The Real Russia. Today. Questionable prison reforms could be coming, Chechnya’s ‘runaway bride’ who wasn’t, and powerless nuclear power plants

12:36 pm, July 19, 2019

Source: Meduza

Friday, July 19, 2019

This day in history: 39 years ago, on July 19, 1980, the Summer Olympics kicked off in Soviet Moscow. They were also the first Olympic Games to be held in a socialist country. Led by the United States, 66 countries boycotted the games entirely because of the Soviet–Afghan War. (The USSR and 13 Eastern Bloc countries and allies would later boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics.)

As the Russian penitentiary system considers its first major reforms in 20 years, human rights advocates don’t like what they see
Chechen woman who fled to Moscow women’s shelter is now smiling for TV cameras in Grozny, accusing ‘feminists’ of malicious ‘recruitment’
Opinion: Oleg Kashin thinks Chechnya’s ‘runaway bride’ story shouldn’t be so forgettable, and Dmitry Belyaev thinks Russian rappers are phonies
News briefs: nuclear powerless plants; poisonous vending machines; stay home, FSB vets; watch your back, Google; detrimental dads; an illegal quiz; and angry Moscow voters

Russia’s prison dilemma ⚖️

On July 16, Russia’s Council on Human Rights reported that pretrial detention centers in Moscow, the Moscow suburbs, and St. Petersburg currently house twice the number of people they have the capacity to detain. Experts have argued that Russia’s pretrial detention facilities, including jail cells for suspects under investigation and preliminary holding areas, are the most dysfunctional part of the country’s penitentiary system, and that recognition has led to a drive for reform. Gennady Korienko, the head of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, and Mikhail Fedotov, who chairs the country’s Council on Human Rights, have already sent a series of proposals on the matter to President Vladimir Putin. Those proposals would mark the first significant nationwide changes to Russia’s jail and prison system in more than 20 years. Meduza asked three top Russian human rights advocates to give their take on the proposed reforms. They told us that some of the new policies would make conditions for suspects, defendants, and convicts in Russia even worse than they already are.

Read Meduza‘s report here.

Chechen woman who fled to Moscow women’s shelter is now smiling for TV cameras in Grozny, accusing ‘feminists’ of malicious ‘recruitment’ 📺

Earlier this week, the television station Grozny aired a 27-minute segment about a Chechen woman named Zaira Sugaipova, whom human rights advocates say was brought to Chechnya against her will by her parents after fleeing to a crisis center to escape a forced marriage. In the video, the woman answers questions from officials in Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s administration and says human rights advocates lied about her situation.

Read Meduza‘s report here.

👰 Opinion: Oleg Kashin on Sugaipova

Zaira Sugaipova’s story is an incredible tale of oppression, but it’s also forgettable and “within Russians’ expectations” for Chechen culture, columnist Oleg Kashin argues in a recent Republic op-ed (published a day before she went on television and denied reports that she was forced to go to Grozny against her will). Whatever the truth of Sugaipova’s journey, Kashin says Russian society has tacitly agreed to sacrifice those Chechens and occasional Russians (like Boris Nemtsov) who fall victim to Grozny’s “cannibalism.” According to this mindset, Kashin says, human rights violations like forced weddings are a local affair that doesn’t affect Russia’s “national heights.” Kashin says there are wider consequences, however, arguing that Russia has inadvertently allowed its “gradual Chechenization” (in terms of state practices, not ethnicity, “God forbid,” Kashin says). For example, police torture once limited to Chechnya is now accepted nationwide.

What’s the moral of this story? Kashin says Russians must remember that “abominable and dangerous” practices in Chechnya aren’t “ancient traditions,” but “cannibalism supported by the state for political necessity.”

Opinion: Russian rappers are guests in the house of hip hop 🎤

In the United States, rap as a genre is inseparable from African Americans’ struggle for equal rights, but it’s just pop music in Russia, according to a new article by journalist Dmitry Belyaev for the website Republic. Belyaev says Russian rappers lack any “natural” racial, cultural, or political ties to the genre, and their own avarice keeps them from using their large audiences to raise social awareness about important civic issues.

The Russian authorities have periodically panicked about rap music, Belyaev says, given that they fear all popular movements and increasingly fear all young people. The state bureaucracy backed away from rappers after last year’s crackdown, however, after realizing that these musicians are no more interested in staging protests than ordinary Russians. (This was a lucky break for the government, given that officials can’t stop or hijack what they don’t understand, Belyaev says.)

What’s the problem with Russian rap music? Belyaev says it increasingly promotes consumerism, the sexual exploitation of women, and drug use. The same is true of rap in the United States, he admits, but he says there’s still an audience for socially conscious rap music in America. (Russian listeners are “virtually uninterested” in such music, Belyaev says, pointing out that the biggest protest song in 2018 belonged to the electronic band IC3PEAK.)

Belyaev also argues that success doesn’t ruin African American rappers the same way, because even the most prosperous of these people never escape the potential racial persecution that permeates American society. In Russia, on the other hand, successful rappers are like successful bureaucrats: they turn their backs on their communities, just as soon as they’re living comfortably. Most Russian rappers don’t care about their communities, Belyaev says, adding that the genre didn’t start as the music of the underprivileged in Russia, but in fact belonged to musicians affluent enough to travel abroad, study English, and access recording studios. Subsequent Russian rappers have chosen business over civic duty, Belyaev says, and business and protest are incompatible in Russia.

News briefs

Yours, Meduza