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Welcome to the twenty-third edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. My guest today is the Russian artist Slava Ptrk.

The Crypt Gallery in central London recently hosted a multimedia exhibition called The Brainwashing Machine, about the uses of propaganda.  The exhibition, which first opened in Madrid, showed works by artists from a range of different countries, but the great majority was from Russia. The venue in the basement of the Crypt at St. Pancras Church provided a dark and atmospheric labyrinth, with dark cells where little light penetrated.  In these alcoves and on their rough walls, were displayed intriguing interpretations of the role of propaganda in contemporary life. Among them, were works by Sasha Skochilenko, made while she was still in prison in Russia, Pavel Otdelnov and Nadia Tolokonnikova. One could also read and hear the words of dramatist Zhenya Berkovich and director Svetlana Petriichuk, both still in a Russian prison today. But personally, I was most taken by the works of our guest today: Slava Ptrk

This podcast was recorded on 19 September 2024.

My questions include:

• Tell us about your name, if you would. It’s a pseudonym, but why did you choose to glorify PTRK?
• Tell us about how you came to be a part of The Brainwashing Machine exhibition about propaganda?
• Your works exhibited in the exhibition – did you make them especially for the exhibition ?
• Perhaps your most memorable work in the exhibition is called ‘I am not interested in politics.’ Tell us about it and how it came about.
• You started your professional career as a journalist. Is that why propaganda and its impact are important subjects for you? What were your experiences as a journalist in this regard?
• What served as the impetus for you to become an artist? What were your first steps in this direction.
• What is most for you in expressing yourselMy questions include:
• Tell us about your name, if you would. It’s a pseudonym, I guess,  but why did you choose to glorify PTRK?
• Tell us about how you came to be a part of The Brainwashing Machine exhibition?
• Your works for the exhibition – did you make them especially?
• Perhaps your most memorable work in the exhibition is called ‘I am not interested in politics.’ Tell us about it and how it came about.
• You started your professional career as a journalist. Is that why propaganda and its impact are important subjects for you? What were your experiences as a journalist in this regard?
• What served as the impetus for you to become an artist? What were your first steps as an artist?
• What is most important to you in giving expression to yourself and the surrounding reality in your art? You have said that your chief instrument is irony.
• Another work in The Brainwashing Machine exhibition in London is called ‘Steps’ and next to it is a work titled ‘Ways.’ What do these works represent? How do they relate to propaganda? 
• Looking at your street art, one could guess that Banksy was a strong influence on your work. Is that so,  or did you take inspiration elsewhere?
• Your final work in the London exhibition is called ‘The Sinnerman.’ It is uses a mobile phone screen. How should one understand this work and what, or who, is depicted in it?
• When and why did you decide to leave Russia?
• How does being outside Russia affect your choice of subjects for your current and future work?
• Do you have hopes of returning to Russia?

My guest today is documentary filmmaker Askold Kurov, whose latest film, “Of Caravans and Dogs,” was screened this past June in England as part of the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival, the largest festival of its kind in the UK.

According to the festival programme, this “bold and compelling documentary looks at the curtailment of press freedom in Russia on the eve of and during the invasion of Ukraine.” The credits list two directors. One is “Anonymous Number 1” and the other is our guest today, Askold Kurov.

This podcast was recorded on 29 August 2024.

My questions include: 

1. Askold, I watched your film with great interest. Please explain the origins of the title. 

2. In the Sheffield Docfest programme, your unique access to people and events is much praised.  Tell us how the documentary came about?  In the credits, it says that the film was made with the support of Novaya Gazeta.  Was it their idea or did you approach them with the idea?

3.  Tell us about the relationship between you and your team. Your co-director, as well as two others in key roles – the sound recordist and the editor - all chose to remain anonymous, but you didn’t.

4.  I heard a journalist at TV Dozhd say that the Russian authorities had played the independent opposition media, that they had done everything to get opposition journalists to quit Russia voluntarily so that there would be no one left to push back against government pressure and censorship in Russia.  What do you think?

5.  You didn’t leave Russia straight after the beginning of the war.  You now live outside Russia.  What prompted your departure finally? 

6.  Do you keep in touch with your “anonymous” colleagues from the film?  How are they doing?

7.  Many people, including in your film, talk about Russian journalists’ own self-censorship.  Do you think this is an option?  Does it promote or destroy quality journalism?

8.  Access to all independent sources of information in Russia is increasingly restricted.  What sources of information remain open to Russians and is there a demand for it?  Has this changed since the Ukrainian army’s recent incursions in the Kursk region?

9..  Tell us a little about yourself.  Where did you grow up and how did you become a documentary film-maker?

10. I remember very well the strong impression I took away from your 2017 film about Ukrainian film-maker Oleg Sentsov, who was arrested during the annexation of Crimea and taken away to be imprisoned in Russia.  What did your close interactions with and observations of Ukrainians reveal about the differences between Ukrainians and Russians?

11.  Could you have predicted then that Russia would start a full-scale war against Ukraine?

12.  How do you see the war ending?

13.  Are you currently working on a new project?  

14. How do you find living in a foreign country?

15. How do you see your future? In Russia?  Under what circumstances?

My questions include:

1. Were you aware that Sasha was going to replace the price labels in the supermarket? Or did you find out about it later?

2. Did it surprise you? How did you react?

3 I remember seeing pictures of these new price labels by Sasha on Facebook, and being amazed by the subtlety of the idea and its execution – you had to look pretty closely to realize that the labels had completely different texts from the usual ones. The font, the format, the size – everything had been carefully copied but with added facts about the victims of the Special Military Operation. Did she imagine then what consequences it could lead to? And did you realize the danger of what she was doing?

4. Tell us about Sasha – what kind of person is she and what was she like as a child? I understand that she’s a talented musician and artist.  How did you bring her up?

5. You now live in France. Had you previously thought of leaving Russia, or was it because of Sasha’s arrest?

6. Sasha was kept in prison for more than 19 months before her trial. What were conditions like for her and how did she cope? Did it affect her health?

7. Seven years in prison for such a ‘crime’ – at the time this seemed unimaginably severe.. Was it a surprise to Sasha? And to you?

8. What can you do to help her from outside Russia?

9. Various organizations, including Rights in Russia, encourage people to write letters to political prisoners in Russia. Does Sasha receive such letters? What do they mean to her?

10. Where possible, do you try to disseminate information in the West about other political prisoners in Russia? Do you think the West does enough to support them and intercede on their behalf?

11. Does the fact that both Amnesty International and Memorial have recognized Sasha as a prisoner of conscience and a political prisoner, and demand her immediate and unconditional release, have any impact on her fate?

12. How do you see the future for Sasha? And for yourself?

Welcome to the twentieth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. My guest today is Olga Sadovskaya, a lawyer from the civil society group, Team Against Torture. The project’s members have been investigating complaints by Russians about torture for over two decades. Thanks to their work, hundreds of cases of torture by law enforcement officers have reached the courts and compensation from the state has been awarded to their victims. Olga Sadovskaya lives and works in her native city of Nizhny Novgorod. She graduated from Lobachevsky State University with a degree in Public International Law, defending the first thesis in Russia on the prohibition of torture and the practice of the European Court of Human Rights on this issue. She has been taking cases to the European Court of Human Rights for over 20 years. This podcast was recorded on 20 June 2024.

My questions include:

1. You chose a rather unusual topic for your diploma. In 2003, when you defended it, what profession did you think you would pursue in the future?
2. How did it come about that you specialised in torture?
3. In Russia, it seems to me, few people are concerned about torture – people think ‘that’s just how it should be’, or ‘they deserve it, and that’s all there is to it.’ How do you explain the rather high tolerance for violence in Russia?
4. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has the Russian public’s attitude to torture changed? Has it become better, worse, or have moral and ethical guidelines shifted in general?
5. Previously, in such situations it was common to appeal to the ECtHR, but in 2022 the Russian Federation withdrew from the jurisdiction of the European Court. What tools are now left for Russian human rights defenders to seek justice?
6. I read somewhere that you have said that “all wars end in a resolution of peace.” In your opinion, will Russia’s war against Ukraine also end through peace negotiations? With the intervention of international forums, or do the warring parties no longer have confidence in them?  
7. What is it like for you and other human rights defenders to work under current conditions?
8. Since the spring of 2022, when the register of foreign agents is updated every Friday, have many of your colleagues left the country or given up their human rights practice?
9. How does the ‘foreign agent’ label affect your professional work. And can you explain what is an “undesirable organisation”?
10. Have you ever received any threats yourself? Or have there been administrative cases initiated against you?
11. What is meant by the word “torture” and what should a person do if they find themselves in a situation where, in their opinion, they are being subjected to torture? And what if they are exposed  to torture in detention? What should they do then?
12. Is there such a thing as psychological torture? Have you experienced it yourself in your work as a human rights defender?
13. Can such a term be applied to what happened to your fellow resident of Nizhny Novgorod, Irina Slavina, who committed suicide in the most horrible way in front of the Interior Ministry building in the city centre in 2020?
14. You said somewhere that ‘even if a person is not themselves directly involved in torture, they could still be party to the system of violence.’ Can you elaborate? 
15. What does the police treatment of suspects in the terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall in March this year tell us about today’s Russia?
16. In Russia now everyone is living with uncertainty. What options for the future of your work do you see?
17. Can you imagine ever being forced to give up your work – that the screws will be tightened to such an extent that it will be impossible to work in the field of human rights in Russia?

Our guest today is Iryna Khalip, a Belarusian journalist and participant in the 2010 protests against election fraud in the presidential elections in Belarus. Her husband is the politician Andrei Sannikov who ran as an opposition presidential candidate in those very elections. Since 2006, Iryna has been working as Belarus correspondent for Novaya gazeta, now Novaya gazeta – Evropа. Before that, Iryna worked in local opposition media, was an activist, was sent to prison, subjected to threats from the Belarusian special services and was a victim of psychological threats from the authorities. Today we will talk to Iryna about herself, the war in Ukraine, and the relationship between Lukashenka and Putin, between Russia and Belarus.

This podcast was recorded on 30 May 2024.

Our questions include:

• Iryna, I was honestly amazed when I read about you in Wikipedia. Tell us about your activism against President Lukashenka of Belarus and his unlimited power in the country?  When did you start your activism and what have been the consequences for you personally?
• You took part in the protests against election fraud in 2010. How did the 2020 protests differ from the 2010 protests?
• What are the reasons for the failure of the latest protests, perhaps the most massive protests in the history of Belarus? 
• It is said that the prison system and the situation of political prisoners in Belarus is much worse than in Russia.  Can you comment on this?  Have they tightened the screws in prisons since you were there?
• What made you decide to leave Belarus?
• Today there is a lot of talk that Russia is following the path that Belarus has already travelled. Is this true?
• What has changed in Belarus since Russia announced the Special Military Operation on February 24, 2022?  How has Russia’s war against Ukraine affected the relationship between Belarus and Russia?
• What does Lukashenka see as Belarus’ role in this war?   
• How can one explain the location of the Wagner base, and previously Prigozhin himself, on the territory of Belarus?  
• How would you describe the state of democratic forces in Belarus today?  Do they have a chance to influence the situation in the country? 
• How would you characterize relations between those who left the country and those who stayed? In Russia, the gap between the two seems to be getting wider and deeper.
• We know about the changes in school textbooks in Russia, especially in Russian history, about the militarization of education even in elementary schools.  What is the situation in Belarus?  Is it true that many children study abroad?
• What can be said about the shortage of labour in Belarus? 
• Can we assume that Belarus has its own path for the future? What will it look like? 
• Can the West somehow influence the political future of Belarus, or is it doomed to remain a satellite of Russia?
• Do you think you will ever return home? And what needs to take place in the country for that to happen?

My questions include:

1. Where were you when you heard President Putin’s announcement about the Special Military Operation in February 2022? What was your first reaction?
2. What were your thoughts as to the future impact of the war on ethnic minorities in Russia?
3. Why is it that a disproportionate number of conscripts from ethnic minorities in Russia’s regions serve in the Russian army – Buryats, for example, or Tatars?
4. Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you born, what did your parents do, and do you have any key memories that have particularly shaped your life?
5. Have there been times when you personally encountered Russian chauvinism or observed its impact on others in Bashkortostan?
6. Do you sense an imperial mindset in Russian people? What do you attribute this to?
7. What was your motivation when you decided to change your place of residence and move to another country? Was it related to Putin’s policies?
8. How do you work as a journalist when you are located far from your sources?
9. Tell me about the recent protests in Bashkortostan? After all, they were quite large-scale and yet little is known about them in the West.
10. Do you think the war against Ukraine could be a catalyst for major changes in Russia?
11. When people talk about the de-colonization of Russia, what does it mean?
12. At the beginning of the war, many analysts believed that the logical outcome of the war would be the collapse of the Russian Empire. They see this as a process which began in 1917, continued in 1991, and has not yet been completed. They see the war against Ukraine as striking a kind of a death blow to the empire. In your view, is the further disintegration of the Russian Empire inevitable? How might the country look in the future?

