Under the influence of agents

Schlosberg case*: How new practices inclusion in the register of "foreign -agents" will affect politics and all our lives

On September 8, the judge of the Pskov City Court Ilya Zinoviev refused Lev Shlosberg* in the administrative lawsuit against the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation and retained the status of a “foreign agent”. This precedent will have significant consequences for Russian politics and for the usual life of many Russians, therefore, having been patience, it must be dealt with in detail.

When the cleaning lady already appeared in the corridors of the court on the evening of Friday in the evening, the judge turned the performance and spent 5 minutes on the manufacture of the resolving part of the decision declared by him. However, before that, he conducted the process correctly, giving Schlosberg and his representatives the opportunity to spread the defense of the Ministry of Justice to the ashes, and at the same time the law "On the control of the activities of persons under foreign influence." The representative of the federal Ministry of Justice Stanislav Vorobyov, connected by a video from the Zyuzinsky court of Moscow, was not ready for a real dispute: in Moscow ships where such cases are held routinely, no one listens to the “foreign agents”. And his mustachioed colleague from the Pskov Directorate of Justice did not utter a word at all, except for: "I support the position of the ministry." No, pipe, let Moscow be blown away, and Pskov is a small city ... In the evenings there is a ringing of the bells of ancient churches, and in the morning - from afar, but clearly - the queue of a large -caliber machine gun at the landfill of the famous Pskov Division of the Airborne Forces. And every dog ​​knows Schlosberg - this is a context. The full -fledged performance of the court with launched positions allows you to see both the political and legal sides of the issue, the person and the inside of the process of entering “foreign agents” to the register, and we are not necessary to wait for the motivating part of the decision: the Ministry of Justice has already said everything, and there will be nothing to add to this judge.

The plague "Inoagenia"

On June 4, 2023, in the “Sunday evening with Solovyov”, a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation from the “Russian Association of Legal Journalism” Alexander Malkevich raised the question of why Schlosberg, a former Pskov deputy, who collects some money for the Yabloko party and receiving, according to his guesses, foreign grants, is still not in the “Register”. “Legal journalist” and candidate of political sciences Malkevich before the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin was connected with his media structures, the Ministry of Justice could not not hear him and on June 16 appointed Schlosberg “a foreign agent”.

For 12 days, which divided these two so -called legal facts, the Ministry of Justice did not find foreign money from Schlosberg, but managed to establish that he was under another - that is, intangible - the influence of other “foreign sources”:

• He criticized his "Rain"*,

• He was talking on YouTube channels with Venediktov*, Makarevich*, Katerina Gordeeva*, Dmitry Bykov*, Tamara Eidelman*and other famous media persons, which were included in the corresponding register earlier.

Soon, in July, on the first Pskov television channel, the head of the Pskov Region Expert Club Ilya Strelkov warned compatriots against contacts with Schlosberg, repeating five times in different ways:

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“Official interaction with the foreigner can lead to serious consequences. All lives can be broken ... I’m not talking about the same donates and money transfers that he again once again asks for naive, probably, his voters, so that they somehow replenish the "apple box office". "

All media resources of the Government of the Pskov region, including 24 district newspapers, immediately picked up and published this not very coherent text. Who else could have such an honor to be? Unless the president. The warning about the toxicity of Schlosberg was immediately widespread by telegram channels, including anti-Semitic connotations.

It is important to warn readers here: present at the meetings of the Pskov city court,

I, I repented, influenced the brilliantly protruding Schlosberg, and you, reading this note, are subjected to mine - therefore, in the logic of the Ministry of Justice, we can all be included in the suspicious register. These are now such “stagners”: with whom the current “agent” spoke, he himself is already toxic.

In Spain, the old name “Bubon Plague” has been preserved for our “seedlings” similar to our “lards”.

