Fifty years later

All you need to know early in the morning of August 27

Good morning!

The most sinister phrase of the past weekend is certainly a “spontaneous wiring” . It was she who happened to the Volodarsky bridge in St. Petersburg: on Saturday evening, the span itself rose by 30-40 cm. The result is three serious accidents and a giant traffic jam. The bridge has just been repaired. The rest is like this:

• On Saturday, the police detained on Red Square participants in the action in honor of the 50th anniversary of the exit to the Red Square of seven Soviet dissidents against the entry into Czechoslovakia of the troops of the Warsaw Treaty.
• Alexey Navalny sits in the police department for two days in anticipation of the court - in the case of a “voter strike” on January 28.
• In Belgium, the police seized two tons of cocaine in briquettes with the United Russia logo.
• Senator John McCain died in the USA.

For your and our freedom

On Saturday, 50 years of the most famous public action of Soviet dissidents - “demonstrations of seven” under the slogans “Long live the free and independent Czechoslovakia”, “for your freedom” and others. Then the slogans were taken away from them, and the participants were sent to psychiatric children and prisons after the trial. On Saturday, the relatives of dissidents who decided to arrange a rally of memory were also selected and, having kept two hours in the ATS, drew up administrative protocols. After the trial, they will write out a fine or be sentenced to compulsory work. There is a softening of morals.

As a 1968 demonstration, it influenced the families of its participants, it is described in detail here .

Set up to retirement

On Saturday, Alexei Navalny was detained in Moscow. He spent two days at the police department, today the court will consider the administrative protocol drawn up on it in February in connection with the “voters' strike” on January 28. The detention, apparently, is connected with the action planned at September 9 against the pension reform - the Moscow authorities refused to coordinate it. It is most likely to be given to Navalny for 30 days, and on September 9 it will be still behind bars.

The leader of the “Left Front” Sergey Udaltsov , also arrested for 30 days for some rally and announced a hunger strike against pension reform, again went to the hospital.

It became clear that the Communist Party would not be able to independently hold a referendum on pension reform , the question for which the CEC approved. To do this, the party, according to the law, must register referendum subgroups in half of the Russian regions, that is, in 43 out of 85. But now, in 46 regions, spoolers are registered, and more than one one cannot be registered in the region. It seems to be called “methodologists at work” .

Bear on cocaine

In the port of Gene, the police intercepted three containers with two tons of cocaine , a breeze of about a kilogram of each packaged in 1903. The briquettes were marked with a bear against the backdrop of a tricolor - the logo of United Russia, which, at the upcoming local elections, is going to speak under the slogan “United Russia” - Presidential Party. "In" United Russia "with humor reacted to this news," the BBC was told in the party’s press service.

In the Republic of Altai, 55 candidates with criminal records are running from the President’s party, one of the convictions have five. Take it with humor.

The president himself celebrated Shakhtar's Day in Kemerovo. Today he will confer there about coal, and information about beating in the IK-37 of the Kemerovo region, according to the local Ombudsman, has not been confirmed .

Provocations and comprehensive assistance

The Russian Ministry of Defense for the third time announced possible “provocations” using chemical weapons in Syria . Major General Igor Konashenkov indicated even the exact place where this will happen. Usually, after such “announcements”, poisonous substances are really used, and Russia accuses the “terrorists who support the United States” of this (i.e. groups of opponents of Syria President Bashar al -Assad), and international investigations indicate the Soviet origin of chemical weapons. The day before the Sunday “announcement”, the United States warned Russia about a possible strike by Assad in the event of a new use of chemical weapons.

But the President of Belarus promised Assad "comprehensive assistance in peaceful construction."

In the world

• In Moldova , who celebrates Independence Day today, mass protests were held with a demand to restore the chosen mayor of Chisinau and with the wishes of the government’s resignation. The criminal case on the fact of preparing the riots has already been instituted.
• Senator John McCain died in the USA. The funeral will be held on September 2 in the city of Annapolis of the state of Maryland at the cemetery of the Navy Academy, before that, the coffin with the McCain body will be in the Capitol (only 30 most prominent US figures fell on the entire history). The current president of the United States, according to rumors, is not invited to the funeral, George Bush-Ml was called to make speeches. And Barack Obama. Here is a story about John McCain’s difficult attitude to Russia.
• Perhaps the most successful American playwright of the second half of the 20th century died Nile Simon . He was 91 years old.
• The Pope , who completed a visit to Ireland on Sunday, met victims of sexual violence by priests and generally repented about this .
• At least four people became victims of shooting at the video game in Florida. The shooter was killed (according to rumors, he simply lost and decided to take revenge).

Five links

• The story of a little -known defector from the USSR to the west of Nikolai Khokhlov, an actor from Nizhny Novgorod, who became the liquidator of the NKVD, but refused to kill by order of the authorities.
• The essay of Gennady Katsova about Ivan Elagin-to the centenary of the poet-emigrant of the second wave.
• On the “shelf” is a new article, Valery Shubinsky about Pushkin’s “Copper Horseman”; In “Foreign Literature” - a letter to Henry Bell about Chekhov; And here (well, suddenly you are interested), Mikhail Idov’s reasoning about the coin.

Sincerely yours,
Seven forty