The Real Russia. Today. Siberian hip hop is on the ropes, the Kremlin fears Russia's debtors, and Kadyrov's aborted Instagram return

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

This day in history. On November 14, 1985, KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky was sentenced in absentia to death for treason, after spying for the British for 11 years. In November 2007, he was hospitalized with thallium poisoning, for which he blamed “rogue elements in Moscow.” Gordievsky is 80 years old today.

• Siberia's hip hop concerts are in jeopardy, as parent groups discover the genre's fascination with sex and drugs
• Columnist Evgeny Karasyuk says the Kremlin's spinelessness is growing Russia's number of debtors
• Columnist Pavel Aptekar argues that supporters who rescued The New Times agreed to pay a new ‘self-assessed conscience tax’
• Former Ambassador Michael McFaul lays out his grand strategy for containing Russia in a ‘hot peace’
• Two Russia-related events, one in London and another in D.C.
• Ramzan Kadyrov's Instagram account is reinstated, and then disabled once again

Friendzoned in Siberia 🎤

Known for its sharp-witted dance hip hop, the St. Petersburg group “Friendzone” performs music about teenage life and (more often than not) the sexual frustration that colors much of adolescence. One of the group’s founders is believed to be rapper Vladimir Galat — a regular competitor on the YouTube channel VersusBattleRu. At the time of this writing, Friendzone currently has more than 300,000 subscribers on Vkontakte. On November 1, the group embarked on a 28-city tour.

On November 12, Friendzone was supposed to perform a show in Krasnoyarsk, but the authorities showed up an hour before soundcheck and escorted tour manager Anastasia Zaitseva to the district attorney’s office. Zaitseva told Meduza that City Hall officials demanded the cancellation of the concert, “without presenting any related documents or court orders,” and accused organizers of labeling the event with the wrong parental advisory (the concert was listed as appropriate for individuals age 12 and older, instead of adults only). On Vkontakte, the group said it tried to raise the age advisory or find another venue, but it came up with nothing. “At the last minute, we found a venue at ‘Dozhd Studio,’ but the prosecutors popped up again and took our tour manager and the club’s art director down to the station,” Friendzone said in its statement.

The next day, on November 13, Friendzone lost another concert, this time in Kemerovo. According to Zaitseva, the local authorities again took issue with the age advisory, and they also accused the concert’s organizers of failing to pay the venue rental costs. “We tried to find a compromise: we suggested that kids under 18 would be allowed with their parents, and we wouldn’t charge their parents, but City Hall refused,” Zaitseva says. “Get this: the district attorney in Kemerovo today can’t even handle the word ‘vpiska’ [rager], which we used in our concert ads. They told us that the word is forbidden.” In its statement on Vkontakte, Friendzone also mentioned that officials objected to lyrics in the song “Butylochka” (Little Bottle), which they claimed “incites same-sex relations.”

Zaitseva says this is the first time the group has had to cancel concerts, but it has encountered hostility from local officials elsewhere. For example, police came to Friendzone’s concert in Omsk on November 10, “staying for the whole show, recording everything on video, and then said they hadn’t witnessed any illegal activity.” Zaitseva says she has no idea why the group is suddenly having problems on its tour. City officials in Kemerovo and Krasnoyarsk have not commented officially on the cancellation of the group’s concerts.

The “Anti-Dealer” movement has taken credit for the cancellation of Friendzone’s concert in Krasnoyarsk

On November 13, the Krasnoyarsk social movement “Anti-Dealer” announced on Vkontakte that it had managed to “block” Friendzone from performing locally, thanks to “coordinated action with the police, the district attorney’s office, and the Culture Ministry.” The online community said “singing to children about drugs, same-sex love, and depravity is a crime against the nation,” calling Krasnoyarsk “a city with strong moral standards that was the first to fight against the propagation of unhealthy lifestyles and false values.” The Vkontakte post also cites a few examples of allegedly objectionable Friendzone lyrics, including “Crocodile Boy sells heroin to the kids,” “I’ll teach your little sister to smoke,” and “Kids are cutting themselves to my rhymes.”