Our guest today is Zoia Svetova, renowned journalist and human rights activist. She continues to live and work in Moscow.  She is the author of several books, including Priznat’ nevinovnogo vinovnym [To Find the Innocent Guilty]. Her voice is perhaps one of the few authoritative oppositionist voices still heard in Russia today.  

This podcast was recorded on 26 March 2024.

My questions include:

• When it became known that Russian troops had invaded Ukraine in 2022, could you ever have imagined such a thing happening?
• You decided to stay in Russia. Did you discuss with your family, your four adult children, whether to leave or stay in Russia?
• Can I ask you to tell us a little about your family? After all, you are part of Russia’s hereditary dissident aristocracy, if I may put it like that. Tell us about your parents, what you most remember about them, about their lives? 
• Your husband was also involved in the dissident movement.  How did you meet? And how did you bring up your children, what were the main moral values you tried to pass on to them?
• When Putin became president in 2000, did you have any hopes?
• Was there a key episode when it became clear for you which direction his regime was heading?
• The title of this podcast, “Then and Now,” is associated with the fateful date of 24 February 2022. But there has since been another terrible date that will be a significant event in the perception of the world and of Russian public opinion  – 16 February this year. What was your first reaction when you learned of Aleksei Navalny’s death in the Polar Wolf penal colony.
• What did Navalny mean for Russia, what did he symbolise? And what did his death in prison mean for the future of Russia?
• You were at Aleksei’s funeral in Moscow. Could you share the mood that prevailed there, what you observed –  tell us about your impressions.
• Should other political prisoners in Russia now fear for their lives?
• Just recently, a presidential election was conducted in Russia. If I’m not mistaken, you were abroad at that time. Did you take part in the “Noon against Putin” protest? Did the protests bring any benefits? And is there any difference between such protests in Russia and abroad?
• Your sons Tikhon and Filip are engaged in interesting work abroad. Does the fact that Tikhon is on the register of foreign agents and is editor-in-chief of the Dozhd TV company, which has been declared an undesirable organization in Russia, affect your life in Moscow in any way?
• After the attack on Leonid Volkov, a leading member of Navalny’s team, in Vilnius, do you fear for your own children and other Russian oppositionists living outside Russia? 
• What would have to happen in Russia for you to change your mind and leave the country?
• What needs to happen in Russia for your children and grandchildren to return home? 
• What are your thoughts about the recent terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall in Moscow?  Do you think 22 March 2024 will be another milestone in the history of the Putin regime?

My guest today is Anastasia Burakova, a human rights lawyer and democratic activist from Russia. 

We are still in shock at the news of the murder of Aleksei Navalny in a high-security penal colony in the settlement of Kharp. 

Aleksei Navalny’s political star rose as a leader of the opposition to the Putin regime in 2011.  That year, 2011, played a significant part in the  political coming of age of  today’s guest - Anastasia Burakova, a Russian human rights lawyer and activist for democratic change in Russia - and influenced the trajectory of her professional life.

However, ten years later, in November 2021, Anastasia was forced to leave Russia. She moved to Georgia after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, where she founded the Ark Project (‘Kovcheg’). Initially, set up to offer help to exiled Russians because of their opposition to the war, over time, Ark’s activities have broadened.

This podcast was recorded on 22 February 2024.

My questions include:

1. I am haunted by two thoughts that never leave me now – the death in prison of Aleksei Navalny and the second year of war inUkraine. What thoughts have occupied you most this past week?
2. In an interview almost one year ago, you talked about a ‘white rose’ of resistance in Russia. Are there grounds for optimism in Russia today?
3. The journalist Elena Kostyuchenko wrote in her book about Russia: “Why did I ever think my life would be different?” Do you have an answer for her?
4. Tell us a little about your childhood. Were there any key moments in your biography that led you to your choice of profession and the path you followed?
5. You have said that the year 2011 played a big role in your own development. What does 2011 in Russia mean to you? What are your most vivid impressions of that year?
6. You left Russia at the end of 2021, just 10 years later. What happened in the intervening years in the field of civic activism?
7. To what extent did human rights and civic activism face new and more difficult challenges in the period leading up to the invasion of Ukraine? What defined the relationship of the authorities to civil society?
8. Soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you founded the Ark Project. What was the idea behind the project and who are the beneficiaries?
9. Is there any real hope for the Russian opposition in exile? What can it really do? 
10. What do the countries that have welcomed Russian exiles have to gain from their presence? 
11. Aleksei Navalny from prison urged the Russian people to act. He proposed that people should go to the polling stations on the last day of the election, 17 March, at 12.00 noon local time, and stand in line outside the polling station in protest. Do you think there’s a chance that many will do this following his assassination in prison by the Russian authorities?
12. What do you think the future holds for you? And what are your thoughts about the future of Russia?

Welcome to the fifteenth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. 

My guest today is Anna Karetnikova. Until recently, Anna Karetnikova lived and worked in Moscow.  In 2016, she was appointed lead analyst to the Federal Penitentiary Service – FSIN. Prior to that, she served for eight years as a member of the Public Oversight Commission (POC) in Moscow and worked closely with the human rights organisation “Memorial”.

Anna Karetnikova exemplified that rare combination in Russia of someone who was both a human rights activist and a government-appointed official working for the FSIN. For several years she pulled this off brilliantly. But just over a year ago, she was forced to leave Russia. The events that led to this decision and how she feels about life in exile are among the topics we will be talking about.

This podcast was recorded on 8 February 2024.

ou can also listen to the podcast on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and YouTube. 

My questions include:

1. Before your appointment to the Federal Penitentiary Service, you worked in the Public Oversight Commission in Moscow. What were the functions of this commission and how did your work there lead to your appointment to the Federal Penitentiary Service?
2. Did you have any interests or occupations from a young age which helped you decide to take up this kind of work?
3. How did it happen that you were invited to join the FSIN? What did  your work there involve?  Is it true there is no such position as lead analyst in any other regional branch of the FSIN?
4. How does the system of corresponding with political prisoners work? Do they really receive letters of support from people they don’t know? Do the authorities still allow this?
5. Unlike many of your colleagues, acquaintances and friends in human rights organizations, you stayed in Russia after the Special Military Operation was launched on February 24th 2022? Was leaving Russia not an issue for you at that time?
6. What changed in the FSIN system that prompted you to decide to leave Russia almost a year later?
7. What was your reaction when you learned about the recruitment of lifers in the penal system to the Wagner private military company? What did it say about the attitude of the authorities both to the war and to society as a whole?
8. What changes did you observe in the FSIN and in the regime to prisons and penal colonies after the start of the war?
9. And in the treatment of prisoners? Were there problems, for example, with supplies? Or other issues? xould they still correspond with relatives and have visits from them?
10. Would you say the numbers of political prisoners has increased since the start of the war?
11. With your experience and knowledge of the penal system in Russia, what can you comment about the treatment of Aleksei Navalny in the penal colony? To what extent does his treatment differ from the treatment of other prisoners? And how?
12. And Vladimir Kara-Murza? Could you comment on his recent transfer to the correctional colony No. 7 Omsk. 
13. You currently live in France. Why France?
14. How do you see your future?  And the future of Russia?

My guests today are Mamuka Kuparadze, the founder of Studio Re in Tbilisi, which works to advance ‘people’s diplomacy’ through documentary film, and Aleksandr Pichugin, a Russian journalist, originally from Nizhny Novgorod, who left Russia with his family immediately after the announcement of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and started a new life in Tbilisi.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the flow of Russian citizens fleeing the war to Georgia has reached an unprecedented 100,000. That’s the size of two small Georgian cities such as Gori, for example.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, relations between Georgia and Russia have not been easy. There have been wars of secession, first in South Ossetia, then in Abkhazia, and their de facto removal from Georgian government control. And the culmination of these wars, we can say, took place 15 years later, in 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia and won a five-day war after which Russia “officially” recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (both are still considered by the international community as legitimate parts of Georgia. Georgia itself calls them Russian-occupied territories).

In this edition of ‘Then and Now’, we take a look at how Georgian society and government perceives these immigrants from Russia and how Russian immigrants live there.

The recording was made on 4 January 2024.

My questions include:

• Aleksandr, what pushed you to such an important decision for yourself and your family? After all, it is not easy to start from scratch in a foreign country?
• Why Georgia? Did the visa system play a role in your decision?
• Did you find a place to live? A job? Tell us a little about how you solved such domestic problems and how you were received by Georgian society. Is there a sense of a separate ‘Russian world’ in Tbilisi?
• Mamuka, Studio Re recently released a short movie about how the local population feels about the flow of Russian immigrants into their country. What were the main findings of your research?
• How does the flow of Russians into Georgia affect the country’s economy?
• Against the background of extremely uneasy and tense relations with Putin’s Russia, how do the Georgian government and civil society feel about the presence of so many Russians on Georgian territory, Mamuka?
• Refugees from Ukraine have also come to Georgia. Aleksandr, is the presence of Ukrainians felt in your circles?
• The Georgian border service has denied entry to the country to several Russian citizens who are critical of Putin’s regime, such as Mikhail Fishman, journalist, presenter and analyst of TV Dozhd, and others. What is the explanation for this, Mamuka? What is the position of the country’s ruling party, the ‘Georgian Dream’, towards today’s Russia?
• How does it differ from the position of activists in civil society?
• Aleksandr, how did you in Georgia perceive the new flow of Russian immigrants, which began immediately after the announcement of mobilization on 22 October? Do you feel a difference in the motivation and goals of the first wave compared to the second?
• Has the war with Ukraine given rise to new anxieties on the part of Russia in Georgia, Mamuka?
• How do Russians in Georgia see their future? Have some already returned to Russia? How do you personally see your future, Aleksandr?

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. 

My guest today is Lev Aleksandrovich Ponomarev. Lev Ponomarev trained and worked as a physicist in the USSR before devoting more time and energy to issues of human rights in the Soviet Union and subsequently in the Russian Federation. He was one of the founders of  « Memorial » in 1988, and soon became one of the foremost figures  in human rights in Russia. In the dying days of perestroika, Lev Ponomarev went into politics and in 1990 co-founded the opposition movement « Democratic Russia ». He was a People’s Deputy at the end of the Soviet era and a deputy of the first convocation of the State Duma in the new Russia after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. In 1997 he founded the not-for-profit « For Human Rights » and in 2007 he set up the « Foundation in Defence of Prisoners’ Rights ». He was a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group from 1996 until its closure last year. In 2019 his organisation « For Human Rights » was shut down by the authorities. On December 28, 2020, Lev Ponomarev’s name was in the first list of individuals designated as ‘media foreign agents’ by the Russian Justice Ministry.

The recording was made on 22 December 2023.

You can also listen to the podcast on our website, or on SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

My questions include:

• Lev Aleksandrovich, where were you when you learned that Russia had launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine? Do you remember how you felt at that moment?
• If I’m not mistaken, you now live in Paris. Could you tell me how this came about?
• Your NGO « For Human Rights » was closed down in 2019 and a year later you yourself became a “Media – Foreign Agent”. How did you feel when all this was happening and why did the authorities do this?
• You have always been someone who warned about the dangerous developments of the Putin regime. Do you think you had insights that others did not? Does everyone agree with you now?
• What do you think was Boris Yeltsin’s biggest mistake?
• Presidential elections are scheduled for next March – although we already know that they will not be “free and fair”. What do you think civil society should do in the run-up to the election – and during the election itself?
• To what extent do people in emigration perceive things differently from those who stayed in Russia? Is this difference noticeable to you? How do you think it affects relations between those who have left Russia and those who remained?
• It is hard not to be pessimistic about human rights in the near future, not least because Russia’s war against Ukraine is still ongoing.  But in the longer term, are there grounds for optimism?

My guest today is Natalya Zyagina, head of the Moscow branch of Amnesty International shut down by the Russian authorities in 2022. Natalya Zvyagina has a long record as a Russian human rights activist. She is originally from the city of Voronezh, where she worked for many years in the Interregional Human Rights Group. Natalya has also worked at the Institute for Law and Public Policy, a non-profit organization based in Moscow, and at the Russian branch of Transparency International.

This recording was made on 30 November 2023.

