Skip to main content

The Real Russia. Today. What happens if Russia ignores the ECHR on Navalny?

Source: Meduza

Friday, February 19, 2021

  • The ECHR has called for Navalny’s release. What happens if Russia refuses?
  • Independent journalist Sergey Smirnov on serving time in a Russian ‘special’ detention center
  • Opinion and analysis: Shlayakhtin and Arkhangelsky debate the politics of Soviet monuments
  • News briefs: Belarus says no to an investigation, a Navalny supporter pleads guilty to extremism, Ukraine sanctions a Putin-linked oligarch, and Russian attitudes towards the U.S.

Feature stories

⚖️ Freeing Navalny

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has invoked Rule 39 and called on Russia to release imprisoned opposition politician Alexey Navalny immediately. But what happens if Russia refuses? Meduza breaks down key questions about this development including, but not limited to:

  • Why did the ECHR call for Navalny’s release?
  • What’s Rule 39?
  • How quickly does Russia have to make a decision?
  • Will Russia be forced to reconsider Navalny’s prison sentence?

🗣️ ‘Collapse and chaos’

Mediazona editor and prominent independent journalist Sergey Smirnov was released from custody on Thursday February 18, after serving 15 days in jail for a joke he shared on Twitter. Following his release, Smirnov described his time in detention in an interview with journalist Elizaveta Nesterova that was streamed on YouTube. You can read our summary of what Sergey Smirnov said about the conditions at the “special” detention center here.

Opinion and analysis

🗽 A tale of two monuments

Roman Shlayakhtin, historian — VTimes

Is there still a place for Vladimir Lenin in tomorrow’s glorious Russia? Maybe, argues Roman Shlayakhtin, who describes how Lenin monuments in different parts of the country continue to inspire varying degrees of respect and care. He also cites polling from the Public Opinion Foundation that suggests 83 percent of Russians oppose the demolition of Russia’s Lenin monuments. How is this possible, given Lenin’s modern-day legacy in other post-Soviet states as the catalyst for the USSR’s horrors?

For Russians, says Shlayakhtin, Lenin symbolizes their “comfortable and legendary Soviet past,” not occupation. Monuments in Lenin’s honor, moreover, address a past, present, and future that were “taken” from millions of Russians in the 1990s, causing trauma that neither state officials nor the anti-Kremlin opposition addresses today. 

Allowing localities to decide the fate of their Lenin monuments, streets, and squares “enables different communities to cope with the trauma of the empire’s collapse in different ways” and to define their own relationships to Russia’s Soviet past. This freedom to choose, Shlayakhtin argues, should be part of Russia’s future.

Andrey Arkhangelsky, columnist — Republic

Arkhangelsky suspects that the Kremlin deliberately provoked a debate about adding another monument (perhaps restoring the Felix Dzerzhinsky statue) to Lubyanka Square, outside the FSB’s headquarters, as a means of rallying so-called “patriotic” figures for a public campaign to discuss the nation’s statehood, disguising what should be a conversation about “good and evil” in Soviet history as a debate about architecture aesthetics. 

A more honest symbol of Russia’s post-Soviet nationhood, says Arkhangelsky, would be to preserve Lubyanka Square’s supposed “emptiness,” as a nod to the “self-delusion” that fuels Russians’ incapacity to assess their own national past. Another solution would be a permanently installed crane, he says, as a reminder that no monument can stand forever.

More news in brief

🕯️ Tomorrow in history: 21 years ago tomorrow, on February 20, 2000, the Russian politician Anatoly Sobchak died after a suspected heart attack outside Kaliningrad. A co-author of Russia’s modern-day Constitution and the first democratically elected mayor of St. Petersburg, Sobchak was a mentor and teacher to both Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev.

Yours, Meduza