The “Anti-Dealer” movement, which launched in the mid-2010s under the leadership of State Duma deputy and former Olympic athlete Dmitry Nossov, has a history of locking horns with musicians. The group’s activists were present in 2014 and 2015, when police arrested the rappers “Guf” and “SLiM” in Krasnoyarsk. “Ptaha,” one of their collaborators, later savaged the Anti-Dealer movement during a concert, and police later slapped him with felony charges for inciting hatred against the movement’s members. In 2015, Anti-Dealer activists tried to disrupt the “Media Strike” festival in Moscow. On its website, the movement says it helped block more than 1,500 pages on Vkontakte before the start of the year, “inspected” more than 1,000 pharmacies, and repeatedly accompanied police officers on raids. The movement takes special credit for Guf’s arrest, but until now it hasn’t claimed responsibility for canceling music concerts.

Daniil Podbornykh, who manages Anti-Dealer’s regional branch in Krasnoyarsk, told Meduza that his group learned about Friendzone only a week ago. After listening to some of their music, the activists asked a faculty member at Siberian State University to analyze the lyrics. Podbornykh says a psychology professor concluded that the music is inappropriate for teenagers, and so Anti-Dealer appealed to the Culture Ministry and local police to stop the group’s concert. “We used to fight only with rappers who openly promoted drugs. We never even suspected that this is already being promoted among children,” Podbornykh says. “[In Friendzone’s songs,] they sing about kids who are made of pills. Kids in school will hear this and think: ‘Well, why not?’ I’ve got a son in grade school right now, and I wouldn’t want him hearing this stuff. In the Russian Orthodox Church, they were pretty shocked by such music.”

Musicians performing songs with supposedly immoral lyrics have faced increasing pressure in Russia to cancel their concerts

In late September 2018, a 19-page petition appeared online, signed by the “Nizhny Novgorod Parental Community,” listing a whole slew of musicians (mostly rappers) who were scheduled to perform in Nizhny Novgorod, despite being dangerous to the youth and their “physical, mental, spiritual, and moral development.” The text named many prominent entertainers, including “Allj,” “Matrang,” “Monetochka,” “Gone.Fludd,” “Khleb,” and “Poshlaya Molly,” as well as the Dutch symphonic metal band “Within Temptation.”

A month later, the Nizhny Novgorod district attorney’s office announced the cancellation of five concerts at Club Milo (which the parent group singled out) due to the music’s foul language and lyrics with information “capable of tempting individuals into consuming alcohol and illegal substances.” Officials also faulted organizers for failing to restrict attendance to adults. Club Milo then notified ticket holders that concerts for “Jah Khalib,” “GUNWEST,” Monetochka, Matran, and Allj had been postponed for different reasons.

In late October, a group calling itself the “Tyumen Parental Community” launched a similar initiative, targeting concerts by several musicians scheduled to perform at Club Baikanur (including “Pornofilmy,” “Face,” “Khaski,” “Pionerlager Pylnaya Raduga,” “LSP,” and others). The parent group complains that these concerts would “feature profanity, incite antisocial behavior, and exploit interest in sex,” making the performances inappropriate for minors. The activists are trying to prevent these shows and stop children from attending future concerts by such musicians. So far, however, these performances are still on the calendar.

Putin the Softie 💸

In an article for Republic, columnist Evgeny Karasyuk argues that the Russian government is mismanaging debtor policy and fueling a culture of financial irresponsibility, instead of teaching discipline. According to federal statistics, more than six million Russians currently face foreign travel restrictions because of unpaid debts (mostly overdraft banking fees, alimony, and tax and administrative fines). While enforcement agencies say today’s policy is an effective regulatory measure, the number of debtors in Russia keeps rising.

Instead of cracking down on this growing problem, Karasyuk says, the Kremlin has handled debtors with kid gloves to avoid upsetting voters, costing the federal budget and damaging Russia’s economy. Many mayors and governors have also followed Putin’s lead and amnestied local debtors for unpaid utility bills. Things have gotten so ridiculous, Karasyuk says, that drivers generally ignore traffic violations, because they can count on the tickets to expire after two years. Senators, meanwhile, have opposed an effort to auto-deduct this money from offenders’ bank accounts.

Rescue The New Times, save yourself ⛑️

In an op-ed for the newspaper Vedomosti, columnist Pavel Aptekar says the successful crowdfunding campaign to rescue The New Times from a crippling regulatory fine demonstrates how many Russians today are prepared to pay a “self-assessed conscience tax” to fight injustice against those persecuted by the authorities. Aptekar compares the magazine’s surprisingly quick fundraising drive to similar initiatives by Transparency International Russia, Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, the news site Mediazona, the civil rights group “Jailed Russia,” and others, repeatedly arguing that supporters often disagree with those they help, but they donate money, nonetheless.

