Evening Medusa

January 24th. 10 years for Nikita Belykh and again "Death of Stalin"

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The prosecution asked to sentence Nikita Belykh to 10 years in a strict regime in the case of bribery. The trial, at which the parties moved to the debate today, is being held behind closed doors in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center due to the poor health of the former governor of the Kirov region. It became known about the prosecution's petition from a video podcast of the Prosecutor General's Office filmed near the walls of the detention center (it seems that this is a unique case).

Alexei Navalny delivered a speech at the ECtHR , where his complaint about detentions at rallies in 2012–2014 is being considered. The oppositionist said that the authorities humiliate his supporters by coordinating rallies not in city centers, but in remote areas and "literally in the forest." You can watch the video with the speech fragment here .

The Supreme Court overturned the decision to deport Novaya Gazeta journalist Ali Feruz , who has been in the temporary detention center for foreigners since the summer. His case has been sent for review. Feruz, who has been living in Russia for the past few years without documents and seeking asylum, is being sent back to his homeland in Uzbekistan. He claims that they can kill him there.

Investors shut down the Russiangate website, which published investigations about corruption in Russia. Yesterday there was a text about the fact that the head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, has undeclared real estate in St. Petersburg. A few hours later, the site was blocked in Russia, and the material was removed at the request of investors (their names are unknown). According to editor-in-chief Alexandrina Elagina, they demanded that journalists not write "about President Vladimir Putin, the Russian Orthodox Church and Putin's inner circle."

What is Death of Stalin really about?

Everyone continues to discuss Armando Iannucci's comedy The Death of Stalin, the release of which was canceled by the Ministry of Culture yesterday after a negative reaction from deputies and cultural figures who saw the picture at a special screening. The public council at the department asked the Russian Prosecutor General to check the film for extremism , MP Elena Drapeko suggested creating an expert council on morality for such cases .

Meduza film critic Anton Dolin also watched the film, and this is what he thinks :

From a simple human desire to tell the eternal and always fascinating story about the death of a dictator, a parable was born about how terrible, sooner or later, becomes pathetic and funny. <…>

Stalin does not die when Stalin dies, and certainly not on March 5, 1953. Stalin dies when fear dies. Iannucci's film pronounces this thesis so clearly that it removes all possible claims to artistic viability and risky choice of genre.

Pope on 'fake news'

Pope Francis has published a message on the problem of "fake news", timed to coincide with the World Day of Social Communications. The pontiff said that the snake from the Book of Genesis was the first distributor of fake news, quoted Elder Zosima from The Brothers Karamazov in his message, and stated that journalism in the modern world is not a job, but a mission.

“I would like to ask everyone to call for peace journalism. By this I do not mean journalism that refuses to acknowledge the existence of serious problems or smacks of sentimentalism ... On the contrary, I mean honest journalism that opposes lies, rhetorical slogans and sensational headlines.

Navalny or Sobchak? Pozner or Dud?

Recently, Yandex spoke about the relative popularity in 2017 of “paired” queries, such as “right” and “left”, “oil” and “Bitcoin”, “for children” and “for adults”. We asked the company to look at the results for some other couples. The request "Navalny" turned out to be more popular than "Sobchak" (everywhere except Crimea); “Pozner” is more popular than “Dudya” (but only until the end of the year), and “Thailand” is more popular than “Thailand” (although this is wrong). Other results can be viewed here .

What else

• Complete our game about the Soviet deficit : you need to try to arrange a holiday by laying the table and finding gifts. The game is based on diaries from the 1970s and 80s.
• Read Anton Dolin's review of last week's most talked about film, The Adventures of Paddington 2 .
• Happy birthday to Fiona the hippo, our favorite hippo. It was believed that she was born in February last year, but journalists found out that this happened on January 24th. We wrote about how she is doing, most recently .

Viktor Davydov