In addition to our website, you can also listen to the podcast on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

My questions include:

• First of all, please tell us about your work in Voronezh. What prompted you to become involved in human rights work?
• In the 1990s Voronezh became one of the main centres of human rights activity in Russia, and many of Russia’s leading human rights defenders come from there. What do you attribute this to?
• In 2018, you took up the post of head of Amnesty International’s Moscow office. What were your expectations at that time? What was Amnesty’s role in Russia at that time? How did the Russian human rights community feel about the organisation?
• Looking back, how do you assess the change in the status of Aleksei Navalny, whose recognition as a prisoner of conscience was removed for a while, although now he is again recognised as such? And how important is Amnesty’s classification of people as “prisoners of conscience” for the Russian public and human rights community in general?
• In March 2022, the Russian media regulator blocked access to Amnesty International’s Russian-language website. What impact did this decision have on your work?
• In April of the same year Russian authorities removed the Amnesty’s registration as a representative office in Moscow. In addition to Amnesty’s office, the Russian Ministry of Justice closed the offices of 15 representative offices of foreign NGOs and foundations, including Human Rights Watch, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Heinrich Böll, Friedrich Naumann, Friedrich Ebert, and other organizations. The Justice Ministry said at the time that this was done “in connection with revealed violations of Russian law.” What was all this in fact about?
• At the time, Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said that Amnesty would continue its work to document and expose human rights abuses in Russia despite the office closure. How easy was it for Amnesty to continue its work without a Moscow office? What has been your personal situation and that of other staff members since then?
• Where were you when Russia invaded Ukraine? Did the invasion of Ukraine come as a shock to you?
• Are the current extreme measures against human rights in Russia a result of the war? Or have the policies of the Putin regime been moving in this repressive direction anyway?
• After all these events, a new conflict has erupted in the Middle East. Has this had any impact on your work at Amnesty?
• How do you assess the events in Dagestan in relation to the war in the Middle East?
• Many human rights defenders have left Russia. What is life like for those who have remained in the country? Can they do any meaningful work at all?
• Recently, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs drafted a bill that would require foreigners visiting Russia to declare their “loyalty” to the Russian authorities. What does this mean?
• How do you see the future of human rights work in Russia?

My guests today are two Parisians, Aleksandra Ilkhovskaya and Svetlana Dokudovskaya: Aleksandra [known to everyone as “Sanya]” has lived in Paris since she was six years old – her mother emigrated from Russia in 1991. She is married with two daughters. She is a primary school teacher with 10 years’ experience. Svetlana has lived with her French husband and their 13-year-old daughter in Paris for the past 17 years. She works as a cell biologist at the Gustave Roussy Institute, Europe’s largest cancer research centre. Both their lives changed after February 24th 2022.

This recording was made on 22 September 2023.

My questions include:

1. What were your thoughts and feelings when you woke up last February 24th?
2. Why did you decide you needed to take action? And how?
3. When did you first arrive at the train station and what did you find there?
4. You obviously helped the people there a great deal, but what did you get out of the experience, what did you learn or discover about yourselves?
5. Sveta, with Sanya’s help, you published a book called “Operation Montparnasse”. It contains the stories of refugees and also the stories of your fellow Russian volunteers/translators. What would you say is the particular importance of the book for you?  And for your readers?

My guest today is the author Maxim Osipov.  Following in the great Russian tradition of Chekhov and Bulgakov, he has pursued a career in medicine in parallel with that of a writer.  For his works of fiction – for the most part short stories that are sharp and witty commentaries on modern-day life in the Russian provinces – Maxim Osipov has won a number of literary prizes, and his plays have been staged as well as broadcast on the radio in Russia. Osipov’s works have been translated into 18 languages. His books published in English include the collections of short stories Rock, Paper, Scissors and Other Stories and Kilometer 101 (see my review in Rights in Russia from earlier this year).

Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Maxim Osipov signed several letters condemning Putin’s military operation.. He left Russia on 4 March 2023 and now lives in the Netherlands where he has launched a new quarterly literary journal,  The Fifth Wave. 

This recording was made on 11 August 2023.

My questions:

• You left Russia almost immediately after the Russian army invaded Ukraine. How did you come to take such a decision? How difficult was it for you?
• Before you left Russia you successfully combined the professions of cardiologist in Tarusa with that of a writer of short stories and other works of literature. How did these two roles complement one another?
• Do the current policies of Putin’s Russia allow you to be a writer? What is the duty or role of a Russian writer in today’s situation?
• What’s your reaction when accusations of imperialism and ‘colonial thinking’ are made against some of the classics of Russian literature? To what extent are they justified? Do you see attempts outside Russia to cancel Russian culture, as is claimed by Russian propaganda?
• In justifying the invasion of Ukraine, Putin set out his interpretation of history, claiming that Ukraine belongs to the ‘Russian world.’ To what extent does such use of history as justification have a place in the contemporary world?
• You have recently begun publication of a new journal. Tell us about it and your aims and aspirations for it.
• You have named your magazine The Fifth Wave. You wrote earlier that this wave of emigration is most similar to the first wave after 1917. What did you have in mind?
• Do you continue to write fiction in emigration? You no longer practice as a doctor, so where do you get your material from?
• How do you find life in emigration?
• Are there circumstances under which you would return to Russia?

Welcome to the ninth edition of our Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. 

My guest today is Tetyana Sokolova, a professional midwife of 40 years at Mariupol Maternity Hospital No. 2, on the left bank of Mariupol near Azovstal, the industrial plant that became a centre of resistance against the Russian invaders. 

On 9 March, the city’s Maternity Hospital No. 3 was bombed by Russian aircraft and the whole world watched with horror pictures of the destroyed building and Ukrainian soldiers’ desperate attempts to save the life of a pregnant woman, as she lay on a stretcher among the ruins.

Three pregnant women from the rubble of Maternity Hospital No. 3 were brought to Tetyana and her team of midwives, 

For her work, her resilience and her bravery under the most difficult of conditions, Tetyana was awarded the international Anna Politkovskaya prize, named in honour of the murdered journalist.

My questions

1.  Where were you when you realised that Russia had invaded Ukraine? What was your reaction and what were your first thoughts?

2.  You went to work on 2 March.  Did you waver at all in your decision?  After all, it was less than a week since the war had started.  What made you to go to work that day?

3.  Tell us about the events of 9 March and how they impacted you personally.

4.  You have worked in Mariupol all your professional life - what made you become a midwife?

5. Could you ever have imagined that you would be an eyewitness to alleged war crimes?

6. How did you escape from Mariupol?

7. Where do you live now?

8. Do you cherish hopes of returning to Mariupol one day? 

10.  Were you surprised to be awarded the Anna Politkovskaya prize? Did you know about her before?

As a rule,  guests on our podcast are individuals for whom 24th February 2022 was a turning-point in their life; today we are talking about an organisation that came into being as a result of that fateful date. The Reckoning Project was created in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the aim of gathering evidence of war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine.

To this end, The Reckoning Project has brought together a team of international advisers – human rights experts, historians, lawyers and politicians. And on the front line, so to speak, is a team of journalists led by our guest today, Nataliya Gumenyuk. They are the foot soldiers on the ground who gather testimony about Russia’s war crimes from Ukrainian eyewitnesses.

This recording was made on 22 June 2023

My questions include:

• Could you ever have imagined doing what you do  today? What was the journey that led to your present occupation?
• What exactly was the impetus behind the creation of The Reckoning Project?
• What role do the lawyers play in your work? Have they had an impact on your team’s journalistic practice? 
• What kind of interaction is there between lawyers and journalists on the team?
• Tell us about your work with Ukrainian children – after all, their deportation to Russia is classified as a war crime under international law.

• How did your team gather testimonials from people who were victims of the recent catastrophe at the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric dam?
• Are you confident that your work will be of use to in the future? In what way?

See also this story on the deportation of children from Mariuopol:

Iryna Lopatina [via thereckoningproject.com], ‘“Dad, You Have to Come—Or We Will Be Adopted!”: One Ukrainian Family’s Harrowing Wartime Saga,’ Vanity Fair, 6 October 2022

Welcome to the seventh episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas. In recent weeks, politically motivated trials and lengthy prison terms in Putin’s Russia reached a new peak. Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment for treason and Evgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriichuk have been remanded in custody awaiting trial for “justifying terrorism” in connection with the staging of a play. Some say these developments signify a return to the USSR of the 1970s, others that it is reminiscent of Stalinist purges. Our guest today, Boris Kuznetsov, is a lawyer who played a key role in the first high profile trial of Putin’s presidency – he defended the interests of relatives of the sailors who died on the Kursk nuclear submarine, which sank in 2000. We invited him to share with us his experiences of the Kursk case in particular, and more widely his observations and reflections on the legal system and practice of jurisprudence in Putin’s Russia. The recording was made on 1 June 2023.

This recording took place on May 11th 2023

You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

My questions include:

1. How long have you known that Putin had imperial ambitions in relation to Ukraine? Where did these ambitions come from?
2. After Russia invaded Ukraine, you decided to leave the country. What was your main argument for your decision?
3. How do you assess the current wave of Russian emigration? How does it compare to previous Russian emigrations? How might this influence the country’s future development?
4. What do you think prompted the general mobilization that took place last autumn? What consequences has it had?
5. Immediately after its was announced, a large number of men of conscription age left Russia. Do you see this as a demographic crisis? 
6. Can you comment on the annual Victory Day celebrations in Moscow and other Russian cities? What can does it tell us about the state of the Russian army – about its losses, about the criticism we hear about the Defence Ministry from numerous private military groups and so on?
7. Under what circumstances could the war against Ukraine be brought to an end?
8. What will happen after Putin? Do you think he will be overthrown? Will he die peacefully in his bed?

This recording took place on 19 April 2023.

Marina Ovsyannikova’s autobiographical Between Good and Evil describing her life in Moscow as a journalist and the media ‘propaganda factory’ that works on behalf of the Kremlin is published by Post Hill Press, March 2023, pp190, ISBN: 979-8888450505.

You can also listen to the podcast on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

My questions include:

• Marina, how do you remember 24 February 2022? Could you have imagined that such a thing could happen? Or did the invasion by Russian troops of Ukraine come as a complete surprise to you?
• What was your job at Channel One then?
• When did you start working for the state TV channel? What does it mean to you to be a conscientious and professional journalist?
• Were there instances in the past when you and your colleagues might have acted differently?
• What thoughts were going through your head that prompted you to act on 14 March? Tell us how it happened. I’ve heard that an English journalist unwittingly played a key role in your decision to act.
• Weren’t you afraid of the consequences? You are a mother, you have children …
• Did Channel One introduce new procedures after your protest to make sure it couldn’t happen again?
• What happened to you immediately afterwards?
• You were placed under house arrest. Did you have an electronic bracelet? How long did that period last and were there people watching you?
• When did the offer of help to flee Russia come? What did you decide to do?
• In the end, it was a very big adventure! Tell us in as much detail as you can about your escape. How did you manage to get the bracelet off?
• Are you in touch with your husband? And with your mother?
• What about your son?
• A new law on digital conscription was recently introduced. What does this tell you about the path Putin is taking Russia down in the years to come? Are you afraid for your son?
• Vladimir Kara-Murza was recently convicted of treason and given a sentence of 25 years’ imprisonment. What are your thoughts about this?
• Are you afraid for yourself?
• How has your daughter coped through all these dramatic events and changes to her life?
• Do you think your former colleagues at Channel One are still genuinely and sincerely committed to their jobs? 
• What is life like for you in Paris?
• How do you see your future?

Our latest guest is the Ukrainian writer Andrei Kurkov. Andrei Kurkov became widely known to readers around the world in 2001 when his novel Smert’ postoronnego [Смерть Постороннего] was published in English translation as Death and the Penguin. Other novels followed and, in their wake, worldwide recognition and success at prominent international literary awards. His latest novel, Grey Bees, tells the story of an elderly beekeeper in the occupied territory of Donbas. The novel touches on the war in Donbas and on the violation of Crimean Tatar rights in Russian annexed Crimea. In 2015 his Ukraine Diaries was published in English and, recently, his Diary of an Invasion.  

This recording took place on 14 April 2023. 

Diary of an Invasion is published by Mountain Leopard  Press, ISBN: 9781914495847, pp 304, London, 2022. It is a collection of Andrei Kurkov’s writings and broadcasts from Ukraine in the lead up to and during the war.

You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

My questions include:

1.      You started your Diary of an Invasion just before New Year at the very end of 2021. Do you always keep a diary?

2.      What emotions did you feel when you learnt what had happened on February 24th?

3.      How do you see the role of the writer during the war?

4.      Before the invasion, your remarks in the Diary about Ukraine and your Ukrainian compatriots are quite multifaceted. But after you tend to write about them as if they were figures from Ukrainian historical myths (‘bylinas’) – how brave, freedom-loving they are, and how different they are from the Russians. It is as if those human traits that make your novels so memorable and touching aren’t relevant here. What explains that change?