While not exactly the same idea, political scientist Alexander Kynev similarly emphasized “dignity” as a driving force in electoral upsets in certain gubernatorial races. Read Meduza’s summary of his article in Republic here.

McFaul's strategy ♕♛

In a long article for Foreign Affairs, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul lays out his “new bipartisan grand strategy” for “confronting Putin” in what he calls “the hot peace” that defines today’s U.S.-Russian relations. The plan hinges on containing Moscow until Russia “changes from within” (in other words, “after Vladimir Putin steps down” or “maybe even longer, depending on who succeeds him”). McFaul says America’s current conflict with Russia “doesn’t revolve around mere policy disagreements: rather, it is a contest between Putinism and democracy.” He also calls for abandoning efforts to integrate Russia into multilateral institutions, arguing that integration has failed to “moderate Russian behavior.”

McFaul’s containment plan starts with curbing Russian influence on U.S. elections, including “enhanced cybersecurity resilience” and federal laws “to provide greater transparency about Russian media activities inside the United States” (with additional regulations to “encourage social media platforms to grant less exposure to Kremlin-created content”). The fate of Ukraine, McFaul says, is paramount: “A failed state in Ukraine will confirm Putin’s flawed hypothesis about the shortcomings of U.S.-sponsored democratic revolutions.” In Asia, Washington’s “important task will be to divide China from Russia,” the former ambassador argues. When it comes to economic activity, McFaul says Europe should reduce its dependence on Russian energy exports and ditch Nord Stream 2, while implementing greater transparency in banking to “expose the ill-gotten financial assets that Putin and his cronies have parked abroad.” Western money, meanwhile, should start flowing more vigorously into Russia and its periphery, to support independent journalism.

U.S. “hot peace” policy isn’t all containment, however. McFaul also calls for continued cooperation in some areas, like arms control and combating terrorism (though “different ideas about what groups and individuals qualify as terrorists” complicate this work). But the Kremlin should be denied “symbolic leadership” wherever possible, says McFaul. This includes sporting events held in Russia.

McFaul’s long-term advice is what he calls “strategic patience,” which boils down to waiting for Russia domestic reform, while signaling clearly that the U.S. doesn’t want “endless conflict with Russia.” When a democrat finally takes Putin’s seat (if that ever happens), Washington must “seize the moment” and “encourage democracy within Russia” and “integrate Russia into the West,” and do a better job than the White House managed in the 1990s.

Events

😷 What was (in London)

On November 14, University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies assembled a panel of three scholars (Precious Chatterje-Doody, Aglaya Snetkov, and Pete Duncan) and one journalist (Ellen Barry), chaired by Ben Noble, to discuss the March 2018 nerve-agent attack in Salisbury, England. The speakers addressed the “broader context” of what was apparently an assassination attempt by Russia’s military intelligence, Moscow’s response, and the media’s varying coverage. You can watch an archived video of the whole event on YouTube. (Opening remarks wrap up at 1:12:55, followed by questions and answers.)

☢️ What will be (in D.C.)

On Friday, November 16, at 10:00 a.m., EST, the Center for Strategic and International Studies is hosting a debate on Russian nuclear strategy after the Cold War between Kristin Bruusgaard and Olga Oliker, moderated by Michael Kofman. Bruusgaard will be arguing that “current Russian strategy is reducing the emphasis on nuclear weapons and oriented primarily toward deterring rather than fighting nuclear war.” The event will be webcast live right here.

And now this 🐈

Now you see him, now you don’t. For a brief few hours on Wednesday, Instagram reinstated Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov’s account, restoring his access to millions of subscribers, lost unceremoniously in December 2017, two days after Kadyrov’s name was added to another round of U.S. sanctions. The strongman’s return to the network where his fascination with cats famously earned him comedian John Oliver’s ridicule even warranted a BuzzFeed article, titled “Chechnya's Leader Is Back On Instagram And He's Already Being Weird As Shit.”

Alas, at the time of this writing, Kadyrov’s account, @kadyrov_95, was once again unavailable. “The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed,” Instagram informs visitors. Some reunions simply aren’t meant to be.