New level of solidarity

Ivan Golunov's fight for freedom and the subsequent march demonstrated how quickly the vortex of collective action is now unwinding, when the most pressing and painful problems of society catch on to indignation - sociologist Ella Paneyakh

Unprecedented wave

The words “unprecedented wave of solidarity” last time I wrote, when readers on the Internet raised the necessary money in less than four days to save the New Times from an unfair fine. It’s not good to repeat ourselves, but there is hope that this will not be the last time: an unprecedented wave of solidarity in less than four days forced the Ministry of Internal Affairs not only to release Meduza journalist Ivan Golunov, who was accused by police of drug trafficking, but also to take seriously the officials responsible for his persecution. At the time of this writing, more than 180,000 people have signed a petition in his defense, and despite the fact that Ivan is already at large, they continue to sign: it’s not just about the fate of an individual.

The country's three largest business newspapers came out with the same front pages, "I am Ivan Golunov," and the circulation was demolished from the kiosks in the first hours. From the reposts of Golunov's anti-corruption investigations, all these days on the net, rippled in the eyes. Even employees of the semi-official media raised their voices - probably more out of corporate solidarity than out of universal solidarity, but even that is bread. Probably because they were “allowed”, or at least hinted that it was possible - but this would never have happened if the public reaction had not been so strong and had not grown so rapidly.

The Golunov case immediately caught on to many problems: corruption and profanation of elections, police lawlessness and the use of security forces in political and business showdowns, freedom of speech and, perhaps, in particular, the “people's” 228 article, which threatens virtually anyone

Despite the fact that the editors of Meduza, after the release of their journalist, opposed the march, which was originally planned in his defense, greatly disorienting potential participants, on June 12, several thousand people took to the streets of . Moscow The affair ended in a brutal crackdown and mass arrests; first of all, and no doubt defiantly, angry police officers seized journalists on duty - however, they were also systematically released from the police department without complaints: the situation received too much resonance.

This is - again - a new level of solidarity, accumulated social capital, a new quality of collective action. Until now, if a public movement has been able to wrest an unjustly accused person from the hands of the repressive machine, this has been the result of many months or even many years of work by human rights activists, lawyers, a long and systematic public protest - even in those cases when the interests of the case turned out to be by no means the notorious "Kremlin towers", and the security forces or officials of the middle class. And as a rule, the result was not the full rehabilitation of the person under investigation, but some kind of surrogate: a suspended sentence, a sentence “according to the time served,” a quick parole, like Oyub Titiev, or something like that. It was known that the system as a whole does not give up its own, and the power structures practically do not let anyone out in peace.

And no matter what blow this sense of solidarity was dealt by the thoughtless demarche of the Meduza editors, who missed a wonderful opportunity to remain silent after such a significant victory, what is more important is that people clearly saw - once again, but in a new capacity - how quickly the funnel of collective actions when the reason for indignation clings to the most pressing and painful problems of society. And the Golunov case was immediately hooked by many: corruption and profanation of elections, police lawlessness and the use of security forces in political and business showdowns, freedom of speech and, perhaps, in particular, the “people's” 228 article, which threatens virtually anyone, including those who, like Ivan, never touched illegal drugs in his life.

"People's" article of the Criminal Code

In 2018, according to the official data of the Judicial Department, 92.5 thousand people were convicted under the “narcotic” articles of the Criminal Code - mainly, of course, under the 228th, “people’s” article, which, theoretically, punishes only drug users, and not merchants; 38.5 thousand of them went to places of deprivation of liberty. This is one in seven convicts and one in five sent to jail in the country as a whole.

But with practice according to the specific composition that Ivan Golunov was charged with, everything is much tougher than with “drug” articles in general. Article 228.1. “Illegal production, sale or shipment of narcotic drugs”, in theory directed against serious drug traffickers, of which there cannot be many, in fact it is applied against anyone who was found in possession of more than a certain amount of the drug - if he kept a lot, then he wanted to sell. According to it, there are no excuses and practically no punishments other than deprivation of liberty are applied. So, according to the specific composition that was presented to Ivan (228.1 part 4, with a term of imprisonment from 10 to 20 years), 2 people out of almost 10 thousand convicts were acquitted in a year, and the absence of corpus delicti was recognized twice more. Not a single case was dismissed due to active repentance - which would be extremely strange if the article was used on a case, that is, to fight serious organizations of drug distributors, where you can “spin” one to cooperate in order to get to others. And only 326 people received punishments other than imprisonment, mostly suspended sentences.

In total, out of ten thousand accused, 99.6% were convicted and 97% of the convicts left for the zone. This is a very revealing cruelty, even for Russian law enforcement practice - for a simple murder, let's say, they give less terms, and justify it ten times more often.

The practice of the Russian police is arranged in such a way that all this is done systematically and constantly, in relation to thousands of people, and practically no one is protected. The political system, in turn, is designed in such a way that it is impossible not only to solve these problems, but even to discuss them.

Russian drug policy is designed in such a way that there is nothing but criminal repression in it. No help for addicts, no harm reduction programs, no rehabilitation for those who have quit; even direct and unambiguous anti-drug propaganda is fraught with serious troubles: a simple talk about the mechanism of addiction, or about the comparative harm of different substances, can already turn into accusations of “drug propaganda”, understood very broadly. The Russian court, as we know, does not acquit anyone and does not question the testimony of the police - especially in cases such as these, where there is neither the victim nor, often, witnesses independent of the police, and the defendant, by virtue of the word “drugs” alone in the accusation, does not arouse the slightest sympathy from the court. The Russian legal system is designed in such a way that it doesn’t cost anything to turn an occasional drug user into a distributor, a petty distributor into a major drug dealer (for this you just need to play with the size of the found batch or draw a “criminal group” of unidentified persons in the case file), and a person , who never took the "substance" in his hands - in any of them, as they almost did with Golunov before our eyes - and with the help of exactly those simple and very clumsy tricks that were used there. The practice of the Russian police is arranged in such a way that all this is done systematically and constantly, in relation to thousands of people, and practically no one is protected.

The Russian political system, in turn, is designed in such a way that it is impossible not only to solve these problems, but even to discuss them properly. As a result, we have a system where people sit down for a culinary poppy or simply because they got caught at the wrong time in the field of view of the police; a system where doctors are afraid to prescribe legal painkillers to patients, and planting drugs becomes a universal lifesaver for cracking down on anyone who has a more or less influential enemy who is able to negotiate with not the biggest police chief, or even just with an operative. And – on an even larger scale in terms of the number of victims – all this contributes to the petty arbitrariness of the security forces on the streets, where the threat of planting drugs is not so often carried out as used as a means to force anyone to comply with any illegal demands, or shake out a bribe, or simply humiliate.

It is possible that this circumstance, which concerns everyone, served as a trigger that prompted many of those who until then remained aloof from the so-called "politics" - that is, from topics of public life usurped by the authorities and tabooed to discussion under pain serious life problems. And when concern about a particular problem begins to attract many new people to protest and, moreover, threatens to take shape in a systematic movement, the authorities are forced to listen.

Ivan is free. Whether more significant progress will begin in the legal and law enforcement field depends on how consistently society continues to pay attention to such incidents and show the very solidarity that helped Ivan so much.

* The author is a sociologist, associate professor at the Department of Sociology at the Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, former director of the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems at EUSP