Opinion: Ensuring that the regime doesn't escape faceless

Naming names in the judicial and legislative machine of Russia's modern-day repression

More than three years after violence erupted at a protest in Moscow, the Bolotnaya Square case is still churning out criminal convictions. On December 22, a Moscow court sentenced Ivan Nepomnyashchikh to 2.5 years in prison, making his the 33rd conviction in an investigation that many view as political persecution intended to intimidate demonstrators against repeating the protests that caught the Kremlin off guard in 2011. In an opinion piece for the newspaper Vedomosti, journalist Maria Eismont argues that the Bolotnaya Square case is a reminder that Russia isn't ruled by Putin alone. She believes the historical record must fully reflect the names of those who collaborate with the regime today. Meduza translates that text here.

Ivan Nepomnyashchikh is the 33rd person to be sentenced in Russia's Bolotnaya Square case—an investigation into street violence that occurred in Moscow more than three years ago in May 2012. If, like many people, you think Nepomnyashchikh is innocent of assaulting the police, it likely seems his sentence is far too harsh. If you bear in mind how long he could have been sent to prison, however, the sentence seems much lighter.

This is how many of Ivan's supporters were talking when they showed up at the Moscow courthouse. The judge, Alexey Kaveshnikov, condemned the 24-year-old engineer to a penal colony for two-and-a-half years. It was less than the maximum potential sentence. This is what happens when the system won't let you acquit someone, but your conscience won't let you hand down the full sentence.

“I, too, was relieved when I got 3.5 years instead of 5.5 years,” Alexey Polikhovich, another Bolotnaya Square case, wrote on Facebook after going free recently. “The system has driven us to such a state that we consider it society's victory over the state, when we're sentenced to time already served, and we see it as a neutral outcome, when we're sentenced to anything less than the maximum penalty. Our reference points and our sense of how things should be have been distorted by the state's aggression against us and against the whole society.”

”It's pocket change,” Ivan's father said in the courtroom, after hearing the sentence. Later, outside the courthouse, he continued: “And don't forget that he's already spent 10 months under house arrest. I mean, guys, what else can we hope for in this country?!” He then added that it was Putin who sent his son to prison, and that the judge, the prosecutors, and the investigators are merely pawns.

But we shouldn't accept this. Even in today's Russia, everyone has the opportunity to obey both their conscience and the law. And if you're not up to protesting or fighting, you can at least still avoid participating.

On Grani.ru, which is blocked in Russia, Dmitry Borko and Darya Kostromina run a project called “Bolotnaya: Lies Have Names,” where they demonstrate the importance of documenting individuals' contributions to Russia's legal and political system today. “It would be wrong,” they write, “to leave faceless and nameless the gang that ‘was just doing its job,’ putting dozens of innocent people behind bars.” Borko and Kostromina collect information about the role of each investigator and judge involved in the Bolotnaya Square case.

Making sure that the authors of Russia's repressive laws and repressive court sentences don't escape as faceless and nameless is just as important as ensuring that these decisions are repealed. Just a year after enacting the Dima Yakovlev Law, which banned US citizens from adopting Russian children, Duma lawmakers were already angered by questions about it. “What more is there to say on the subject?!” they'd ask annoyedly.

Not long ago, I happened to meet Duma deputy Anton Ishchenko. When I told him that I hope he dreams every night of the orphans he left without a family by supporting that law, he told me that the vote “went along party lines.” In other words, responsibility rests with the political parties, and not with Mr. Ishchenko and his colleagues. But the eight lawmakers who voted against the legislation showed that it was possible to go about it another way.

Sooner or later, the repressive laws will be repealed. They'll be ruled either unconstitutional or inhumane. When that happens, we mustn't forget who made these measures possible. When Nepomnyashchikh and his allies in the Bolotnaya Square case are rehabilitated, we cannot pretend that there was never any Judge Kaveshnikov or District Attorney Amirkhan Kostoev, who, according to Borko, conducted himself in trial ”very politely” and “showed himself to be a man who understands the full nonsense of the case and quietly and discreetly tries to correct this savagery.”