5.      You write about the traditions of the Ukrainian people and the creation of myths in times of crisis. What is the role of traditions and myths in the identity of a people?

6.      Your native language, in which you became a famous writer, is Russian. Have you ever had any problems in your relations with Ukrainian writers or the public because of it?

7.      What is your attitude to the Russian language in Ukraine now?

8.      How do Russians around the world react to your advocacy for Ukraine – do you get hate mail from Russians?

9.      Do you see the possibility for Russian-speaking Ukrainians to write in Russian again in the future?

10.  You write in your Diary that you have an unfinished novel… will you be able to finish it or is it doomed to remain in the unfinished after the Russian invasion?

11.  Do you believe in the concept of ‘good Russians’? Who is a ‘good Russian’ for you?

12.  Has Russian culture played a major role in your own development as a writer?

13.  Are there any commonalities between Russian and Ukrainian culture and traditions? (You write in the Diary about the feat of Russian PR in promoting Russian culture around the world, as if Russian culture would not be so highly regarded without it.)

14.  How do you see the future of Ukraine? And of Russia? 

Welcome to the third episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas.  

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 everything, everywhere, suddenly looked different. That day was a watershed. Guests on the Then & Now podcast are people for whom February 24 became a defining moment, dividing their lives into before and after the war.

Today’s guest is Lev Gudkov, a sociologist and director of the analytical Levada Centre, Russia’s leading independent polling organisation. He is also editor-in-chief of the journal The Russian Public Opinion Herald. Lev Dmitrievich has worked at the Levada Centre since its founding, initiated by Yury Levada in 2003. After the death of Yury Levada in 2006, Lev Dmitrievich becamse the director of the Centre. In September 2016 the Levada Centre was designated as a ‘foreign agent’ organisation, a move which at the time Lev Gudkov said amounted to ‘political censorship.’

This recording took place on 16 March 2023

Welcome to the second episode of our new Russian-language podcast Then & Now with me, Teresa Cherfas.  

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 everything, everywhere, suddenly looked different. That day was a watershed. Guests on the Then & Now podcast are people for whom February 24 became a defining moment, dividing their lives into before and after the war.

Today’s guest is Svetlana Alekseevna Gannushkina: human rights activist, social activist and chair of the Committee for Civic Assistance – the first human rights organisation in Russia helping refugees and displaced persons. In 1991, she was one of the founding members of the Memorial Centre for Human Rights and in 2010  – together with Memorial – she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. On December 23, 2022, her name was added to the register of ‘foreign agents.’  Her organisation, the Committee for Civic Assistance, was registered as a 'foreign agent' in April 2015.  

The recording took place on 16 February 2023

My questions include:

• What did you recall of your feelings and thoughts on 24 February 2022?
• What were the key events that led you to become a human rights activist?
• Why did you decide to focus your work on refugees? 
• How does being on the register of 'foreign agents' affect you? And the work of your organisation?
• You often talk about feelings of shame and responsibility for your country. How do you understand Russia’s lack of sympathy for Ukrainians?
• What is left of civil society in Russia today after the closures of Memorial, the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Sakharov Centre?
• How do you see the future of Russia?

Questions include:

• You performed a fantastic feat in defence of Sasha.  Where did you draw your strength from?  
• How would you describe the behaviour and attitude of the British authorities toward Sasha’s murder?
• Was it a surprise to Sasha (and to you) that Putin sent assassins to attack him in London? 
• Especially after the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, which explicitly accused Putin of killing Sasha, were you afraid that they could come after you, too?  Were you worried for your son?
• Tell us about some of the projects that have been developed relating to your husband’s case? 
• Where were you and what do you remember of the moment you found out that Russia had attacked Ukraine?
• Did your perception of  Putin change as a result?  Did it change your feelings about Russia?
• How would you have described the Putin regime before February 24? Did that change afterwards?
• How do you see the future of Russia?  And of Putin?  
• What would it take for Russia to become a ‘normal’ country? 
• Does the West’s attitude towards what is happening in Ukraine give you hope? What else do you think the West needs to do?  
• Will Putin and his associates be put on trial and punished for war crimes in The Hague?
• How do you see the future of Ukraine?  

Our guest on the podcast this week is Varvara Pakhomenko. Varvara Pakhomenko has been a human rights activist for a very long time. Back in her native Tomsk she was actively involved in human rights activities. Having moved to Moscow, Varvara began working with many human rights activists in the capital, but the geography of her travels remained very wide. Since 2006, Varvara Pakhomenko has worked in conflict zones in the North and South Caucasus: in 2006-2009 at the human rights organization Demos, in 2009-2011 at the Dutch organization Russian Justice Initiative, and since 2011 she has worked as a programme analyst for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group. When the Russian authorities effectively closed the ICG’s Moscow office, Varvara left to work in Ukraine. There she worked first for the UN Development Programme and after that for Geneva Call. A move to Canada seemed to put some distance between her and Europe, but now Varvara Pakhomenko is back again on the old continent.

The recording took place on 24 June 2022.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

You can also listen to the podcast in full here (see also below):

The questions we ask Varvara Pakhomenko include:

·         How did human rights activism come into your life?

·         One of Tomsk’s leading human rights activists was Boris Maksovich Kreindel. He was involved in many projects, including defending the rights of Roma in Tomsk region. How did it happen that he had to leave his native land?

·         Tell us about your work in the conflict zones in the Caucasus – where did you work? To what extent was it dangerous?

·         Which Moscow human rights activists and which organizations have you worked with in Russia?

·         When and why did you decide to move to Ukraine?

·         How does the human rights movement in Ukraine differ from that in Russia?

·         At least since 2012 the Russian authorities have pursued policies of increasing restrictions on human rights work in the country, attacks on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and a general moved towards isolationism. Do you think they have been preparing for the war against Ukraine for a long time?

·         What has been your role at the UNDP and Geneva Call?

·         How has the Ukrainian army changed since 2014. How do you assess the Ukrainian military’s compliance with international humanitarian law and with the rules and customs of warfare?

·         How do you see the future of human rights in Russia and the future of human rights organizations?

Our guest on the podcast this week is Nikolai Kavkazsky. Nikolai Yurievich Kavkazsy is a Russian civil society activist, human rights defender and opposition politician. He is one of the leading Yabloko activists in Moscow. Nikolai Kavkazsky was a defendant in the Bolotnoe case. Politically, he defines himself as a left-wing social democrat, an internationalist, a supporter of LGBT rights and of feminism. He is an advocate of juvenile justice and a humane drug policy.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

The recording was made on 18 June 2022.

The questions we ask Nikolai Kavkazsky include:

·         Which word best describes you – civil society activist, human rights activist or politician?

·         You studied law at the Institute of World Economy and Informatization. At what point did you realize you wanted to be a civil society activist and a politician?

·         You became a member of the Yabloko party in 2007 and are one of the party’s leading activists in Moscow. Why did you choose Yabloko as your party?

·         Why are political parties weak in Russia?

·         You took part in the Bolotnaya Square protest in 2012, after which you were charged with ‘participation in mass riots’ (under Article 212(2) of the Russian Criminal Code) and held on remand for almost a year and a half. Amnesty International recognized you as a prisoner of conscience, along with several other individuals involved in the Bolotnaya case. In December 2013, you were amnestied and the criminal case was dropped. How did all this happen?

·         What were the conditions in pre-trial detention centre?

·         You were an associate of the late Andrei Babushkin, who headed the Committee for Civil Rights. What is the work of this organization? And what kind of person was Andrei Babushkin?

·         You support LGBT rights in Russia. Why is the country so intolerant of LGBT people?

·         On 24 February 2022 you were detained for taking part in an anti-war protest. The next day you were jaled for six days. What is the situation regarding anti-war protests in Russia?

·         How do you see the future of the country and, in particular, the future of human rights?

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “Everything, absolutely everything, must be politicized. Including the question of installing benches at the entrance to an apartment building and protesting against plans to build in housing courtyards.” That’s what Simon Cosgrove and I were told by Nikolai Kavkazsky in a conversation we had with him last week. I’ve known Nikolai since the infamous Bolotnaya trial in Moscow. He is first and foremost a politician, a political activist. We also remember his active participation in human rights organizations, including Andrei Babushkin’s Committee for Civil Rights. It was an interesting conversation in which Nikolay Kavkazsky bravely states that he wants to change politics as they now are in Russia; he wants to change society so that it is more just, more free, and integrates all oppressed social groups.

Our guest on the podcast this week is the historian Nikita Vasilievich Petrov. Nikita Petrov is deputy chair of the board of the Memorial Research and Information Centre (which is based in St. Petersburg). Born in Kiev, Nikita Petrov graduated from the Moscow Institute of Chemical Engineering and went on to study at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. His association with the Memorial Society began in 1988. As a historian Nikita Petrov has specialized in the history of the Soviet security services. He is known as the author and compiler of many works describing the structure and functions of the Soviet security services from 1917 to 1991.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

The recording took place on 30 May 2022.

·         When and why did you first become interested in history, particularly the history of Soviet repression and the security services?

·         When did your collaboration with Memorial begin?

·         You wrote a number of works with Arseny Roginsky, who headed Memorial and died in 2017. Can you tell us about how you first met, what it was like to work with Roginsky, and what he was like as a person?

·         As a historian who worked in Russia’s archives for many years, can you tell us how historians’ access to these archives has changed over the years?

·         You have written about the history of the NKVD under Stalin, in particular about Nikolai Yezhov. To what extent can we talk about the personal influence of people like Yagoda or Yezhov on the NKVD, or were they just doing Stalin’s bidding?

·         You also wrote about the role of the NKVD and MGB in Central and Eastern Europe from 1939. To what extent were the repressions against people of Polish nationality similar to the Nazi repressions on the basis of race – an example against people of Jewish origin?

·         Another topic you wrote about is that of Ivan Serov and the post-Stalinist KGB. To what extent did the security services change in the post-Stalin period, first as the KGB and then as the FSB?

·         Is there an explanation for why the security services played such an important role in Soviet and Russian history? For example: in the book From the Red Terror to the Mafia State: Russia’s Secret Services in the Struggle for World Domination the authors [historian Felshtinsky, who is not considered a historian by many, and former KGB Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Popov (Canada)] write about the history of the state security takeover in Russia, presenting developments in terms of a confrontation between the Cheka-KGB and the Communist Party. In fact, did the Chekists confront the Communists or were they basically all the same kind of people?

·         Why are today’s authorities in Russia so interested in the study of history?

·         Are there any lessons in history? Including for the citizens of Russia?

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: Read old newspapers and magazines! That was exactly the advice Nikita Petrov got from his father. He taught him that reading the Soviet press would be interesting later, after many years had passed. So Nikita Petrov, who had studied to be a chemist, became a historian. In our latest podcast Nikit Petrov told Simon Cosgrove and me about his love for collecting old newspapers and magazines, how he stacked them in folders and read and re-read them. That's how chemistry came to lose one scientist from its ranks but history gained a remarkable specialist in the study of the Soviet security agencies. We all know Nikita Vasilievich as the author and compiler of many works describing the structure and functions of Soviet security services from 1917 to 1991. This knowledge is very important to all of us today as people from these very special services continue to occupy seats of power. And these people, having gained access to the levers of power, act even more subtly than the preceding genergation of Chekists. "Logic is turned inside out, black is repainted white, and the crimes of the Soviet regimeare not condemned but justified," Nikita Petrov told us. "Today's attempt to recycle history and use it to educate people in the spirit of patriotism is untenable. Such a policy will only bring up a generation of cynics. However, people who can think for themselves will figure things out, they will see for themselves it is all one big lie."

Our guest on the podcast this week is Lev Aleksandrovich Ponomarev (pictured, left, with the late Andrei Babushkin). Lev Ponomarev is a human rights activist and head of the For Human Rights movement and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. He also participated in the creation of the Memorial Human Rights Center. As a legal entity, the For Human Rights Movement was liquidated by a November 2019 decision of the Russian Supreme Court. Lev Ponomarev became one of the first private individuals to be included in the registry of "media foreign agents" when the Russian Ministry of Justice included him in the corresponding list on December 28, 2020.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

The questions we ask Lev Ponomarev include:

1 Andrei Babushkin, the well-known human rights defender, died recently - on the night of May 14. You knew him well for many years. What kind of person was he?

2 When did you leave Russia and what made you take this difficult decision?

3 What is the situation like for human rights defenders who still live and work in Russia today?

4 You were one of the organizers of the peace movement in Russia. How strong is this movement?

5 How difficult is it to continue your work outside of Russia?

6 How long can Russian propaganda be effective in the face of Russia's enormous human and material losses during the war?

