Moscow and Petersburg Rally in Defense of Maxim and Alexei

A few images and videos from yesterday’s rallies in Moscow and Petersburg in defense of Maxim Solopov and Alexei Gaskarov. The campaign to secure their release is still on: go here and here to find out what you can do to help.

This video from the Moscow demonstration features the event’s moderator, activist and journalist Vlad Tupikin, well-known civil rights activist Lev Ponomaryov, sociologist and activist Carine Clément, and sociologist and activist Boris Kagarlitsky. Clément talks about how both Maxim and Alexei are the kind of people whose work on behalf of various causes contributes to the building of “civil society” that the current Russian regime claims to be interested in building. Kagarlitsky argues that if the young men are not released, it will be a disgrace for all of Russia. They are being punished because their comrades had the “impudence” to tell the truth to the authorities, who are incapable of performing their jobs and taking responsibility for their actions.

This video, also from the Moscow rally, features Tupikin, who argues that the spontaneous demo outside the Khimki town hall on July 28 was a decisive factor in the subsequent backdown by the high Russian authorities (in the form of a temporary halt to the clear-cutting of the Khimki Forest pending a review of the route through it for a planned Moscow-Petersburg toll road.) After a fragment featuring Carine Clément, Alexei’s mother, Irina Gaskarova, talks about how there is no evidence that her son committed any crime, that the country’s pretrial detention facilities are overcrowded with people who are imprisoned for months on end, and that an investigator confessed to her that he and his colleagues know very well that her son and Maxim are innocent, but that the case is being curated from the very top of the Russian political hierarchy and there is nothing they can do. Irina Gaskarova is followed by Viktor Solopov, who also talks about how the police are fabricating the case against Maxim and Alexei. He also recounts how, when Maxim was summoned by the police for a “discussion” on July 29, he warned his son not to go to them because they cannot be trusted. This draws a round of applause from the crowd. He also talks about the police have been torturing and otherwise intimidating the young men’s comrades to obtain “testimony” against them. (We will have more details about this aspect of the case in a later post.) Mr. Solopov is followed by Seva Ostapov, another young Muscovite who was recently victimized by the Moscow police (and tried and convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.) He reiterates Solopov’s arguments about the untrustworthiness of the police: according to Ostapov, the words “police” and “lawlessness” have become synonyms in today’s Russia, while the words “court” and “justice” no longer have any connection between them. The video ends with Vlad Tupikin reading aloud a letter sent to the demonstrators by Vladimir Skopintsev, an antifascist activist now in forced exile in another country. At around 11 p.m. on September 2, persons unknown fired shots into the window of his family’s apartment in the Moscow suburb of Troitsk, barely missing the head of Skopintsev’s younger brother, Andrei. Instead of investigating the incident, police summoned to the scene of the crime took Andrei and his father to the local police station, where officers threatened to charge Andrei with extremism and began beating him up. The police released Andrei and his father only in the morning, confiscating Andrei’s passport in the process. (You can find more details of this strange but all too typical story here.) In his letter, Vladimir Skopintsev writes that his own experiences and Russia’s recent history have taught him that sooner or later anyone who comes into conflict with the “party line” will face repression. He closes by expressing the hope that one day he will be able to return to Russia and be reunited with the people at the rally.

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The image at the top of this post was taken by Moscow blogger and activist anatrrra. See their complete photo reportage of the Moscow rally here.

A bit earlier in the day, activists and concerned citizens gathered under a cold rain in Petersburg’s Chernyshevsky Garden to voice their support for Maxim and Alexei and demand their release. The photo below was taken by the ever-reliable Sergey Chernov. See his complete photo reportage of the Petersburg rally here.

Boris Kagarlitsky on Why We Should Support the Khimki Hostages

Russian sociologist and leftist activist Boris Kagarlitsky on why we should demand the release of the Khimki hostages, Maxim Solopov and Alexei Gaskarov. He is shown signing a postcard addressed to President Medvedev demanding the release of Maxim and Alexei. The video also contains an appeal to attend a rally at 4:00 p.m. tomorrow, September 19, at the monument to Griboyedov near the Chistye Prudy metro station in Moscow.

To find out what you can do to support them and secure their release, go to khimkibattle.org.

Today, many people — both in power and within the social movements — have the tendency to say that there are good, loyal people in the movement to defend the Khimki Forest who use nonviolent methods, and then there are the extremists, the irresponsible people who attacked the Khimki town hall, who carried out this violent action and so on. People who argue this way fail to notice two things. First, violence was used by those who were attempting to stop the protest campaign. We all know about the violent attack against the environmentalist camp in the Khimki Forest. And this attack took place with cover from the local authorities — or, at very least, the local authorities did nothing to prevent it. We haven’t heard that the attack against the camp has been investigated. We haven’t heard that the Khimki police have punished the guilty parties. We haven’t heard that the local or federal authorities were angered or outraged by this ugly incident.

And after this it is quite clear that this kind of inaction on the part of the authorities, this passive encouragement of violence by those ultra-rightwing gangs provoked violent actions from the other side. But keep in mind that the violence of the ultra-rightwingers was directed against people. As far as the damage done to the Khimki town hall is concerned, not a single person was injured.

We have no grounds to believe that the two people who are now being held in the pretrial detention facility are responsible for what happened. The only thing we do know for sure is that they were in Khimki at that moment and participated in the action.

It was precisely Alexei and Maxim who advocated moderate, nonviolent actions. And they advocated these views publicly. Note that many [antifascists] cover their faces and conceal their surnames. But Alexei and Maxim didn’t conceal their surnames: they acted publicly, openly. By the way, they reported voluntarily to the police when they were summoned. That is, they behaved like loyal, law-abiding citizens.

In other words, even if we believe that someone should be punished for those four broken windows [in the Khimki town hall] — and someone probably should pay [to have them replaced]: this is the whole extent of the problem — then it is not at all obvious that this should be Maxim and Alexei.

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Watch other videos in this series of appeals for solidarity with the Khimki hostages here.