In those countries whose “agent” is implied by Schlosberg, and in Russia another 20 years ago-the hall of the Pskov court would be filled, the recording of the meeting would be carried out by two or three television cameras. The plaintiff would have received the rostrum, which he fully deserved: iron logic, honed with rhetoric, skillfully dosed with cold rage. He is really a bright public politician, but this time his brilliance, not counting me, secretly admired, I think, only the judge.

Legal and mediaology are intertwined here so closely that it is impossible to see and evaluate their separately: with this view, no logic is either in either. The court and the TV are two sides of the same medal, and the destruction of independent media and the deprivation of the independence of judges is the same historical process. But if we can only guess about the fact that in the heads of the showmen, then in such a judicial performance as this, abundant by the details, skillful legal tactics allows you to detect traces of directors and scriptwriters behind the scenes. And this is not a “political scientist” Malkevich, not the “expert” of shooters and not even Solovyov.

Spy history

Those from whom Schlosberg was infected with an in agent, mostly simply spat, especially since decent people have long considered this stigma something like a quality sign, and many even left the country who had enlisted them. The Ministry of Justice acts here only as a horse -drawer who puts the Taurus on the horse skin of the conditional Venediktov, and recently justifies his decisions as it hit.

But unlike those to whom the Ministry of Justice sews “political activity”, excuse me, as a sleeve to a famous place, Schlosberg is engaged in it professionally. For more than a quarter of a century, he headed the Pskov branch of Yabloko, for more than 20 years he was elected a deputy of the Legislative Assembly, while in 2015, after an attempt to investigate the version of the death of the Pskov paratroopers in Ukraine, colleagues did not deprive him of authority. Nevertheless, he remains a public politician and insists that this is his constitutional law.

Back in 2014, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation indicated that the term “foreign agent”, which appeared in Russian legislation in 2012, on the one hand, does not carry any negative connotations, and on the other hand, this status does not limit the rights of its carriers. At the formal level, this position of the Constitutional Court remains unchanged, and therefore mandatory for the legislator. But since then the legislation included numerous prohibitions for “foreign agents”. So,

Schlosberg in the statement of claim indicated that this status deprived him of the right to organize peaceful rallies, participate in the elections and support them of the party comrades, and in fact forced him to resign from the post of chairman of the Pskov branch of Yabloko. It is forbidden to teach him at school, that is, to work in his specialty (Schlosberg has a diploma of a history teacher).

Starting from 2012, President Putin many times asked the discriminatory nature of the Law “On Foreign Agents”, and the guarantor of the Constitution, referring to the experience of other countries (very inaccurate, but we will not repeat in this part), associated it exclusively with financial control over political activities. So, at a meeting with the HRC on October 30, 2017, the president explained: “To exclude from the registry, you must either stop engaged in political activities or refuse to receive foreign money.” But in the decision of the Ministry of Justice regarding Schlosberg, there is no money about any money.

The item on intangible wagging by “providing support or impact on the face, including by coercion, belief or other ways”, appeared in the “Law on Monitoring the Activities of Persons under Foreign Infant”, in July and entered into force on December 1, 2022 - and the case of Schlosberg demonstrates what the potential of this “legal force”.

If anyone has forgotten, the rights and freedoms of a person and a citizen, enshrined in Chapter 2 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, according to its own Article 18, “are directly valid. They determine the meaning, content and application of laws, the activities of legislative and executive branch, local self -government and are ensured by justice. ” So it is written there.

But there is a basic law, there are laws that create exceptions from it, and finally there are practices. And there is no answer from the Constitutional Court.

Role exchange

In court, Schlosberg says, turning to the television screen from which something croaks (technical costs of broadcasting) federal ministe:

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Lev Schlosberg:

“Our family has been living in Pskov since the 19th century, we miraculously survived two world wars here, my grandfather went missing during the fighting, and my father experienced the Holocaust. And it is not clear who claims that I am a foreign agent. I hope the court will dispel our doubts ... "

Apart from the criticism of the law “On Monitoring the Activities of Persons ...”, this is the only political statement that Schlosberg made in this process. Then he switches to a purely legal position: the law is anti -constitutional and is not good, but since it is adopted, let's act on it. On the political side, it turns out, on the contrary, the Ministry of Justice: they have changed roles.