7 What effect do sanctions have inside Russia?

8 Many people now use the word "fascism" to describe Putin's regime in Russia. Would you use this term?

9 You have advocated democratic reforms in Russia since at least the late 1980s. Why have these reforms - at least to date - failed so badly?

10 How do you see future developments?

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: " Lev Ponomarev said, 'The atmosphere in the country now is like, well, they’re not shooting us yet, but... What is there to say? I’ve been squeezed out, I have been forced to go abroad. The attacks were almost daily. But I wasn't beaten up once, thank God. I have to thank those guys who attacked me. They showed humanism, so to speak. Well, they poured something smelly over me, and I had to throw away my jacket and trousers. The cops stopped me in the metro, told me I was on the federal wanted list, and then they drove me around town and let me go. In general, I realized I had to leave.' In our latest podcast on Rights in Russia, Simon and I talked with Lev Ponomarev. We remembered Andrei Babushkin, who has died recently, discussed the human rights situation in Russia and considered possible scenarios for the future.

Our guest on the podcast this week is Andrei Kalikh, a human rights researcher, journalist, and activist with a special interest in the issue of corruption. In the past, Andrei worked as programme director at the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights and he has been a board member of Perm Memorial Society. Until recently, Andrei lived in St. Petersburg. He recently left Russia and is currently in Israel.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

The questions we ask Andrei are:

1) When the war began on February 24, 2022, did it come as a surprise to civil society in Russia?

2) Why did the war begin on February 24, 2022?

3) There were many protests in Russia at the start of the war. You were involved in some of these protests. What was the atmosphere at the protests? How did the authorities respond?

4) Nowadays there are fewer protests. Why?

5) At the beginning of the conflict there were estimates that about 250,000 people had left Russia because of the war. Who were these people and why did they leave?

6) What help is available to those who have left Russia?

8) To what extent is there now an "anti-Russian" atmosphere in public opinion outside Russia because of the war?

9) Many people say one of the reasons the Russian military has not been successful in Ukraine is because of corruption. You worked on anti-corruption projects in Russia for many years. How strong is the corruption in Russia?

10) What do you think will happen in the next few weeks and months?

Sergey Nikitin writes on Facebook:

Russian human rights activist Andrei Kalikh took part in protests against the war unleashed by the Kremlin. It was not long after the first bombings and shelling of Ukraine: Andrei could not remain indifferent and on February 27 he stood in the centre of St. Petersburg holding a placard to express his opinion in the most peaceful way possible.

The police were brutal; no one was spared. They grabbed him, twisted his arm, threw him in a van and took him away.

“One of the reasons for the outbreak of this war was the lack of resistance from civil society, the opposition movement and the protest movement. We have all lost; we were weak. I feel personally responsible for this,” says Andrei Kalikh. A former programme director at the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights, a board member of the Perm Memorial Society, a human rights and civil society activist and journalist, Andrei Kalikh was our guest on our latest podcast as part of the Rights in Russia project. We talked about many things, including protest and civic activism, not only in big cities, but also far from them. Andrei told us about the protest in the village of Siversky in Leningrad region, not far from where he lived until recently. And in this quiet dacha settlement, known to us from Nabokov's memoirs, as it turns out, there are people who care too. People who are ready to express their position publicly and find a variety of ways to do so. Andrei Kalikh, like many other human rights activists, was forced to leave Russia. He told us that for him living in Russia had become impossible and shameful. "Everything that had been achieved has been wiped out by this war,” he told us.

Our guest on the podcast this week is the lawyer Kirill Koroteev, head of international legal practice of Agora International Human Rights Group. Previously, Kirill worked as legal director at Memorial Human Rights Centre, where he specialized in handling cases before the European Court of Human Rights. Kirill graduated from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and received his master's degree from the University of Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he also taught public law.

The themes we discuss in the podcast include: the work of a Russian lawyer in international courts; Russia's exclusion from the Council of Europe and its consequences; Russia's war against Ukraine; the current brain drain from Russia; and the future of human rights in Russia.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

The questions we ask Kirill Koroteev include:

1) As head of international legal practice at the Agora Human Rights Group you extensive experience in international courts and jurisdictions in various countries. How would you compare Russian lawyers today - especially human rights lawyers - with lawyers from other European countries?

2) Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe on March 16, 2022. This is only the second case of the exclusion of a state from the Council of Europe. Was there an alternative to this turn of events?

3) What will be the consequences of Russia's withdrawal for participants in Court proceedings – including those whose cases have already been decided, but not yet executed; those who have applied to the Court but whose cases are still in progress; and those who may still want to bring a case to the Court?

4) Russian lawyer and human rights activist Karinna Moskalenko has said that the inability of Russians to apply to the European Court would be ‘a punishment for ordinary people, not for the government.’ Do you agree with this point of view?

5) What is the future of the interstate case filed by the Ukrainian government on 28 February, as a result of which on 1 March the Court issued interim measures (under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court) requiring Russia to ‘refrain from military attacks on civilians and civilian objects, including homes, ambulances and other specially protected civilian objects such as schools and hospitals, and immediately ensure the safety of medical facilities, personnel and ambulances on the territory attacked or besieged by Russian forces.’

6) What is the legality of showing public videos of conversations and press conferences with prisoners of war. Is this a violation of the Geneva Conventions? Valentina Melnikova, for examples, has argued that such videos can save the lives of Russian POWs (see Valentina Melnikova’s interview with Gordeeva in the program "Tell Gordeeva").

7) Do you see any scenario in which Russia could rejoin the Council of Europe?

8) Could the exclusion of Russia could have a positive impact on the Court, given that Russia has one of the worst records so far as implementing the Court’s decisions is concerned?

9) According to existing estimates, as many as 250,000 people have left Russia because of the invasion of Ukraine. A great many of them are young professionals, including lawyers. Do you think this is a temporary phenomenon? Will people return to Russia in the near future? Or is this a development that will last for many years?

10) How do you see the future of human rights in the Russian Federation?

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “For this reason, a lot of class specialists in the legal practice of the ECtHR appeared in Rusia,” Kirill Koroteev told us, referring to the fact that the flawed judicial system in Russia led to a large increase in applications to Strasbourg. However, on 16 March 2022 Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe. This is the first case of exclusion of a State from the Council of Europe: only Greece left the Council in 1969, and then on its own initiative.

Simon Cosgrove and I asked Kirill if there had been any alternative to this course of events. His opinion is that there was an alternative: an even earlier exclusion of Russia from the Council of Europe. After all, the main purpose of this oldest European organization is cooperation among member states, not armed conflicts among them.

According to Kirill in 2019, the Council of Europe for the sake of 60 million euros actually did everything to permit the Russian authorities to remain members. If the Council had suspended Russia’s membership in 2019, as the organization’s own documents demanded, perhaps membership would have ended sooner.

Kirill, like many Russians, has left a country where the rule of law has long been dormant.

“All we’ve seen in the last 10-12 years,” he says, “is deterioration. What hope for the future is there?”

Our guest on the podcast this week is the Russian cartoonist Vyacheslav Shilov. He was born in 1970 in Potsdam, Germany. Until recently Vyacheslav Shilov, a member of the Union of Artists and Graphic Artists of the International Federation of UNESCO, lived in St. Petersburg. Today Vyacheslav with his family is outside Russia - in Europe. Vyacheslav Shilov in addition to his talent is known for his civic position. He has worked with the St. Petersburg Ombudsman Aleksander Shishlov (everyone remembers his wonderful human rights calendar). Vyacheslav also drew for Amnesty International: the cover of Amnesty’s report on "Agents of the People" was created by Vyacheslav Shilov.

The topics we discuss on the podcast include: his education and early career as an artist;

The questions we ask Vyacheslav Shilov include:

1) You have lived in Potsdam, Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg and now Europe. What has inspired you to move from place to place?

2) You graduated in journalism from St. Petersburg State University and yet we know you as an artist. Did they teach you to draw at the University?

3) How did you became involved with human rights activists?

4) You have drawn for many newspapers (Nevskoe Vremya, Vecherniy Peterburg, Smena). Have you experienced censorship in your work?

5) Are there differences of opinion among St. Petersburg artists (and not just cartoonists)? Is there a division between "patriots" and "regime critics"?

6) You have recently left Russia with your family after receiving threats. When did these attacks increase in intensity?

7) How do you assess the situation in Russia? Are all people engaged in the arts leaving or planning to leave? A lot of people compare the current situation with the emigration to Constantinople in the 1920s or to the ‘Philosophers’ Steamship’ when intellectuals left Russia after the revolution. Do you agree with these analogies?

8) How do you see the future of human rights activism in Russia? What awaits the country and the world?

9) What plans do you have while you are in Europe?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “There were several reasons for our departure,” Vyacheslav Shilov said. “The final straw, after which I no longer wished to remain in Russia, was the fact that in the school where we had enrolled our son (it’s a good school, of high quality, with good facilities) they began to give political education to the children, talking about the glorious victories of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.”

Slava Shilov, our guest on our latest podcast, is a St. Petersburg artist, a great caricaturist and a brilliant graphic artist, told us that when he and his family flew from St. Petersburg to Istanbul, several associations with the past of our motherland surfaced in his mind. These were the ‘Philosophers’ Steamship’ and the exodus to Constantinople. The passengers on the only voyage that day, the voyage to that very Constantinople, were quiet, intelligent people.

Involuntarily comes to mind the history of a hundred years ago, when more than 150 000 people left Russia on 126 ships. And the ‘Philosophers’ Steamship’ on which in 1922 almost three hundred people left Russia, deported by the Kremlin authorities. ‘The future has been stolen,’ says Vyacheslav Shilov, one of the thousands of Russians who left a country that has become an aggressor, a country that has become a disgrace.

For how long?

You can help Vyacheslav Shilov by buying his work at https://cartoonagency2.blogspot.com/2020/06/artoon.html

(c) Viacheslav Shilov - illustration for Amnesty International report "Russia: Agents of the people: Four years of "foreign agents" law in Russia: Consequences for the society

Our guest on the podcast this week is the Russian civil society activist, now living in Talinn, Estonia, Evgenia Chirikova. Evgenia Chirikova is especially well known for her campaign to save the Khimki Forest and she was leader of Ecological Defence (Ecoborona) in Moscow region. She was also a member of the organizing committee for Strategy 31 and a member of the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition. You can learn more about her work today at: activatica.org.

The topics we discuss on the podcast include: the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, public opinion in Estonia, what the West is doing, what needs to be done to help, why things have come to this, the role of Vladimir Putin, prospects for the future.

Our questions to Evgenia:

1) What does the public in Estonia think about the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

2) Boris Nemtsov was a great friend of Ukraine and was killed shortly after the annexation of Crimea. Do you think he imagined that would be such a full-scale invasion could occur?

3) How do you think Russian civic activists are doing? Many activists are leaving, laws are becoming more repressive. People are being detained and jailed. How do you assess the situation for Russian civil society?

4) Why do you think Putin decided to take this extraordinary step of invading a neighbouring country?

5) How is the West reacting? Are the EU and the U.S. doing enough? What is the impact of economic sanctions?

6) What should the general public in the West do?

7) How will Putin's regime change as a result of this war? Is there a possibility that the regime will not survive?

8) What do you think will happen in the coming days and weeks in Ukraine and Russia?

9) How do you see the future of human rights activism in Russia, what awaits the country and the world?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “It pains me very much that right now some kind of universal evil is coming from Russia, from my homeland.” Russian civil society activist Evgenia Chirikova, who moved to Estonia several years ago, found an hour to talk with Simon Cosgrove and me. Zhenya says from Tallinn, where she now lives: “We need to help refugees, we need to do a lot of organisational work.” Zhenya told us that when asked "Who is to blame for this" her answer is that we tried to stop Putin with all our might. But we had a very weak civil society that had been decimated during the preceding decades of totalitarianism. "People of my generation - we were actually the first to try to organize movements, to resist unfair elections. But we also saw the cooperation of Western politicians with Putin, a kind of Schröderization of the West. They were feeding Putin." In our conversation Zhenya Chirikova recalled speeches she made in the European Parliament and in the British Parliament where she asked the Western countries not to buy oil and gas from Putin, not to support this corrupted regime. "People laughed at me, said it was real politik. It turns out that we raised this monster together with the West, and now we all have to clean it up together.

THIS PODCAST IS NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE

FOR THE PRESENT TIME WE HAVE REPLACED THE PODCAST WITH MIKHAIL SAVVA WITH A PODCAST WE RECORDED IN NOVEMBER 2020.

