space was filled with state propaganda. Reporters Without Borders placed Russia on 162th in the press freedom rating.
More than a hundred media resources, as well as popular social networks—Instagram, Facebook, X—were blocked: their sites can be opened only with the help of a VPN.
Since the beginning of the invasion, military censorship has been introduced with new criminal offences for spreading ‘false information’ about the Russian army and ‘discrediting’ the Russian army, which means, for any information that does not correspond to official information. To date, more than 1200 people have been prosecuted for their anti-war statements and activities.
I am one of these people. In Russia I am accused of ‘justifiying terrorism’ and I could be put into prison for up to 7 years because of two posts on a social network. These were posts of DOXA, an online magazine which covers topics from a leftist perspective. Me and my colleagues, we write about protests, repressions, wars, strikes all over the world, LGBT-rights and so on. That’s why the Russian state tries to silence us and prosecute us. Unsuccessfully.
Almost a thousand organisations and individuals have been classified as ‘foreign agents’, a quarter of them media, individual journalists and bloggers. Andrei Lugovoi, the murderer of former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko and current member of the State Duma, has repeatedly stated that ‘foreign agent’ is a euphemism for ‘enemy of the people’. Unfortunately, the Russian socialist movement was classified as a ‘foreign agent’.
Soon foreign agents will not be allowed to run for office. Two notable leftist politicians, also foreign agents, had to leave the country. One of them is Evgeny Stupin, a former deputy of Moscow city council. He was suppressed first in his own party, Communist Party of Russian Federation, and now he lost a seat in the council.
The second one is Mikhail Lobanov, he also lives in exile. He won the Russian parliament elections against a TV-propagandist but the victory was stolen because of manipulations with online-voting.
An even more serious restriction for civil society is the classification of an organisation as ‘undesirable’, i.e. as an alleged threat to the security of the state. Cooperation with such an organisation can be punished with up to five years in prison. 11 media are ‘undesirable’. DOXA is among them. Feminist Anti-War Resistance too.
While repression remains partly random and is not very wide-spread, the risk of prosecution significantly limits the ability of Russians to oppose the war. But even in these conditions there is space to act.
One of the strategies is obvious: to be more discreet. FAR organised a lot of such action. Amongst them are Women in Black protests. FAR also distributes a samizdat anti-war newspaper.
There is also direct action. It is difficult to calculate exactly how many acts of sabotage were committed by rail guerrillas in Russia and Belarus. The count could go into the hundreds.
Anarchist Ruslan Sidiki faces up to 30 years in prison in Russia. He derailed 19 freight wagons. He specially chose the place for the sabotage. He saw that military equipment and fuel were being transported along this section of the railway. He was tortured after being detained.
Institutional work is almost impossible. The education system, for example, is full of propaganda. From kindergarten to university. DOXA gathered information about 2500 cases of repression at Russian universities.