Moloko Plus Siloviki. What problems are the creators of the Almanac about violence in Russia

In the Nizhny Novgorod, the police tore the presentation of the Moloko Plus almanac dedicated to the theme of revolutions. Two of his authors and editor -in -chief Pavel Nikulin were detained, who refused to show the passport Nikulin threatens up to 15 days of arrest. Prior to this, the security forces came to the presentation of the Almanac in Krasnodar and St. Petersburg. Mediazona tells how the authors and publishers of Moloko Plus are persecuted, who write about terrorism, drugs and revolutions.

"At the moment when I said that everything was going through without problems, the police entered"

On July 14, 2018, the editor -in -chief of the Almanac Moloko Plus, Pavel Nikulin and its author Sofiko Arifjanov, arrive in Krasnodar. The next day, a presentation dedicated to the topic of revolutions of the third issue of the magazine should be held in the cultural center “Printing House”. The Moscow presentation of the number took place in May and did without incident.

When Arifjanova and the 17-year-old volunteer of the Printing House Anastasia Khukhurenko walk around the city, three men in civilian are suitable for them in one of the quiet lanes, who say that they should detain girls. “They did not want to show their certificates for a very long time, they said something about some materials of the criminal case, and that they could not tell why they were delayed, and they need to go to the department because all the materials are there,” recalls Arifjanova. - At first they began to threaten me that they would send for a narcotic examination that a commission on minors would be called a girl. Then they tried to grab the phone from their hands, said that until Pasha [Nikulin] would not come, [we] will not let us go anywhere. ”

According to Sofiko Arifjanova, when the girls were brought to the police department No. 7, she unlocked the phone to inform her colleagues about the detention, one of the police officers grabbed him, "began to watch a gallery, deleted photos from the car, climbed into telegrams, and began to read correspondence."

As a result, the girls were released when Sofiko signed an obligation not to organize inconsistent mass events and a warning about responsibility for extremist activities. By evening, Pavel Nikulin, who was forced to sign the same documents, came to the department with a lawyer.

The next morning, when journalists were going to go to the presentation, two men in medical masks attacked them at a tram stop - as they recall, Arifjanov, they shouted “Hallowe, Ukraine!” And they sprayed fluid from pepper cans into their face. In the hospital, the victims were diagnosed with chemical burns of the cornea. Two weeks after the attack, a criminal case was opened under part 2 of Article 115 of the Criminal Code (intentional infliction of mild harm to health).

They did not cancel the presentation, and when Nikulin and Arifjanov came from the hospital to the cultural center, it turned out that the police also came to the presentation - they said that they were conducting an audit on the statement of the coordinator of the “Interregional Public Movement” Mikhail Banazarov. He argued that at the presentation "it is planned to prepare extremism, terrorism and the use of narcotic substances."

The circulation of the almanac was seized, it has not been returned to this day. One of the witnesses, recalls Arifjanov, was drunk. The seizure was led by the investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Anzor Kappushev, who, as Mediazona wrote , has been suspected of abuse of authority since 2013 (paragraph “a” of part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code) - according to the investigation, he beaten the bottle of cooler. After the presentation, the journalists left Krasnodar easily.

The next presentation of the new issue was scheduled for September 9 at the Petersburg club Fish Fabrique Nouvelle, which is located in the Pushkinskaya 10 art center . On the same day in Russia, a single voting day and announced by politician Alexei Navalny protest against raising the retirement age were supposed to take place. On September 6, the club administration unexpectedly canceled the presentation. “What exactly caused us the abolition of the event was not informed, but they said about the pressure of some“ organs ”. Now we find out the details and look for a new site, ”the journalists noted.

“There are people who communicate with us, they have their own superiors, there is the owner of the club, the owner of the club will subrate this place and so on. There was an instruction to prevent us from holding a presentation. Who gave it, at what level, we do not understand, ” said Pavel Nikulin.

When the presentation was transferred to the Saint bar, the FSB officers came to it. “They went to communicate with the owner of this bar and said that the event is being held, and its organizers promote terror to foreign financing and extend extremist literature. But she turned out to be savvy and said that they have no paper from the court, their words have no weight and would not cancel anything. As a result, they remained at the presentation, listened to our conversation about journalism, ”recalls Arifjanova.