Our guest on the podcast this week is Mikhail Valentinovich Savva. Mikhail Savva is a human rights activist, political scientist, and former professor at Kuban State University. In 1993 Mikhail Savva began working in the administration of the Krasnodar region and then later in the Federal Ministry of Nationalities Affairs and Regional Policy - a position from which he resigned in connection with the first Chechen war. From January 2001, Mikhail Savva served as director of grant programmes at the Southern Regional Resource Centre, an NGO, and he was also a member of the Krasnodar Region Public Oversight Commission to monitor human rights in places of detention. In April 2013 a politically motivated criminal case was initiated against Savva under Article 159(3) of the Criminal Code ("Fraud on an especially large scale"). In April 2014, a Krasnodar district court gave him a three-year suspended sentence. Since 2015 Mikhail Savva has lived in Kiev where he is chair of the board of the Sova Expert Group, an NGO registered in Ukraine.

The recording is from 4 March 2022

The topics we discuss in the podcast include: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the current situation in the conflict, what the West is doing, why things have come to this, Putin as a leader, public opinion in Ukraine and Russia, and what will happen in the short and long term.

The questions we asked Mikhail are:

• ·         What is the current situation in the conflict? Where is the front line - if there is one?
• ·         The Ukrainian troops have put up very strong resistance. How is Ukrainian public opinion reacting?
• ·         How do people in Ukraine assess the quality of Russian military forces - human and technical?
• ·         Where do people get their information about the course of the war in Ukraine? Are there reliable sources?
• ·         What do we know about Russia's plans in the coming days - and months?
• ·         What is the West doing? And should it be doing more?
• ·         There are many reports of Russian troops bombing civilian areas. Some talk about the need for a no-fly zone by NATO to protect civilians. Is this realistic?
• ·         How do you feel about Putin's reference to nuclear weapons?
• ·         In retrospect, why has Putin invested so much – great economic and human resources and even his political future - in this destructive military adventure?
• ·         Watching videos of Putin talking to his ministers in Moscow in an empty hall or at the end of a long table, one gets the impression that he is a very isolated leader. Especially when compared to Volodymyr Zelensky. What do you think?
• ·         What do you think will happen in the short and long term?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

The guest on our latest podcast is Dmitry Piskunov, a lawyer and human rights activist from Russia who works for the Moscow-based human rights organization OVD-Info. OVD-Info monitors politically motivated prosecutions, with a particular focus on the right to freedom of assembly. Previously, Dmitry worked for the Committee against Torture, a human rights organisation based in Nizhny Novgorod. He was also a member of the Moscow Public Oversight Commission.

This podcast was recorded on 22 February 2022

The topics we discuss include: the work of a human rights lawyer, the work of OVD-Info, the most important human rights issues in Russia today, and what’s coming in the near future and in the long term.

The questions we ask Dmitry are:

• Where does your interest in jurisprudence and human rights in particular come from?
• What types of cases are you currently working on?
• How has the human rights situation in Russia changed in recent years? What examples can you give?
• To what extent does the legislation on foreign agents negatively affect the work of civil society organizations?
• To what extent has anti-extremist legislation become an instrument of political repression?
• What role does the European Court of Human Rights play? And how do you see the relationship between this court and Russia? And with the Council of Europe?
• What do Russian citizens know about the Russian leadership’s intentions toward Ukraine?
• What will happen if there is a war? Will the population support such a policy?
• What is your prognosis for the future of human rights in Russia?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “No one wants war. And if there is anyone who wants it, it’s radicalized people who hold nationalist views. I don’t think this is the dominant view in Russian society,” said Dmitry Piskunov in an interview shortly before the aggressive attack by the Russian armed forces and the start of the invasion of Ukraine. “The actions of the Russian authorities do not deserve support. Nevertheless, I think only a small part of the Russian public will express their dissatisfation. Most will be afraid. Most of those who can organize protests will keep in mind that now there is a possibility to be prosecuted for treason or for extremism. At any moment, they can start branding individuals as foreign agents, especially in relation to dissemination of information about the army.”

Now all the social networks and news feeds are full of information about the army. Law enforcement authorities in Russia are merciless, threatening and intimidating. Peaceful anti-war protests are brutally suppressed by police. The Kremlin is at war with the Ukrainian people. It is also at war with the Russian people, on whom, however, it has not yet dropped bombs and which it has not yet crushed with the caterpillars of tanks. Dmitry sees the future of the human rights movement in Russia in a grim light. He speaks about the possibility of Russia`s isolation from the rest of the world and the likelihood that Russia may withdraw from the Council of Europe and the European Convention of Human Rights. “How close that prospect is, I can’t say,” Dmitry said when we spoke last Tuesday. A few hours later, war broke out.

Our guest this week on the podcast is Andreas Umland, a political scientist and an expert in modern Russian and Ukrainian history and politics. He lives in Kiev and teaches at the National University of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Andreas is a senior expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv and a research fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Relations in Stockholm. He has written extensively on the development of post-Soviet countries, including on the extreme right and on nationalism.

The topics we discuss include: the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, the situation on the borders, the threat of a Russian invasion, how decisions are made in Russia, reactions in Ukraine and the West, and what is to come.

The questions we put to Andreas Umland include:

1) What is the current situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border and on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border?

2) What is the motivation for the concentration of Russian troops?

3) What is the purpose of the "negotiations"?

4) What is the decision-making process inside Russia?

5) Are there divisions within the Russian elite?

6) What is Russian public opinion and does it play a role?

7) What reactions are there in Ukraine to what is happening?

8) How is the West reacting?

9) What do you think will happen next in the short term? And what will happen in the long term?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: Simon Cosgrove and I spent an hour in an interesting conversation with Andreas Umland, a political scientist who studies modern Russian and Ukrainian history and lives in Kyiv and who has a very interesting perspective on today’s situation. “I think February will be a tense month,” Andreas says. “The Olympics are coming to an end, and these exercises that Russia is holding in Belarus – by the end of February it will be clear whether there will be a military escalation or not. I hope not.” Speaking about the future, Andreas says: “Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy will remain the same in the future regardless of whether Zelensky is re-elected or not, whether Poroshenko returns, or maybe Klitschko becomes president. Personalities may change, but the direction of policy will not change. In Russia it is rather the opposite. If personalities change there, the whole regime could change. It may, by the way, change for the worse. Anything is possible there, from fascism to liberalism.” Andreas Umland lives in Kiev and teaches at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Andreas has written extensively on the development of post-Soviet countries, including articles on the extreme right and nationalism.

Our guest this week on the podcast is Vitaly Ponomarev, head of the Central Asia programme of the Memorial Human Rights Centre. Since 2005 Vitaly Ponomarev has also been head of the Centre’s monitoring programme, ‘Combating fabrication of criminal cases of Islamic extremism in Russia.’

In the podcast we discuss the human rights situation in the countries of Central Asia, the relationship between Russian policy in the area of human rights and that of the Central Asian countries, the situation of refugees and the fabrication of criminal cases of Islamic extremism in Russia. 

The questions discussed are:

1) Where does your interest in eastern countries come from?

2) How do human rights in the Russian Federation compare with those in Central Asia?

3) To what extent do Russia and the countries of Central Asia copy each other’s policies in the area of human rights - for example Russia and Tajikistan or Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan?

4) There are reports that there are a large number of religious and political prisoners in Uzbekistan. Could you shed some light on this situation?

5) What is the situation of refugees persecuted in Central Asia and Russia? How realistic is the threat of forced return in the post-Soviet space?

6) You have been banned from entering Kyrgyzstan since 2017. How did this come about and how common is this phenomenon in relation to researchers such as yourself?

7) To what extent are anti-extremist laws and practices based on the Russian model being used as a tool of suppression?

8) Please tell us about the monitoring programme "Countering fabrication of criminal cases of Islamic extremism in Russia. How does it work and what are the main trends in this area?

9) Does this mean Russia is drifting towards the East? How do you see the perspectives for human rights in Russia?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website, SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: Central Asia is a region that includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. In Soviet times, it was called ‘Central Asia and Kazakhstan.’ Simon Cosgrove and I recently spoke with an expert on the region, Vitaly Ponomarev, head of the Central Asia programme at Memorial Human Rights Centre. At the same time, he has headed the Centre’s monitoring programme ‘Countering fabrication of criminal cases of Islamic extremism in Russia’ since 2005. The five countries have chosen different models of development, and the range - Vitaly Ponomarev explained to us - is large: from Turkmenistan with its totalitarian regime to Kyrgyzstan. "These are different countries, different cultures, and the more time passes since the collapse of the USSR, the more these differences become apparent. When mass repression began in Uzbekistan in the late 1990s, Russia was a relatively democratic country. Now there is this metamorphosis: Russia is becoming more and more repressive. In some aspects of criminal law, Russia has already surpassed in terms of certain restrictions some of the countries of Central Asia that we once cited as examples of serious human rights violations." Vitaly believes that Central Asian countries these days are often borrowing from Russian experience, in terms of the the toolkit for suppressing dissent, including both legislation and law enforcement practices related to so-called anti-extremism legislation. 

This week our guest on the podcast is Konstantin Aleksandrovich Kotov, a Russian computer programmer and civil society activist. In 2019 Konstantin Kotov was the second person to be convicted under the so-called ‘Dadin’ Article 212.1 that was added to the Russian Criminal Code in July 2014 – ‘Repeated violation of the established procedure for organizing or holding a meeting, rally, demonstration, march, or picket.’

The topics of our conversation include: the Russian judicial and penitentiary systems, and the current state of human rights in Russia.

The questions we are discuss are:

Why did you become a civic activist?

How unexpected was your arrest, prosecution and imprisonment in 2019? How did you feel at the time?

Your arrest and sentence caused a great public outcry. What did this support mean to you?

You and the defendant in the New Greatness case, Anna Pavlikova, were married in the building of the Matrosskaya Tishina detention centre where you were held. How did this happen?

On 20 April 2020, Moscow City Court reduced your sentence from four years in prison to one year and six months. Through all this time how did you see the work of the Russian legal system, including the President’s intervention?

What has been your experience of the Russian penitentiary system?

How do you assess the current situation in Russia in terms of human rights?

What needs to be done to improve the human rights situation in the country? What is the role of civil society and civic activists?

What are the prospects for the development of human rights protection in Russia?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Anchor and YouTube. 

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: 

“It probably started with the protest on Bolotnaya Square. I was at Bolotnaya, I was at Sakharov Prospekt, I participated in all the peaceful protests that took place in 2011-2012 in Moscow. I had a job, I was a programmer. The turning point was 2018: Oleg Sentsov and his hunger strike. His act touched me deeply: a man risking his life to save others.”

Simon Cosgrove and I continue to record our podcasts – conversations with human rights activists, civic activists, lawyers and journalists. Yesterday our interviewee was Konstantin Kotov, the second person convicted under the so-called ‘Dadin’ Article 212.1, added to the Russian Criminal Code in July 2014. He was sentenced to 4 years in prison, but was released a year and a half later, in December 2020. The colony was the same Penal Colony in Pokrov where Aleksei Navalny is now imprisoned.

“Your day in the colony is strictly regulated: from 6 a.m., when you get up, until 10 p.m., when you go to bed, you don’t belong to yourself. “

Among other things, Konstantin talked about his experience in prison: “Apart from inspections, sweeping pathways, and other things, you are also obliged to watch TV. Moral support came from letters that I still keep. Many of them came from Amnesty International activists from abroad.”

This week our guest on the podcast is Ivan Pavlov, a human rights lawyer specializing in freedom of information and treason cases. For many years, Ivan Pavlov headed the civil society group Team 29, which also worked to promote freedom of information in Russia.

The topics of our conversation today are the persecution of lawyers in Russia, the rule of law, what reforms are needed, the history of Team 29, the right of association and the future of human rights in Russia.

The questions we discuss include:

1. You are one of Ivan Safronov's lawyers. Both you and Evgeny Smirnov, another of Safronov’s lawyers, are forced to live outside Russia. Question: why exactly are these measures being taken against lawyers now?

2. Is the legal professional community able to stand up for itself?

3. Has Russia ever been a country where the rule of law existed?

4. What needs to be done to bring the country closer to the rule of law? What are the main steps that need to be taken to achieve this?

5. Can you tell us something about the history of Team 29? When was it created? What did it accomplish? Why was it shut down?

6. We are all following the Memorial case. One gets the impression the Russian authorities today do not want any independent civil society organizations to exist. What are the consequences of this policy for Russia? What is a country without civil society?

