Marina Dubrova, an English teacher on the Russian Pacific island of Sakhalin, showed an inspiring YouTube video of her eighth grade class last month in which the boys, in Russian and Ukrainian, sang about in a “world without war.” ”.

After she showed it, a group of women stayed during recess and asked her about her views.

“Ukraine is a separate country, a separate country,” Professor Dubrova, 57, told them. “Not anymore,” replied one of the women.

After a few days, the police arrived at his school in the port city of Korsakov. In court, he listened to a recording of that conversation, which seemed to have been made by one of the students. The judge imposed a $ 400 fine for “public discrediting” in the Russian Armed Forces. The school He fired herhe said, for “amoral conduct.”

“Everyone seems to have gone into some kind of madness,” Dubrova said in a phone interview, reflecting the pro-war mood around her.

enemy at home

With the direct support of President Vladimir Putin, Russians who support the war against Ukraine are beginning to turn their backs on internal enemy.

The episodes are not yet a mass phenomenon, but they illustrate the growing paranoia and polarization in Russian society. Citizens attacked each other in a cold rumor of Stalin’s fear, driven by the state’s violent official rhetoric and enabled by far-reaching new laws that criminalize dissent.

There were reports of students teasing teachers and people teasing their neighbors and even those eating at the adjacent table.

At a shopping mall in western Moscow, it was the text “no to war” displayed in a computer repair shop and reported by a passerby who arrested the store owner, Marat Grachev, by police.

In St. Petersburg, a local media outlet documented anger at the allegedly pro-Western sympathy with the public library; it exploded after a library official mistaken the image of a Soviet scholar on a poster for Mark Twain.

Continue “provocateurs”

In the western region of Kaliningrad, authorities sent text messages to residents urging them to provide phone numbers and email addresses of “provocatives” related to “special operations” in Ukraine, reported by newspapers in Russia; they can do this comfortably through a special account in the Telegram messaging application.

A nationalist political party has launched a website urging the Russians to denounce the “plagues” on the elite.

“I’m really sure the cleanup will start,” Dmitri Kuznetsov, the member of parliament behind the website, said in an interview, predicting that the process will speed up after the “active phase” of the war has ended. He then clarified, “We don’t want anyone to be shot, and we also don’t want people to be incarcerated.”

Remnants of the Soviet era

But it is the history of mass executions and political incarceration during the Soviet era, and the state -encouraged condemnation of fellow citizens, that now heralds the deepening climate of repression in Russia.

Putin set the tone in a speech on March 16, declaring that Russian society needs “self -cleansing” in which people can “distinguish the true patriots from the“ scoundrels and traitors ”and“ they will just spit out like a fly that accidentally flies into their mouths. “

In Soviet logic, those who choose not to report their fellow citizens can be treated as suspects.

“Under these conditions, there is a renewed fear of the people,” said Nikita Petrov, a leading scholar of the Soviet secret police. “And that fear dictates that you report.”

In March, Putin has signed a law punishing public statements that contradict the government’s line in what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine with up to 15 years in prison. This is a cruel but necessary step, the Kremlin said, because of the West’s “information war” against Russia.

Prosecutors have already used the law against more than 400 people, according to rights group OVD-Info, including a man holding a piece of paper with eight asterisks. “No to war” in Russian has eight letters.

“It’s kind of a big joke that, to our frustration, we’re living,” Aleksandra Bayeva, head of the legal department at OVD-Info, said of the absurdity of some of the war-related prosecutions. He said he saw a sharp increase in the frequency of people reporting to their fellow citizens.

“The repressions are not just done by the hands of the state authorities,” he said. “They were also made by the hands of ordinary citizens.”

In most cases, penalties related to war criticism are limited to fines; For the more than 15,000 anti-war protesters arrested since the raid began on Feb. 24, fines are the most common punishment, though some have been sentenced to up to 30 days in prison, Bayeva said. But some people have been threatened with longer prison sentences.

recorded conversation

In the western city of Penza, another English teacher, Irina Gen, came to class one day to find a giant “Z” written on the blackboard. The Russian government endorses the letter as Symbol of Support for the War, after it was seen painted as an identity marker on Russian military vehicles in Ukraine.

Mrs. said. Gen to his students who look like half swastika.

Later, an eighth grader asked him why Russia was banned from participating in sporting competitions in Europe.

“I think that’s the right thing to do,” Mrs. replied. Gen. “Until Russia starts acting in a civilized way, it will continue forever.” “But we don’t know all the details,” said one girl, referring to the war. “Right, you know nothing,” the teacher added.

A recording from that exchange emerged a popular Telegram account that often posts inside information about criminal cases. The Federal Security Service, a successor agency of the KGB, called her and warned her that her words blaming Russia for the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, last month were “100 percent a criminal case. “

is now being investigated for causing “serious consequences” under the censorship law last month, which can be punishable by 10 to 15 years in prison.

Teacher Gen, 45, said he saw little support from his students or his school and quit his job this month. When he spoke to the class about his opposition to the war, he said he felt “hatred” towards him coming from some of his students.

“My perspective doesn’t reflect the heart and mind of almost anyone,” he said in an interview.

But others criticized by countrymen have learned more hopeful lessons from the experience. On Sakhalin Island, after local media reported on the case of Ms. Dubrova, one of her former students raised $ 150 a day for her, before Ms. Dubrova stopped. and told him that he himself would pay the fine. On Friday, Ms. Dubrova the money at a local dog shelter.

In Moscow, Mr. Grachev, the owner of a computer repair shop, said surprisingly none of his hundreds of customers threatened to sue him for the “no war” text he prominently displayed on screen in behind the counter for weeks after the invasion.

After all, he said, he was forced to double the price of some services because of Western sanctions, which likely angered some of his customers. Instead, many thanked him.

Source: The New York Times

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