The next city, where the creators of Moloko Plus were going to present a new number - Nizhny Novgorod. On September 16, journalists and listeners gathered in the Postobka bar. “At the very moment when I said, how cool that everything goes without any problems, the police entered, there were a lot of them, more than six people,” says Arifjanova. - Again, they began to say that we are suspected of spreading extremist literature, that they arrived on the statement that came to [number] 112, began to demand from everyone to leave the bar, one person demonstratively and rigidly took it. ”

The security forces, she recalls, extremely reluctantly showed their certificates, and, like in Krasnodar, seized the circulation of the almanac, about 90 numbers. Three of his authors were detained: Pavel Nikulin, Sofiko Arifjanov and Mikhail Shubin.

“We asked them for documents on the basis of which they came to our presentation to conduct some [operational] events, they refused to provide us, while they asked our passports. But, since they could not provide documents on the basis of which they wanted to establish our identity, we refused to show our passports. I was detained first, because I refused to give a passport, and here, if I am not mistaken, an employee of the Center "E" suddenly said that I suddenly pass on a orientation on a robbery in Nizhny Novgorod, ”says Shubin.

As Arithdjanova says, her detention was explained by the fact that the girl allegedly approached the description from the orientation in the fraud case. After the detention, she discovered the loss of the phone: the journalist suggests that he fell out when she was dragged into a car carrier.

Arifjanov and Shubin were released from the department, while Nikulin was left for the night in the department, they drew up a protocol under Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (refusal to submit to the policeman’s order), for several hours the lawyer Alexei Matasov was not allowed him to him.

On September 17, the Soviet District Court of Nizhny Novgorod was supposed to consider the case of the editor-in-chief of Moloko Plus, but due to violations in the protocol, the judge returned it to the police. Nikulin will spend another night in the police department.

"We decided on an experiment on ourselves"

The first number of the Almanac Moloko Plus went on sale in September 2016, it was dedicated to the topic of terrorism. The topic of the second issue was drugs - it was released in August 2017. The third dedicated to revolutions was printed in April 2018.

The price of each issue is tied to the number of the corresponding article of the Criminal Code: the first costs 205 rubles (terrorism), the second - 228 (drug storage), the third - 278 (forcible seizure of power). The publication positions itself as a “counter -cultural almanac about violence”, and its name is a reference to the drink from the novel “Clothing Orange” Anthony Bergesses. The heroes drank him before the start of "ultranasia."

“Some are trying to play aesthetics of protest, but they cannot go beyond the stereotypical images of a brutal fighter in a mask and a chick with tits, looking at their overlord. Seriously - how much can this shit be already? The world is more complicated by the Soviets from glossy magazines about the relationships of the sexes. We decided on an experiment on ourselves and on you and plan to continue. There are simply no other ways yet, ”the edition says .

The presentations of the previous issues were held without any complications, except that about the first number “Fifth Canal” released a plot called “Moscow was held in Moscow, which may interest those who are fighting extremism”.

Law enforcement agencies really immediately became interested in the publication. “In bookstores, we were told that from time to time some suspicious people buy a magazine. For operational purposes, you can allocate 300 rubles to an employee so that he bought a magazine, came home, read it and send it for examination. There was even a comical case: a man from Yekaterinburg told us that he arrived at the mail, took the parcel, printed the parcel in a taxi, and began to read. When he looked up from the almanac, he realized that the taxi driver brought him not home, but to the Main Directorate of the Interior in the Sverdlovsk Region. Because the taxi driver did not like the cover - this was the first number where “terrorism” was written on the cover, ”said Nikulin. In addition, in August, journalists said that their emails and Facebook accounts tried to hack.

The creators of Moloko Plus decided to devote the third number to revolutions. “Actions aimed at the forcible seizure of power or its violent retention in almost any civilized country are punished quite cruelly,” the editorial office to this number notes. For three of the four presentations, security officials appeared.

“Our editors, as always, will raise questions for readers. Is the revolution bad or good? Or the question should be posed differently: "Is any revolution good"? And if some revolution is bad, then what? Why are the names of revolutionaries still call the streets? Is the revolution doomed whose children demolish monuments to the revolutionaries of the past? Should she eat her children? Are the revolutions of guillotine, confiscation and terror necessary? Have you finally passed the times of revolutions? " - the editorial office argues, opening the number.

