The case of the racist Yabloko

On July 19-20, 2010, a copy of the examination of blog materials and other Internet resources belonging to Vladimir Volkov (speaking on LiveJournal as mf-pnz ), an activist of the Penza youth “Yabloko” and “Defense”, was published in the blogosphere. The examination was carried out by employees of the Penza Center for Forensic Expertise and was completed on April 30, 2010, i.e. almost three months before its publication. As can be understood from the text of the document, the examination was carried out during the investigation of the criminal case of the arson of the Penza office of United Russia, within the framework of which Volkov was searched in November 2009, and he himself was detained for two days. Volkov himself, in connection with the publication of the text of the examination, said that he expected charges to be brought under Art. 282 of the Criminal Code, however, there is no reason to suspect that a case under Article 282 exists, at least at the present time. Now in the blogosphere and in the media, the dominant version is the “punishment for the friend feed” that Volkov faces. Such a punishment would indeed be absurd. But at this stage there is no reason to believe that Volkov, if he is accused under Article 282, will be charged specifically with the content of his friend tape. The experts analyzed all the material provided to them by the investigator, which, judging by the description, included all records and other materials downloaded from several Internet resources. The experts’ task was not to determine the authorship of the text and, unfortunately, we do not know what the procedure is for regulating the examination of the content of an Internet resource (perhaps it does not exist). In particular, it is unknown whether the investigator is obliged at this stage of the investigation to separate materials posted by the account owner himself and materials posted by other people (in particular, a friend’s feed) or, on the contrary, this is strictly prohibited (for example, to avoid claims from lawyers about incompleteness checks). But it is obvious that V. Volkov himself adhered to quite pronounced ethno-xenophobic views. From the fragments cited in the examination, we were able to find a number of his records. In some cases, these are materials reprinted from right-wing radical sites and forums (for example, from the DPNI website), in some – comments from Volkov himself. At least one of the texts published by him (unfortunately, it was not possible to identify this post, so it is unclear whether this is a reprint or a statement by Volkov himself) directly calls for discrimination and violence based on ethnicity. Other posts rather only characterize the open racism of the author (“ We dealt with the German occupation in 1945. Now it’s time to fight Chinese and Muslim-Turkestan expansion, otherwise we will be ground into powder ”; “ We must return our land by forming Russian republics. The North Caucasus - ... a kick in the ass. The rest do whatever they want. If the national people agree to be part of Russia on our terms, then let them not live - well, okay: the barrel of honey will be cleaner,” etc.). These racist views could not be unknown in the political movements that Volkov belongs to (in particular, in Yabloko and Oborona), since many activists of these movements are “friends” of the author and, unlike others, at any time could read the entries on his blog, which, according to Volkov, was kept closed from the very beginning. This form of blog raises an important question: was the campaign he waged public? After all, according to the composition of Article 282, publicity is a mandatory element. On the one hand, if the blog was kept closed, the statements in it were not open to the general public. On the other hand, the number of the author’s “friends” who had free access to his records is approaching four hundred, i.e. statements, albeit addressed to a limited circle of people, were still quite widespread. The law does not indicate what constitutes a “public” form of expression/propaganda in this context. And in the case of a hypothetical prosecution of Volkov under Art. 282 the resolution of this issue will remain at the discretion of the court. From our point of view, such prosecution would still be unlawful, since Volkov did not conduct any real public propaganda of his xenophobic views, and almost did not allow direct calls for criminal actions. The issue of open racism of a particular political activist should be considered not within the framework of criminal prosecution, but within the framework of public discussion, first of all, in the parties and organizations in which he is a member, since these organizations oppose xenophobic agitation. Sources

• The investigator attached the friend to the case against the blogger // Lenta.Ru. 2010. July 20.
• Based on blog materials