The Ministry of Justice attached two packs of documents to the lawsuit. One - thicker - contains about 20 court decisions on the refusal of the courts of different regions to the previous “foreign agents” in their administrative lawsuits - some of them are indicated as bacilli carriers in the decision of the Ministry of Justice for Schlosberg, and he never heard anything about others. Several decisions of the Pskov city and regional courts on administrative influences on the plaintiff, including the organization of “illegal procession”, were also attached.

Schlosberg asks to explain what this is to the current dispute. Regarding decisions about other persons, the Ministry of Justice only mumbles, and in terms of decisions about him, he explains that they illustrate the implementation by Schlosberg of political activity. But he himself insists on this. So - cutlets separately, flies separately: they agreed about politics, let's now about the "influence".

The second pack of applications is thinner for him: in it, the screenshots of the announcements of yutub-channels on the Internet of Schlosberg, along with the “agents”-predecessors-his predecessors. The plaintiff does not deny the facts of performances, but demands to clarify, for example: what influence did Tamara Eidelman have had to have? Here is her dad - Nathan Eidelman, a well -known Soviet historian and writer, whose books still stand on his shelf, had an influence on young Schlosberg, as a result of which he chose the historical faculty. And what actions did he take under the influence of Tamara Natanovna, what kind of words and how did she affect him? - Take a job please explain.

The representative of the Ministry of Justice reduces the “influence” of the creation of a “joint product” and notices how to granted: “Foreign agents have a foreign influence” - what to prove here? The Ministry of Justice, who assumed the role of the chief operator in the field of legislation on “foreign agents”, is used to exposing, and here he is in the unusual role of the defendant, for which he is not ready and “croaks”.

But maybe the ministe is not at all for witch hunting?

Behind the scenes

A pack of applications with screenshots stores traces of unnamed persons left behind the scene - from the Office of "E" (to combat extremism) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation and Roskomnadzor. The representative of the plaintiff notes that in the shots of the screen in the side panel you can see the icon of the site “Sex for you” - an employee of the secret department, apparently, opened it either for discharge in the process of identifying extremists, or immediately before the start of this patriotic work. This is his private matter, and in this meeting we are talking about the private life of Schlosberg, about which article 24 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation tells us the following:

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Constitution of the Russian Federation:

“The collection, storage, use and dissemination of information about the private life of a person without his consent is not allowed. State authorities, their officials are obliged to provide everyone with the opportunity to familiarize themselves with documents and materials directly affecting their rights and freedoms, unless otherwise provided by law. ”

Lawyer Anton Golubev, mainly specializing in criminal cases, says that he knows such a law-he is called: “On operational-search activities” (on July 5, 1995). According to him, the secret materials of the ARD can be transferred only to two not secret authorities: investigative and tax - to open the relevant investigations, and nothing has been said about the Ministry of Justice and “foreign agents” in this law - which means that this pile should be excluded from among the evidence. “We have no reason not to trust law enforcement agencies,” the Ministry of Justice retses.

According to the “evidence” presented by him, you can guess that somewhere there there is an accounting business, that is, a dossier, “Foreign Agent Schlosberg”, and someone judging by the accompanyus: “To your number ... from ...”-he began to collect it even before the official procedure for the “foreign agency” was launched in June.

Who, when, for what and on what basis did you do this? What else is stored in the secret daddy in the Ministry of Justice? Schlosberg asks the court to postpone the consideration in order to demand this daddy from Moscow. The representative of the Pskov department performs the first and last active action: he handed the judge a certain page sent to him from Moscow with the stamp “for official use”. The plaintiff and his representatives about the content of this document remained in the ignorance.

