Outrageous. Truly outrageous, no irony. Judges of the Moscow City Court, caught plagiarizing and stealing dissertations, came up with a simply brilliant defense strategy: they sue the media outlets that reported on it and (SURPRISE) win, extracting fantastical compensation for their wounded “honor and dignity.” Just this Friday, The New Times was ordered to pay 1.1 million rubles. If you follow cases like this, you know that large awards in such lawsuits are very rare. Usually, Moscow courts value moral damages for anyone, even the most respected person, at 30,000–50,000 rubles. But here, a plagiarist judge who was told, “you’re a plagiarist,” goes to another judge, and that judge orders the whistleblowers to pay a million. Notably, one of the plagiarists, Judge Gordeyuk, is a regular co-author of Egorova, the chair of the Moscow City Court, which rather hints at the quality of the “scholarly work” produced by these outstanding legal minds. The “honor and dignity” of a fraudster who ought to be stripped of judicial status is valued more highly than the honor and dignity of any academician. They stole a dissertation, made money off it, and on top of that made a fine attempt to bankrupt an independent magazine. After rulings like these, the “honor and dignity” of the entire Moscow judicial system is hardly worth more than a cup of sunflower seeds. Sending my support to The New Times. Our best response to these plagiarist judges is to take part in the subscription campaign. If you haven’t subscribed yet, do it: http://podpiska.newtimes.ru Excellent. What’s excellent is an article in that same New Times: "Where and How the ‘Servants of the People’ Live: A Guide to Nomenklatura Paradise." It does a good job of explaining why there is always something to write in the “outrageous” section.
About wonderful, comfortable, spacious, and extremely expensive apartments that are handed out to officials for free. Give it a read — it’s very interesting. I especially liked this: The same source explained to The New Times why the Rosreestr (Russia’s state real estate registry) documents for apartments in Shvedsky Lane always list two-room apartments with floor areas of more than 200 square meters. The reason is that when the housing commission of the Presidential Administration or the government staff decides who should get an apartment, they follow a rule under which a family of one or two people should receive a one-room apartment, a family of two or three people a two-room apartment, and so on. The floor area, however, is diplomatically omitted from the documents. A two-room apartment measuring 200 square meters is nice. I can just picture some United Russia mug yelling, “My whole family has been crammed into a two-room place for years!”