And you, “Burda”?

On February 26, the Burda Publishing House officially responded to the scandal with the dismissal of Dmitry Shulgin, editor of the Russian version of the German magazine ComputerBild

On February 20, the editor of the Russian version of the German magazine ComputerBild of the Burda Publishing House, Dmitry Shulgin, was fired from his job for "political activities." Or rather, for this post on his Facebook: “Sometimes, after listening to conversations in the metro and at work, you start to think that 99.9% of Russians are now praising Yanukovych and calling for all Ukrainians to be hanged. My nation is as sick as the Germans in the 1930s and 1940s.”

Dmitry talks about the details of the dismissal casually: “Editor-in-chief Nikolai Levsky asked:“ Is this your post? I said mine. He said: “Write, like Rodnina, that your account was hacked and posted on your behalf.” I refused. Then I was told to write a statement of my own free will. I was also told that the German concern would inform the German embassy that I was an extremist, and I would be banned from entering the Schengen area forever. I was transparently hinted at the fact that Russian "titushki" with a bat could meet me at the entrance of my house. And in the evening, one of my well-informed comrades said that the Office for Combating Extremism had received a couple of denunciations accusing me of that very notorious extremism.

The scariest thing about this story is that it doesn't shock. The very "zeitgeist" in which we almost comfortably exist has forgotten how to be surprised at anything at all. And the whole set of signs of the degradation of social life, which illustrates this story - and reprisal for judgment independent of official propaganda, and the fear of superiors for their own skin in connection with the freethinking of subordinates, and sacrificing the latter to confirm their loyalty - determines (literally, according to Marx ) along the way, and our consciousness crippled by widespread insanity. Russia, meanwhile, daily continues to deny in word and deed its “shameful” liberal past and more and more successfully plunge into its “bright” one before the past.

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“I was transparently hinted that Russian “titushki” could meet me at the entrance

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In all this, alas, unremarkable story, there is one very remarkable innovation: both the general director and the head of the personnel department, who signed Shulgin's work book, are Germans, citizens of Germany. Burda is the largest German publishing house, publishing one of the most widely read magazines in Germany, Focus, and the owner of the publishing house, Hubert Burda, chairman of the Union of Magazine Publishers, tirelessly proclaims the principle of freedom of speech.

In a conversation with Dmitry, I advised him to write an open letter addressed to Hubert Burda. It’s somehow scary to believe that everyone in this world is “tied up” and that the desire not to anger Putin has not only become a habit of most domestic heads of the journalistic workshop, but is also spreading like a dangerous infection throughout the world.

By the way, less than a week later, the Burda Publishing House decided to comment on the scandal. According to a statement on Burda's Facebook page, the PD "has not and does not limit the private activities of its employees on social networks" and takes it "for granted that employees of our company designate their opinion as their own and do not give the impression that that it comes from the company or is allowed by it. Well, Dmitry Shulgin, as emphasized in the statement, left of his own free will. It is understandable: the word “voluntarily-compulsory” in the German language, apparently, is not yet more suitable for such situations.