Our Silence = Complicity (Moscow & Elsewhere, February 1)

Here is a translation of the leaflet that will be handed out on Sunday, February 1, at the rally against political terror in Moscow at Chistye Prudy. The original text (in Russian) can be found here and here. Feel free to use and adapt this text for your own protest memorials in other parts of [...]

February 1: Stop the Terror!

February 1
Stop the Terror! An International Campaign of Solidarity with Russian Social Activists
On February 1, in Moscow (3:00 p.m.), Paris (3:00 p.m.), Rome (5:00 pm), and other Russian and European cities, protest demonstrations will be held in memory of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, and in solidarity with all those bold, active people who [...]

Porridge on the Brain: In Praise of Authoritarianism

The Russian language is rich with picturesque expressions. One of the most common is каша в голове—literally, “porridge on the brain.” Someone with porridge on the brain is someone who has “lost his marbles.”
A subscriber to our e-mail platform evoked this expression to characterize the following fragments from an interview with members of the Moscow [...]

Despite Everything

We got this reflection on reactions to the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova from Comrade A., a student, writer, and activist in Petersburg.
I usually don’t swear, and I don’t know what to think when I come across an abundance of such words—or even more ambivalently, one such word—in a text. But now I [...]

Shattered Windows

Yesterday (January 26, 2009), Novaya Gazeta published a short compendium of joyous LiveJournal reactions to news of the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova on the part of Russia fascists and neo-Nazis. We simply don’t have the heart to reproduce even the slightest bit of that hate-fest on these pages. If you want to [...]

March of the Assenters (Petersburg, January 25, 2009)

It has been a grim week for leftist activists in Russia. So it was encouraging to see that not everyone in the community has completely lost their courage—or their sense of humor. Yesterday (January 25, 2009) several dozen anti-fascists, leftists, and preservationist activists took to the streets of Saint Petersburg to express their total assent [...]

Warning! Gypsies Are in the Station!

The SOVA Center reports:
On January 22, 2009, in Saint Petersburg, at the Dostoevskaya metro station, a staff member announced over the loudspeaker, “Warning! Gypsies are in the station!”
At this moment, a group of [Roma] were walking through the transfer tube between the Vladimirskaya and Dostoevskaya stations.

These Shards Are Our Tears

Chtodelat News doesn’t endorse vandalism. However, it is remarkable how much attention has been paid to the fact that, during the antifa march in memory of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova in Moscow this past Tuesday, some of the marchers smashed a few shop windows along their route and some lampshades on the escalator as [...]

Stanislav Markelov: Two Worlds, Two Deaths

It is a bitter irony that the last article Stanislav Markelov published on the website of the Rule of Law Institute (which he founded and headed) was a reflection on the official, media, and public reactions to two recent deaths in two different countries—the death of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II (December 5, 2008) and [...]

In Memoriam: Stanislav Markelov & Anastasia Baburova (Petersburg)

On Tuesday, January 21, the day after the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova in Moscow, Petersburgers gathered at the Bukvoyed bookstore on Ligovsky Prospect, the place where Timur Kacharava was murdered in 2005, and marched to the Field of Mars.
Photos by Sergey Chernov. More photos from the memorial can be found here.