Translated material
Antisocial opinion
The City Court of St. Petersburg recognized the extremist article by historian Kirill Alexandrov “Bandera and Bandera: who they really were,” Radio Liberty reports . Experts from the Russian Pedagogical University named after Herzen discovered an excuse for war crimes in the article.
The lawyer Natela Ponomareva noted that the experts did not find in the article of propaganda of national superiority, ideas of terrorism or Nazi symbols, as well as calls for the overthrow of the constitutional system of Russia. Experts made his conclusion that the article justifies war crimes only on the grounds that Alexandrov expresses doubts about the cooperation of Bandera supporters with the Nazis. In addition, the author gives objective information about Bandera’s childhood and youth, which, from the point of view of experts, can cause sympathy among readers.
The article "Bandera and Bandera. Who were they actually" on September 12, 2014 published in Novaya Gazeta. I placed Alexandrov. Two and a half years later, on March 27, 2017, the judge of the Leninsky District Court of St. Petersburg Anna Moroz in the lawsuit of the city prosecutor Sergei Litvinenko announced the publication with extremist material.
"New" and Aleksandrov was appelier. On July 12, the College of the St. Petersburg City Court decided to consider the case according to the rules of the first instance.
On March 1, 2016, Aleksandrov defended a doctoral dissertation at the St. Petersburg Institute for the History of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the topic "Generals and officer personnel of the armed groups of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia 1943-1946". The scandal around Alexandrov’s dissertation flared up before defending work. The leader of the Black -Hundred movement "People's Cathedral" Anatoly Artyukh submitted a denunciation to the prosecutor’s office, demanding to open a case against the historian under Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code (rehabilitation of Nazism).
The director of the St. Petersburg Institute of History Nikolai Smirnov a week before the defense called to the prosecutor's office for a "preventive conversation." As Smirnov said, other structures also exerted “unprecedented pressure” on him with a demand to cancel the defense of the dissertation of Alexandrov.
About 100 people came to the defense itself, including the militants of the "people's cathedral" and members of veteran organizations. However, despite the pressure, the dissertation council 17 votes against one awarded to Alexandrov a doctoral degree.
On May 29 of this year, the Expert Council of History on History did not recommend the presidium of the commission to approve the decision of the dissertation council. On July 26, the Ministry of Education and Science refused to approve the awarding of a doctoral degree to Alexander.