The latest news has practically forced me to launch this campaign. Read to the end and watch the video — I’m sure many of you will support it.
You’ve probably seen this image — it’s one of the most famous war photographs.
And it’s not just a famous photograph, but a symbol. In a sense, the defining image of the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet term for the Eastern Front of World War II). If someone told you, “pick one little photo that would explain everything that happened in our country to a person who slept from 1938 to 2018,” I think many would choose this one.
The importance of this image is also reflected in the fact that it appears on the cover of an 11th-grade history textbook.
But what would you say if I told you that this photograph is officially banned, and that if you post it on your social media, you could be:
- held legally liable;
- added to the list of extremists and terrorists
Don’t rush to shout: “Alexei, you’ve lost your mind from fighting the regime!”
I’m not the one who’s lost it:
At first I didn’t believe this could be real either, but I requested the case materials, read them, and now I see that this is exactly how it is. The documents are here — you can see for yourselves.
Two years ago, Mikhail Vyacheslavovich Listov, who lives in the city of Arkhangelsk, posted this photograph on his VKontakte wall.
A couple of months ago, Senior Lieutenant Y.N. Arkhireisky of the FSB was engaged in “checking the internet.”
It should be noted that Listov became a volunteer in my election campaign and, unsurprisingly, his VK page instantly ended up in the part of the internet that Senior Lieutenant Arkhireisky of the FSB was inspecting as part of his vitally important work for state security.
And our internet inspector saw that very photograph. And realized that a crime had been committed. You see, those Soviet soldiers — the scoundrels that they were — lowered captured Nazi banners to the ground, and those banners bore swastikas. Those Soviet soldiers failed to consider that 75 years later V.V. Putin would pass a law under which they would be committing an unlawful act.
Their own fault. They should have paid attention to what they were holding. Some banners of the defeated enemy — have they gone completely mad? If those had been small portraits of Putin or a banner saying “Everyone to the polls on March 18,” there would have been no problem.
So the FSB senior lieutenant drew up an OFFICIAL REPORT and sent it to the police.
The police, seeing that the FSB had uncovered treason, immediately opened an administrative case under Article 20.3: public display of Nazi symbols.
At that point, Mikhail Listov thought: this is insane, isn’t it?! Absurd! The case will be thrown out in court immediately.
But the trial took place, and Federal Judge Elena Kostyleva found Mikhail Listov guilty of publicly displaying Nazi symbols.
And this is important for anyone thinking right now: yes, it’s stupid, of course, but a fine is no big deal. The thing is, Article 20.3 of the Administrative Code is very peculiar. If you are found liable under it, the state gains the right to put you on the official list of terrorists and extremists. And that radically complicates your life. For example, a person on that list can hardly use banking services at all — an “extremist” may withdraw no more than 10,000 rubles in cash per month (about 100 liters of gasoline’s worth, and below the subsistence minimum). You also cannot take part in elections. And so on.
So officially, this photograph is banned. People who post it are criminals, and the road leads straight from there to the “list of extremists.”
What do you call this? Idiocy. State-sponsored idiocy, imposed from the very top.
And we badly need a campaign against this idiocy. Listov’s case is far from unique. Just yesterday, Agora released a report showing that people are now receiving real prison sentences over images on the internet every eight days.
Read the remarkable “monologue of a Center E officer” on Mediazona — it explains in detail how this is done. It’s a real machine, and it becomes clear that more and more such cases are appearing.
The latest examples:
a lawyer from Chuvashia is being investigated over reposting an article about World War II
our volunteer was fined for reposting an article by journalist Anton Orekh containing a critical anti-war text
Take part in the campaign against idiocy:
Post the “banned” photograph from the Victory Parade on your own page.
Share this video so that as many people as possible learn what the state is busy doing right now.
If you have a relative who is a veteran, send it to them.
If you know someone in the FSB, the police, or a judge, send it to them with the question: “So, do you enjoy working in a system that does this? Aren’t you ashamed?”