Moloko Plus chief Julian Liszer, in an interview with Radio Liberty, said that Moloko Plus employees “have no goal for something”: “We are not engaged in political agitation, we are not trying to explain what to do, we do not communicate with the audience in the imperative inclination. We simply do our work as journalists, as historians, as political scientists. ”

There are 19 articles in the almanac revolutionary issue: about protests in France in 1968, European and American anarchists, Russian national socialists who thought about the “White Revolution”, European revolutions of the 19th century, about the Euromaidan in Ukraine and the October Revolution in Russia, as well as the participation of the Czech writer Yaroslav Gashek.

In addition, in the third issue there are publications on protests in Venezuela, Mexican separatists, the Greek organization “Revolutionary struggle”, excerpts from the books and the story of the founder of the Berlin group Atari Teenage Riot . The number ends with the phrase “The shadow of the formidable dawn stood over Russia” from the book of John Rid “Ten Days that shocked the world” about the Bolshevik ”about the Bolshevik revolution.

"From Kaluga with Jihad"

Both times, when the security forces seized the almanac - in Krasnodar and Nizhny Novgorod - they mentioned the article by Pavel Nikulin “From Kaluga with Jihad”, published in the New Times magazine in March 2017. This is a story about Kaluzhanin, who, disappointed in left -wing ideas, became a radical Muslim and went to Syria to fight on the side of the Islamists.

In June 2017, Roskomnadzor issued New Times a warning for the publication of the article, considering that it "contains signs of justification of terrorism."

“This can be stunned. Putin publicly says that thousands of Russians are fighting for IG, and to write about the motives why the Russian guy from Kaluga accepts Islam and leaves to fight in Syria - these are "signs of excuses for terrorism!" For me, this is classical censorship, which is prohibited by the Constitution. Lord, how tired of fools ... Of course, we will challenge in court, ” said the editor -in -chief of the magazine Evgeny Albats. Now the article is deleted from the magazine website.

In January 2018, the security forces spent the houses of Pavel Nikulin a search - he was taken to the FSB, where he was questioned as a witness in a criminal case of training for terrorist activities (205.3 of the Criminal Code). Then the investigators seized the circulation of the first number of the almanac dedicated to terrorism from Nikulin. Later, in an interview with Radio Liberty, the journalist suggested that “this story was mixed in the FSB’s head and Moloko Plus.”

“ When we arrived in Krasnodar at the presentation of the magazine, the police showed me a paper from the FSB, where it was written that there was an article prohibited for the propaganda of terrorism in Almanac from the New Times magazine. The police came to the presentation and seized all three numbers. Moreover, the latter is 30 pieces. Until now, we do not know how this test for extremism has ended, ”he said.

After the detention in Nizhny Novgorod, Nikulin told Mediazone that he had heard from the operatives a conversation that he allegedly spreads an article “From Kaluga with Jihad” in Moloko Plus. At the same time, in none of the three published nomors of the almanac there is no this text.

Sofiko Arifjanova also speaks of the interest of the security forces about the text about the Kaluga jihadist. “When they dragged me to give explanations, they directly asked about“ from Kaluga with jihad ”what it is and what it is related to Moloko Plus , is there such an article,” says the journalist.

“It turns out that they, it turns out, are looking for a text that is not there and never was in the almanacs,” the almanac chief Julian Liser is perplexed. - All this could be avoided, just working normally. And now it turns out that a huge number of people, because of this, either unfairly suffers, like my colleagues, or spends his time on dubious things, as employees of law enforcement agencies of a number of cities of Russia. ”

Lyser says that, by the first call of “professional scammers”, law enforcement agencies allow themselves to tear off presentations and detain journalists: “This is illogical not only from a professional point of view, but also from the point of view of banal common sense. I really hope that it will stop as soon as possible, that everyone is aware of their mistakes and will not make them anymore. ”

“Mediazone” has not yet been able to contact Pavel Nikulin, who, after the detention at the presentation, is again in the Nizhny Novgorod police department No. 7 and is waiting for a court in an administrative case of disobedience to police officers (Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). He faces a fine of 500 to 1.5 thousand rubles or arrest up to 15 days.