The ‘Other’ Russia

Meduza, as you know, is the Russian news organization based in Riga. (Russian journalists cannot practice honest journalism in their home country. Putin has banned independent media.) Here is a bulletin from Meduza:

Yes, “sudden death syndrome.” Don’t you hate when that happens? Or when these careless dissidents fall out of windows or down stairs? Bunch of klutzes, they are.

• You wouldn’t think it would be brave to bring flowers to a memorial — but in Russia, it is. Very. Have a look.

• A headline in the New York Times reads, “Risking Arrest, Russians Mourn Navalny in Small Acts of Protest.” Yes. That article is here. It ends this way:

“Someday what we are watching may be in history books,” Andrei, the student, whispered, as policemen urged him and a New York Times journalist to leave the premises. Watching the steady flow of people bearing flowers, and under the increasing pressure of a police officer to move along, he slipped into an underground crosswalk with a request.

“Please don’t forget that there are still many good people in this country,” he said.

Yes. We should not forget the “other” Russia. It is not all Putin’s, you know.

• Here is an item from Julia Davis, of the Russian Media Monitor:

I want to say to my fellow Westerners, my fellow citizens of the Free World: Don’t get demoralized, by all the BS!

• The Kremlin has put the prime minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas, on its “wanted list.” To read an Associated Press report on the matter, go here. Kallas is a firm supporter of the Ukrainians and their efforts to repel the Russian invasion and keep their country. She also knows that Putin would like to swallow other countries, including her own.

In the AP report, Kallas is quoted as saying, “Estonia and I remain steadfast in our policy: supporting Ukraine, bolstering European defense, and fighting against Russian propaganda.” She adds, “This hits close to home for me: My grandmother and mother were once deported to Siberia, and it was the KGB who issued the fabricated arrest warrants.”

• An item from the Moscow Times:

In 2017, I wrote a piece called “The Grave-Hunter, Hunted.” It is about Yuri Dmitriev, who is a political prisoner of the Kremlin. He worked for Memorial, which was the largest human-rights organization, and the largest civil-society organization, in Russia. It was started by Andrei Sakharov and his friends. Memorial has, of course, been banned by the Kremlin, along with civil society at large.

An excerpt from my piece, in 2017:

Dmitriev is a legendary researcher in Karelia, the region in northwest Russia. He is legendary for grave-hunting. He finds mass graves of the Stalin era; he identifies the victims therein; and he honors them.

One more excerpt:

Dmitriev played a major role in discovering the site known as Sandarmokh, outside the town of Medvezhyegorsk, in Karelia. At Sandarmokh, more than 9,000 people were buried. They were murdered in 1937 and 1938. Some 1,100 of the 9,000 came from the Solovki prison camp, which Alexander Solzhenitsyn would dub “the mother of the Gulag.” Among the 9,000 were some 60 nationalities.

The condition of Yuri Dmitriev today, in prison, I don’t know about. He is yet another zek — another prisoner — to bear in mind.