Demotivator for a Marxist. The activist was given 10 days for “demonstration of Nazi symbols”

My name is Lev Burlakov, I am 19 years old, I live in Naberezhnye Chelny, I am engaged in left-wing journalism and journalism. I was an editor in the “Ghost of Communism” community on VKontakte and published my articles on Russian and international politics there. I conceived my personal public page “Levomarginal”, dedicated to the left-wing, Marxist movement, in October 2019. I posted notes from political bloggers there. Then it became a more serious project - I published news, articles even sometimes. As a result, the content turned out like this: sometimes memes, sometimes serious articles. The maximum number of subscribers was about seven hundred.

In mid-August I received a call from the prosecutor's office. The prosecutor told me to come and said that we were talking about some kind of administrative offense. He did not specify which one and did not answer my questions. I asked to send a summons, but he just hung up on the call. An FSB officer called me back and said that neither the FSB nor the prosecutor’s office are currently sending subpoenas. He told me to just come, otherwise I would have problems later - the local police officer would come, there would be some kind of checks.

A few days later I went to the prosecutor’s office, and there they told me that a case had been opened for displaying Nazi symbols - under Article 20.3 of the Administrative Code .

The reason was several publications, the main one was a demotivator, where the congress of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) was depicted, and the caption below was “Marxism without revision.” With this meme I wanted to ridicule the Stalinists, the dogmatic Marxists who advocated the orthodox approach. They were too dogmatic, I compared them to the Nazis. But of course, no one in the prosecutor's office was interested in this. Of course, I am not comparing Marxism with Nazism; rather, I am simply criticizing those who advocate an overly dogmatic attitude towards it. When I posted this picture, I saw the news that the swastika had been decriminalized - it was allowed to be displayed on the condition that Nazism was condemned.

There was also a repost from another public page - a photograph of two young guys against the backdrop of a school board with a swastika drawn on it, with the caption: “The fruits of decommunization. The farther from Stalin, the closer to Hitler. New cannon fodder and watchdogs of capitalism are being raised.” In this post I was critical of the author’s point of view and just wanted to show that it is stupid to pay attention to the absence of any Nazi elements in Stalin’s times. Of course, the court didn’t care about this either.

At the trial, I tried to explain all this and told the prosecutor that I adhere to neo-Marxist leftist views and do not support Nazism. I created this page with the goal of writing articles on topics of the leftist movement. But this didn't affect anything.

When I went to the meeting, I assumed that there would most likely be a fine. And suddenly I was arrested. The judge looked at everything very quickly and quickly passed a sentence; he was also in a hurry to get somewhere, he had his own plans. I connected all this with the fact that I was tried for the second time under this article, and that I refused to admit guilt, but in general I have no idea why [I was arrested]. The first time it was also a post on VKontakte; I had a video on my wall with symbols that resembled Nazi uniforms. It was 2017 or 2018, then I was simply fined a thousand rubles.

Immediately after the court hearing, I called my mother, there was such an incident that I took the only keys to the house. It was all unexpected, I didn’t even know where the police department was for her to come there. They found the address, of course, but they were able to send the package to me only the next day.

Then an FSB officer came for me and took me to a special detention center. On the way, he tried to talk to me about the leftist movement, about LGBT issues. It’s not clear whether he wanted to extract some information from me or just like that. The cell had 12 people, but there was no one there, and, in fact, I spent about six days in solitary confinement. One of my friends suggested that this happened because I was a non-smoker.

The conditions were normal for a special detention center; I expected the worst. There was no hot water or a proper toilet, but they did provide bed linen and the dishes were mostly plastic. They gave you toilet paper, although you had to wait for [the staff] to hear you and come over. Sometimes I knocked and knocked, but they might not react for a long time.

A separate story relates to how I filed an appeal. An acquaintance of mine, who is more legally literate, drew up this complaint and was thinking of handing it over to me in a special detention center during a meeting with relatives. But it turned out that due to the coronavirus infection, dating was prohibited. As a result, the complaint had to be sent in a transmission, along with the products and everything else. It seemed to be accepted, but I never received it, I had to write it myself as best I could.

I was also once called to the prosecutor’s office because of complaints filed by my friends about the conditions of my detention in a special detention center. In particular, the fact that the completed appeal was not handed over to me. But overall there was no pressure after that. Now I am filing a cassation appeal: the Supreme Court of Tatarstan rejected the appeal.