7. Realistically speaking, what are the prospects for fair trial in the Russian Federation?

8. What prospects are there for human rights in general? Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes and Anchor.  The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: "I remember well the 1990s when we crossed a certain threshold, everyone more or less attained a degree of material well-being and began to think about having some rights, about restoring democratic values in the country. I saw that the judicial system was developing, there were some hopes. This trend lasted until about 2004 or 2005, but then developments took a rather different direction. Every person looks for some stability in their life, something on which to base their decisions. In a society governed by the rule of law, that stable basis is the law. A state where there is the rule of law is considered the most stable. But if the law is not stable, and the only ‘stability’ is that a single person has been in power for a long time, it becomes easier for people to look for the signals that come from that one person rather than to the law, which is one thing today and another tomorrow. Officials today are not guided by the law, but by signals that come from that one person. The ability to change by democratic means those in power ensures the quality of life in a democracy." This is what the human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov, who specializes in freedom of information and treason cases, told us. For several years, Ivan was the head of Team 29, an informal association of lawyers and journalists that fought the growing lack of transparency of the state in Russia. I vividly remember that in Soviet times, wherever I went to apply for a job, the hiring process necessarily included a visit to the First Department, a room with an iron door, where - as a rule - some retired man with a crazy look was sitting. These First Departments actually embodied the closed nature of the state, the total control over everything: why the hell do you need the First Department in the offices of a building restoration organisation where I worked in my youth? Ivan Pavlov in our conversation mentioned his team's new project, which he called the First Department. On Monday, he told a wider audience: "The First Department of the state bodies was engaged in the classification of documents and protection of state secrets. Often what was going on behind closed doors in the First Departments had little to do with the law and was simply arbitrary. Our First Department will fight to ensure that employees of all first departments throughout the country comply with the law, so that they do not violate your rights." Listen to our conversation with Ivan Pavlov, who temporarily left Russia but continues to do his fantastic work.

Simon Cosgrove adds: ‘For further information about the past week in Russia, visit our website here.’

Today is a special day: 10 December - Human Rights Day, and our best wishes to all who are listening! This week our guest on the podcast is Sergei Anatolievich Pashin, a retired Russian federal judge, Honoured Lawyer of the Russian Federation and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. 

The topics discussed on the podcast include the reform of the justice system in Russia, trial by jury, and whether there is a fair judicial system in the country. 

The questions we ask include:

1) Is the judiciary an independent and autonomous branch of state power in Russia? To what extent did the judicial reforms of the nineties achieve their goals?

2) Is it likely that with a critical mass of unjust verdicts, society will explode? Or will irregularities and violations always be tolerated?

3) You were one of those who initiated and supported the introduction of jury trials. What has been the fate of its enforcement?

4) Recently the head of the Investigative Committee Aleksandr Bastrykin, speaking at Moscow Legal Week said: "From the idea of 'the individual as the highest value, which has above all rights', we should return to the classical understanding of the individual as the subject of a set of rights and duties. Why is there such a stress on duties all the time?

5) What are the prospects for fair justice in the Russian Federation?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes and Anchor.  The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “In many respects, the fairness of the justice system is a private matter, a matter of individual decent judges, decent investigators (there are such investigators, I knew them), and decent policemen (there are such people, too). That is, in any system there are decent people. But it is another thing that they can be discouraged from practicing justice,” said Sergei Anatolievich Pashin. About this, and much more, Simon Cosgrove and I talked with Sergei Pashin in our podcast. We were very lucky that Sergei Pashin was able to give an hour of his time to talk to us. Everyone knows that Pashin is a retired federal judge, one of the initiators of jury trials in Russia, an Honoured Lawyer of the Russian Federation, a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG), author of the 1991 Constitutional Court Act, and a very busy man. Since 2008, Pashin has been teaching at the Law Department of the Higher School of Economics. Or rather, alas, it’s now necessary to say – was teaching. At the end of November 2021 Pashin suddenly received notice of dismissal and from 24 December he will cease to be an employee of this educational institution: the university terminated contracts with two professors of the Faculty of Law - Sergei Pashin and Gennady Esakov. From 2011 to 2021 the students of the HSE recognized Sergei Pashin every year as the best lecturer - and deservedly so. It was extremely interesting talking with Sergei Anatolievich, as you can judge for yourself. 

Simon Cosgrove adds: ‘For further information about the past week in Russia, visit our website here.’

This week we our guest on the podcast is Svetlana Astrakhantseva, executive director of the Moscow Helsinki Group. Svetlana Astrakhantseva is an economist, lawyer and law professor, and human rights activist. She has been working with the Moscow Helsinki Group since 2008 and has been executive director of MHG since 2016. She is co-coordinator of the Group for Assistance to the Russian-Ukrainian Human Rights Dialogue and a member of the Coordination Council of the Civic Solidarity International Platform.

The topics discussed on our podcast are: why be a human rights defender in today's Russia; what MHG does; whether there is a dialogue today between the human rights community and the authorities; is civic oversight relevant today in Russia; and the prospects for human rights in Russia.

The questions we ask Svetlana Astrakhantseva are:

1) What brought you to the Moscow Helsinki Group? Why did you become a human rights activist?

2) The mission of the MHG is to promote human rights and democracy in Russia, expose human rights violations and ensure that Russia complies with its international human rights obligations. To what extent is monitoring and pressure on the authorities possible nowadays, when the Kremlin is putting so much pressure on human rights NGOs?

3) Liudmila Alekseeva, one of the founders of the MHG, was known for her ability to conduct dialogue with representatives of the authorities (Kolokoltsev, Putin). How far is it possible now to continue dialogue in the way that Liudmila Alekseeva did?

4) A workshop on civic oversight of the police is planned for December this year in the Krasnodar region, with a face-to-face meeting planned to be held in Sochi. Do the authorities put obstacles in your way?

5) What are the prospects for human rights in Russia?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes and Anchor.  The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: Simon Cosgrove and I spoke with Svetlana Astrahantseva, Executive Director of the Moscow Helsinki Group – MHG:

“It’s always been important to me to help people, ever since I first became a Young Pioneer. You always turn around and help someone who’s in trouble.”

“You don’t become a human rights activist. It’s a kind of state of mind.”

“While working in business, I kept asking myself the question: why aren’t our laws working?”

“I came to MHG as an ordinary employee, a specialist in finance. And when I came here, after getting to know people and reading books, I realized that I was finally in the place that was right for me. It was easy to get better every day around these people. It was fate that brought me to MHG.”

Simon Cosgrove adds: ‘For further information about the past week in Russia, visit our website here.’

This week our guests are Victoria Ivleva, photographer, journalist and writer, and Yury Samodurov, civic activist, publicist and co-founder of Memorial. Both Victoria and Yury were detained on 20 November on Pushkin Square in Moscow for participating in single-person protests against the closure of Memorial. Both were held in a police station for two days and then fined by a court.

This week’s podcast concerns the future of Memorial and the law on foreign agents, the freedoms of association, assembly and expression, the procedures for detaining protesters, the behaviour of police, the conditions in detention and the practices of courts in such cases.

The specific topics discussed in the podcast include: the authorities’ moves to close the International Memorial Society and the Memorial Human Rights Centre; protests; arrests; trials; conditions of detention; what will happen to Memorial; other impressions of events.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes and Anchor.  The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “One of the best things we managed to achieve during perestroika that has survived to this day is Memorial.” These words by Yury Samodurov were supported by Victoria Ivleva and marked the start of our latest podcast with two guests who had very recently left their place of detention. The Moscow police had charged the two human rights activists with organizing “a public mass event with more than 10 participants” and locked them in cells for two days as dangerous criminals. Their “crime” consisted of participating in single-person protest pickets in defence of Memorial. The fines the two were given differed in size: Victoria Ivleva (150,000 roubles) was fined an order of magnitude higher than Yury Samodurov (20,000 roubles). The conditions of detention at the police station were humiliating: no toilets in the cell, a ban on toothbrushes, disgusting food, and the rudeness of some uniformed officers who demanded that glasses, watches and boots (or at least the laces) all be removed, A sum covering both fines was collected very quickly after Ivleva and Samodurov were released. Public support, support from civil society, is as important in individual cases as in the defence of civil society organizations. Including Memorial.

Simon Cosgrove adds: ‘For further information about the past week in Russia, visit our website here.

Our guest this week on the podcast is Grigory Melkonyants. Grigory Melkonyants is a Russian human rights activist, lawyer and co-chair of Golos, the movement to protect voters' rights. This week’s topics are freedom of association in Russia, the law on foreign agents, the significance of the attack on the Memorial Society and whether free and fair elections are possible in the country.

The questions discussed in the podcast include the following: designation of Golos as a ‘foreign agent’; the imposition of ‘individual media foreign agent status’ on Golos associates; the quality of electoral law and practice in Russia; the attacks on Memorial; why these attacks have happened now; plans for a civil society conference; the future of human rights in Russia.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes and Anchor.  The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook:  “Democrat Steve Cohen, co-chairman of the Helsinki Commission, and Republican Joe Wilson, member of the Helsinki Commission, submitted a draft resolution to the U.S. Congress on November 18 this year, one paragraph of which reads: “According to the Russian non-governmental organization Golos and independent electoral analysts, approximately 27,000,000 votes, accounting for 37 percent of the official total, were fraudulent, making the plebiscite the most manipulated vote in the modern history of the Russian Federation.” Golos for Fair Elections, a meticulous and professional organization, has long annoyed lovers of fraud: it is not without reason that many believed that Sidankin’s ‘law’ on ‘foreign agents’ was concocted in the first place to kill off Golos. In April 2013 the Russian authorities labeled the organization a ‘foreign agent’, and in 2016 they ‘liquidated’ it. But Golos’s voice cannot be killled off or ‘liquidated.’ Golos still found a way to continue its work, after which officials designated them twice more as agents, creating another registry of ‘foreign spies’ in which the Golos movement was the first to be entered. The recent stunt with the branding of the organisation Fair Elections also tells much about the implacable Russian authorities, who are trying to undermine all those who work to protect the rights of voters, who help Russian citizens participate in independent election monitoring. After all, the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in Russia is its people. I am a huge admirer of these brave people, and Simon Cosgrove and I were lucky to have the opportunity to speak with Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of Golos.”

Simon Cosgrove adds: ‘For further information about the past week in Russia, visit our website here.

This week on the podcast we discuss the current situation around Memorial and the moves by prosecutors to close down two organisations: the International Memorial Society and Memorial Human Rights Centre. Our guests on the podcast are Sergei Davidis and Jens Siegert. Sergei Davidis is head of the programme in support of political prisoners at the Memorial Human Rights Centre, an organisation of which he is also a board member. Jens Siegert is a German journalist, writer, and political scientist who has lived in Moscow for many years, was formerly head of the Böll Foundation office in Russia, and is a great friend and supporter of International Memorial.

The questions discussed in the podcast include:

What has happened? The International Memorial Society received two notices. The General Prosecutor's Office has filed a lawsuit to liquidate International Memorial, and the Moscow prosecutor's office is demanding that the Memorial Human Rights Centre also be closed down. Why such a ‘division of labour’ among prosecutors and why now? And what will happen to the regional branches of Memorial?

Just recently a group of people broke into the Memorial during a showing of a film about the Holodomor, then the police came, and the police searched Memorial’s premises and confiscated some of its equipment! Is there a connection between the events of October 14 (invasion + police) and November 11 (Supreme Court notice)?

How has the public in Russia and the international community reacted? Germany is said to have a special relationship with Memorial - what is the reaction there?

What is the significance of this attack on Russia's most prominent human rights organization?

What is the prognosis? What will happen to Memorial? What will happen to the human rights movement in Russia?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes and Anchor.  The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: "The scale and intensity of recent repression is so great that each new episode of repression competes for public attention," Sergei Davidis told us during the podcast. "Each of these events individually should be enough to outrage society. But when several such events happen on the same day, society simply does not have the strength and resources to react. It should be remembered that the possibility of street protests due to coronavirus bans is also ruled out. Nevertheless, many people have spoken out. On the level of public statements, support is strong." As well as Sergei, Jens Siegert also took part in the podcast. He told us that at first in Germany the news about the prosecutors' moves against Memorial were a big shock. "Few people thought the wave of repression that has been going on in Russia for a year now could reach organizations like International Memorial. It's too big an organization, too important. Many people thought they would probably not touch it. We see a lot of solidarity with Memorial, and I think it will continue to grow. There were protests in front of the Russian embassy in Germany and there will be more. People who are not indifferent see this attack on Memorial as the return of the Chekist state." Sergei Davidis said: "We will fight to the last." I'm sure that many, many people will sign up to these words.

Simon Cosgrove adds: ‘For further information about the past week in Russia, visit our website here.

This week our guest on the podcast is Sergei Babinets. Sergei Babinets is a lawyer and head of the Orenburg branch of the Committee against Torture, whose head office is in Nizhny Novgorod.

