The Real Russia. Today.

Russia’s strict public assembly laws vs. The Bible; two thirds of the country wants Putin to crack down even harder; and behold Russian TV’s fake, fawning viewer feedback

Stalin’s popularity is booming, but this civil war general is off limits. St. Petersburg has dismantled a memorial plaque dedicated to the anti-communist civil war commander Alexander Kolchak. The plaque, mounted outside Kolchak’s old home, had only appeared last November as an initiative by a local historical-cultural center with support from Governor Georgy Poltavchenko. Conservative activists from a movement led by Sergey Kurginyan quickly sued to have the monument removed, arguing that Kolchak was responsible for repressions against Russians. Story in Russia

Russia reconsiders a ban on swearing at home. A State Duma committee has reportedly delayed its review of legislation that would outlaw the use of obscenities in private against neighbors and family members. The committee’s head told the news agency RBC on Wednesday that the delay isn’t necessarily indefinite. Russia’s Interior Ministry is reportedly pushing the legislation as a way to plug what it says are existing legal loopholes that make it hard for police to respond to domestic disturbances. Story in Russian

Mr. Evangelical, do you have a permit to read that Bible? Russia’s Justice Ministry has accused the mass media of distorting its position on a 2014 incident in Sochi, when the head of an Evangelical Christian group was fined 30,000 rubles ($500) for organizing a public Bible reading at a local cafe. On Tuesday, Russian newspaper like Vedomosti reported that Mikhail Galperin told the European Court of Human Rights that the Evangelical organizer was fined because “Bible readings in cafes must have the state’s permission” for “public safety reasons.” In a press release on Wednesday, the Justice Ministry argued that its position is based on Russian public assembly laws and court decisions, and therefore cannot be considered a violation of Russia’s constitutional right to freedom of conscience and religion. Story in English

Russians want Putin to stay the course, or maybe even get a bit rougher. Roughly a third of Russians say the winner of the country’s presidential election next year should take a harder line on domestic policy, according to a new sociological survey by the Levada Center. Forty percent of the poll’s respondents expressed satisfaction with the Kremlin’s current course, while just 12 percent said they think some form of political liberalization is in order. On foreign policy, 19 percent of Russians said they wanted the next president to pursue a harder line, while 56 percent advocated sticking to the same policies. Just 13 percent want Moscow to reduce its confrontation with the West. Two thirds of respondents told Levada that they want to see Vladimir Putin win re-election. Story in Russian

Who says protests can’t work in Russia? Residents in a town outside Moscow briefly blocked part of a federal highway on Monday, protesting against local officials’ failure to reinstate their hot water after summer infrastructure maintenance. Shortly after the demonstration, the town’s hot water was restored. Videos and story in English

How Kaliningrad was left holding 160,000 gallons of what looks to be toxic waste. More than 2,500 barrels of a certain substance registered as a cleaning agent were delivered to a commercial sea port in Kaliningrad in 2016. After a few months, the cargo’s owners formally asked local officials for permission to dump the barrels containing the chemicals. When the government refused, the owners simply disappeared, without ever paying a cent of the cargo-storage rent. Environmentalists suspect this was the plan all along: a scheme to leave toxic waste in Russia. In a special report for Meduza, Vadim Khlebnikov, the chief editor of Rugrad.eu, learned more about this story. Story in English

Russian television’s fake, fawning viewer feedback. The producers of a new daily political talk show on the national TV network Pervyi Kanal have created an army of Twitter bots to post fawning comments they can show on air, presented as engaged public feedback, according to the newspaper Vedomosti. On June 20, the show’s hosts, Ekaterina Strizhenova and Anatoly Kuzichev, announced that viewers would be able to send comments and questions to the show via Twitter, with the “most interesting” tweets appearing on air. After the “interactive experiment” got off the ground, however, journalists quickly discovered that most of the feedback appears to be coming from extremely fake-looking Twitter accounts. Story in English

Yours, Meduza