It is a sort of hybrid civil war the state wages against its own citizens. It intimidates not only the relatives of those arrested, but also the wider public into obedience and silence. Taking revenge and sowing fear has two purposes. As Alexander Tvardovsky wrote in his banned anti-Stalinist poem “By Right of Memory,” the authorities need a supply of such fathers and sons “to always be at hand in case of a shortage of class enemies.” In short, for every criminal statute, a perpetrator will be found, and vice versa. And in true Soviet fashion, the Chechen authorities sometimes require their victims to repent publicly.Īll these actions send a clear message to the public: “If you participate in anti-government actions, we will punish both you and your loved ones.Īnd if your children attend protest rallies, we’ll haul you in for mistreating a minor under your care.” If a son fights for the opposition, his father will be punished. Those fighting civil activism today employ the same methods as their Soviet predecessors. The authorities have shifted their tactics for the direct suppression of civil society from the use of police brutality and repressive laws to blackmail and psychological pressure. This new rendition of the Kremlin-KGB Fathers and Sons saga is not about a generational conflict, but about how Russia’s leaders take revenge against several generations at once - profaning the memory of past victims, blackmailing fathers by seizing their sons, and hurting children by arresting their fathers. This is right in keeping with Soviet-style “justice,” in which not only were parents made to pay for the “sins” of their children and vice versa, but also siblings and other relatives were punished for each other’s “misdeeds.” Today’s leaders are punishing one of Alexei Navalny’s key staffers, Ivan Zhdanov, in exactly the same way - by arresting his 66-year-old, retired father on trumped-up charges. A perfect example is how, instead of jailing Boris Pasternak, the Soviet authorities made his mistress, Olga Ivinskaya, serve time, because they knew it would cause him even greater pain. These typically involve exploiting their victims’ greatest vulnerability - close relatives. The Soviet and Russian secret services have always used the dirtiest tricks possible against their opponents.
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