The issues discussed in the podcast include: How did someone who had intended to work in the prosecutor’s office went to work for a human rights organisation? How does the work of the Committee Against Torture vary in terms of city and region (Moscow, Grozny, Orenburg)? How did you become a journalist (with Ekho Moskvy in Orenburg)? What are the risks that face a human rights defender in Russia today? Is the work of a human rights defender at the Committee Against Torture equally risky across the country? What do you think of the recent revelations of torture in Saratov region penal colonies? To what extent is the state a positive and reliable partner in the work against torture? What is the future of the human rights movement in Russia in the light of what is happening in the country now?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes and Anchor.  The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: He dreamed since childhood of protecting people from criminals, following in the footsteps of his soldier-grandfather and his father, who worked in the police force for 25 years. After receiving a law degree, he decided to work in the prosecutor's office, which oversees all law enforcement bodies. Four years as an assistant prosecutor and attempts to join the prosecutor's office as a full-time employee led him to realise that the prosecutor's office didn't really seem to want him. The search for a job where Sergei Babinets could realize his dream led him to the Committee against Torture. Many years ago, I met Sergei in Moscow. He had just started working in the Moscow office of the famous Committee against Torture and he called on us at Amnesty International. Since then, I have kept in touch with Sergei, who after Moscow worked in many cities: Nizhny Novgorod, Grozny and Orenburg. The possibilities to combat torture and protect victims of torture varies from region to region. While in the North Caucasus the office where Sergei worked was set on fire, if in Nizhny Novgorod the group’s exhibition was banned, if in Moscow ‘Basmanny Justice’ simply does not want to pay any attention to human rights activists, in Orenburg the Committee Against Torture can hold events on any topic - here there is no interest in opposing human rights defenders. Sergei Babinets successfully combines his human rights activities with his work at Ekho Moskvy radio in Orenburg: he is good at this work too, and therefore it’s very interesting to listen to him in our latest podcast.

This week our guest on the podcast is Marina Pisklakova-Parker. Marina Pisklakova-Parker is a Russian women's rights activist and writer. She was the founder of ANNA (Regional Organization for Assistance to Women and Children Victims of Domestic Violence), one of the first women's crisis centres in Russia to help victims of domestic violence. Marina has also addressed the problem of trafficking in women and children.

The issues discussed in the podcast include: the founding of ANNA, the first such centre in Russia; ANNA’s activities in the early years; the main activities of ANNA today; changes in perceptions of domestic violence in Russia since the early 1990s; the extent to which the state is a positive and reliable partner in working against domestic violence; religious attitudes to domestic violence; the future of human rights in general in Russia and domestic violence in particular.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud,  Spotify  and  iTunes.  The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: Marina Pisklakova-Parker: "This was not the first crisis centre. The ANNA centre appeared in parallel with one in St. Petersburg, and near the time the Sisters centre began working in Moscow. I created my first telephone hotline in 1992. The impetus for this work came from gender research, which became available to us only in post-Soviet Russia. I started to receive letters from victims. It was from these letters that my interest in the issue began, because no one talks about domestic violence. This is what drove me to do it.” In our conversation, Marina talked about the prospects for passing a law on domestic violence in Russia and about the connection between so-called ‘traditional values’ and violence against women. About the fact that citizens, alas, do not understand what rights they have and do not know how to use them. And about how ANNA helps. ANNA has accumulated huge experience in the fight against the scourge of domestic violence over three decades. The organisation has united specialists from the regions and countries of the former Soviet Union into an informal network which continues to grow and develop. They provide assistance, conduct monitoring, interact, educate themselves and others, and share their experiences. Only by joining together can gender-based violence be defeated.

Simon Cosgrove adds:  A summary of some of the week’s events in Russia relevant to human rights can be found on our website here.

This week our guest on the podcast is Valentina Dmitrievna Melnikova. Valentina Melnikova is a Russian human rights activist and politician, a graduate of the geology department of Moscow State University and a specialist in geochemistry, but better known to us all as the executive secretary of the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia. Valentina Melnikova was one of the initiators of the Russian Research Centre for Human Rights established in 1990.

The issues discussed in the podcast include: how did a graduate of the geology department of Moscow State University became a human rights activist; the difference between the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers and the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers; cooperation between the Russian military and the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers; the notion that Committees of Soldiers' Mothers are intended to help people avoid military service; the role of Viktor Alksnis; the FSB’s recent decree on unclassified information dissemination of which can serve to designate organisations or persons as ‘foreign agents’; the human rights situation and the future of human rights in Russia.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud,  Spotify  and  iTunes.  The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: "I became a human rights activist overnight in December 1979, when I learned from a radio broadcast that Soviet troops had entered Afghanistan. My two sons were still little but I knew a bit about history and I decided that I will never send my children to the Soviet army led by crazy old folk. Valentina Dmitrievna Melnikova told Simon Cosgrove and me how her search for like-minded people, those who cared about their sons, led her to join the Soldiers' Mothers Committee in 1989. "They were energetic women from all over the Soviet Union, they knew what they wanted, and they achieved a lot through the then deputies of the Interregional Deputies Group of the USSR Supreme Soviet. In 1998 we set up an association called the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia. Valentina Melnikova describes herself as an ‘informed optimist’ and believes that the prospects for human rights activities are not great: "Things will get tougher and tougher, more and more lawless. What is to be done about it? I don't know. I don't expect anything good. But on the other hand, all of us - Memorial Human Rights Centre, the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia, the Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia – what can we do if people keep coming for help? So we have to work, we have to fight.”

Simon Cosgrove adds:  A summary of some of the week’s events in Russia relevant to human rights can be found on our website here.

This week our guest on the podcast is Ernest Mezak, a well-known journalist and human rights activist from the Republic of Komi in Russia. He represents victims of law enforcement violations in courts at the national level and has also acted as a legal representative before the European Court of Human Rights in some 200 cases. In 2012 he won the Moscow Helsinki Group's Human Rights Award in the category "For defending human rights in courts." Previously, Ernest Mezak has worked for the Public Verdict Foundation.

The issues discussed in the podcast include: becoming a human rights defender; human rights in the Komi Republic; the role of the European Court of Human Rights in Russia; prosecutions for exercising right of assembly; Mezak’s prosecution for ‘insulting a judge’; the future of human rights in Russia.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud,  Spotify  and  iTunes.  The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: At Christmas 2007 Ernest Mezak was detained by two police officers. It was in Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic: Ernest was shoved into the so-called ‘dog-cage’, that is, into the back compartment of a police patrol car. Mezak later recalled: "It was very cold and dark in there. I spent 20 minutes in those conditions. Subsequently, I appealed my treatment conditions at Syktyvkar city court. And the most amazing thing happened: the court was sympathetic to my claim and found the detention conditions to be in violation of Article 3 of the European Convention prohibiting torture.” Our interlocutor this week, Ernest Mezak, is a human rights activist from the Komi Republic. He often represents victims of law enforcement violations in courts at the national level, and he has also acted as legal representative before the European Court of Human Rights in some 200 cases. In 2012, he won the Moscow Helsinki Group's Human Rights Award in the category "For Defending Human Rights in Courts. It is understandable that such stubbornness, sometimes bordering on obstinacy, cannot help but irritate people in law enforcement. I think in Syktyvkar he is well known and disliked by all officials. A few months ago in the Komi capital a criminal case was opened against Ernest for insulting a judge. His apartment was searched, and, as usual, all his computers, smartphones, flash drives and hard drives were confiscated. Mezak was summoned for interrogation. Ernest told us what has been happening to him – and about the prospects for the human rights movement in Russia.

Simon Cosgrove adds:  A summary of some of the week’s events in Russia relevant to human rights can be found on our website here.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud,  Spotify  and  iTunes.  The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: About 15 years ago in a secondhand bookstore in the city of Tomsk I bought the book ‘Dream and Reality of a Woman's Prison’. The author was Liudmila Alpern. I had been looking for this book for a long time, and it was only in Tomsk that I got lucky. It was a tough read, but I read the book. And then I responded to Valentina Cherevatenko's call whether anyone had Alpern's book about the women's penal colonies and gave this tome to Valentina. Some time later, I went to see Liudmila Alpern at the Centre for Criminal Justice Reform in Luchnikov Pereulok in Moscow. She told me very interestingly about her constructive cooperation with the head of the penal colony in Shakhovo, Afanasyev and the ‘chief gaoler of Orel’, Surovtsev, and about American prisons. Last week Simon Cosgrove and I spoke with Liudmila Alpern, an expert in her field. We discussed torture in Russian prisons today and prisons in the U.S., which Liudmila visited years ago. The podcast is available for listening and downloading on various platforms.  

Simon Cosgrove adds:  A summary of some of the week’s events in Russia relevant to human rights can be found on our website here.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud,  Spotify  and  iTunes. The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Simon Cosgrove adds:  A summary of some of the week’s events in Russia relevant to human rights can be found on our website here.

This week our guest on the podcast is Grigory Vaypan. Until recently, Grigory was head of the Litigation Department at the Institute for Law and Public Policy where he led strategic human rights litigation before the Constitutional Court of Russia and the European Court of Human Rights. Since 2013, Grigory has been developing the practice of amicus curiae at the Constitutional Court of Russia. Grigory teaches seminars on constitutional litigation and writes articles on constitutional law and international law.

The topics discussed in the podcast include: Legal education in Russia and the U.S. (at Moscow State University and Harvard Law School); The Galina Starovoitova Fellowship at the Kennan Institute; Why become a lawyer/advocate specialising in human rights issues; Court cases; Institute for Law and Public Policy; The International Federation for Human Rights report: ‘Russia: Crimes Against History’; Last year's Constitutional Amendments; the European Court of Human Rights; The laws on ‘foreign agents’ and ‘undesirable foreign organisations’; Young lawyers in Russia today; The future of the justice system  and human rights in Russia.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud,  Spotify  and  iTunes. 

The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: Moscow University, Harvard Law School, and St. Petersburg University are stages in Grigory Vaypan’s education in law. In addition to these institutions, Gregory spent three months at the Kennan Institute as a Galina Starovoitova Fellow. "The task of the American educational system at Harvard is to intellectually inspire a person to accomplish things in their profession,” says Grigory Vaipan. “The Russian system of higher education is designed in a different way." Grigory has also worked at the Institute for Law and Public Policy, where he was involved in developing nonprofit jurisprudence related to human rights cases in the constitutional court. In addition, a recent report written by Grigory Vaypan for the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), entitled ‘Russia: Crimes Against History,’ has attracted the attention of the reading public. This document discusses ‘how the Russian state monopolizes history.’ The author with justice states that ‘Russia is one of the countries that has passed the largest number of laws suppressing freedom of expression on historical issues.’ These include a law against the ‘rehabilitation of Nazism.’ laws banning the use of Nazi symbols and attributes, laws against extremism and terrorism, and more. The latest news from the Kremlin ideological front, with its newly-formed Historical Enlightenment Commission - with the help of state law enforcement agencies fighting off all attempts to ‘falsify’ the facts - only confirms the importance and timeliness of Grigory Vaypan's report.

Simon Cosgrove adds:  A summary of some of the week’s events in Russia relevant to human rights can be found on our website here.

This week our guest on the podcast is Alena Vershinina, a journalist and former host of Ekho Moskvy radio who has also previously worked on Nastoyashchee vremya and now is with Radio Svoboda.

The topics discussed in the podcast include: Career - from Lipetsk to Moscow; The difficulties of working as a journalist in Russia; Harassment by the authorities; Trends in modern journalism in Russia; Journalism in the capital and in the provinces; The quality of journalism in modern Russia; Journalism and human rights; Journalists who have left the country; The prosecution of journalists; The ‘foreign agent’ label; Arrests, searches, and seizures of equipment; Comparing Soviet and Russian external broadcasting; The future of Russian journalism.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud,  Spotify  and  iTunes. 

The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “What is happening in Russia now seemed impossible to us just a year ago,” says Alena Vershinina. “And now everyone is weighing the risks regarding their family members. After all, they seize all the technical equipment they can find during a search, not just what belongs to the journalist. And everyone is now wondering what can happen to your parents or grandparents.” Simon Cosgrove and I spoke with the journalist Alena Vershinina, who we know from Ekho Moskvy, Nastoyashchee vremya, and who now works for Radio Liberty. When I asked her what her prediction for the future would be, Alena said, "We don't even know how we're going to survive the next eight weeks with the Russian elections coming up. Every Friday we wait to see who else will be declared a foreign agent. We don't understand what will happen in three years: we don't even understand what will happen by the end of the year!" "Every move by the state authorities against the journalistic community gets its own answer,” Alena said, during a fascinating conversation. I recommend you listen to the recording to find out what answers intrepid Russian journalists give.

Simon Cosgrove adds:  A summary of some of the week’s events in Russia relevant to human rights can be found on our website here.