Further, the thread is not visible - while it broke off the employees of the ED management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Roskomnadzor, which, as you can assume, are hunting before entertainment with the Sex for You site. And nothing more about them cannot be known. But this is something. According to the laws of the bureaucracy, everything is documented, which gives us a chance to ever know where the real headquarters was on the appointment of “foreign agents”: whoever poked a finger at their candidates, with whom he agreed, what logic was guided by.

The pyramid is wrong

Schlosberg very accurately notes the disgrace of the very design of the Law “On Foreign Agents”: only the court can limit the rights of a person and a citizen, and this law should have foreseen the judicial procedure for assigning a discriminatory status-and not so that at first the Ministry of Justice, without revealing evidence, gives them someone, and his chosen one then has to start the judicial procedure from the reverse end.

In normal form - and even in the textbook on which all the owners of legal diplomas passed exams - the pyramid of law and law enforcement is as follows. The top is the constitution that establishes the state, it is adopted at a referendum or constituent assembly. The legislator develops its provisions in the laws, the Constitutional Court ensures that they comply with the Basic Law. Judges who, in specific cases, apply the provisions of the Constitution on the rights of man and a citizen directly, noting everything that may contradict her. On the lower floor of the pyramid are civil servants who, within the framework of their powers, apply laws to us sinners, but we enjoy judicial protection from their arbitrariness.

In the anatomical theater, a visit to which we owe the efforts of Schlosberg with the team and, in general, the judge’s favor for them, we were able to restore the picture that was completely turned upside down. The main figure here is not even a Ministry of Justice (law enforcer), but a non-imminent one, who pulled him by the thread from behind the curtains. Judges only give the form of legality to anti -constitutional practices, and if they begin to lack the so -called laws for this, the legislator is included. In this order, in 2022, the Law on Foreign Agents was supplemented by “other influence”, but the practice of applying the new article of the Criminal Code on “military fakes” is formed in the same way.

The decision of the Ministry of Justice on the appointment of someone with a “foreign agent” (like a court decision) is the so-called performativity: not a story, but an act of naming, hanging a label. But the performance requires a narrative that legitimes it: justifies the logic of appropriation of the name and the very right to make a naming.

In the legal field, such a narrative will not stand criticism. Therefore, it is carried out in the field of propaganda, where Solovyov is not connected by any law. But Soloviev must create the illusion that his narrative is based on facts. And here is the “legal fact” - an act of naming the Ministry of Justice and the court.

This is a comprehensive, hybrid mechanism for creating a parallel world in which the heroes are operating - the participants of her, but also the anti -heroes: “enemies of the people” - “foreign agents”. This is a simulacrum, which the author of this term philosopher Jean Baudrillard defined as "a phenomenon, which does not correspond in the ontological series of being." But this is not just some kind of electronic shooter: the simulacrum is forcibly included back in the “ontology”: someone on this basis plug their mouths, someone is planted, and someone is losing their lives.

And more about patriotism

Lies need repressions - there are always people who are not ready to repeat it. Значит, она нуждается также в «правоприменителях».

Судья Зиновьев позволил Шлосбергу на протяжении трех заседаний (около 15 часов) расстреливать оборону Минюста в одни ворота. А далее ему пришлось сделать выбор между правовой логикой Шлосберга и политической Минюста. Судья — и на том спасибо! — не стал прикидываться, что этот выбор не был предрешен. Он сделал вроде бы все, что мог. Нет — мог бы, конечно, и больше, но, удовлетвори он административный иск Шлосберга, это решение было бы отменено областным судом, а самого Зиновьева туда бы не взяли — а сейчас квалификационная коллегия судей как раз рекомендовала его к такому повышению.

До начала СВО и окончательного разгрома ею права судьи могли как-то оправдывать себя в собственных глазах юридическим позитивизмом (легализмом): дескать, закон плох, но это закон. Теперь эта грань пройдена, и в том спектакле правосудия, который мы здесь наблюдали и препарировали, к праву имеет отношение только позиция Шлосберга.

Нельзя не отдать должное и трем его представителям: Антону Голубеву, Виталию Исакову и Максиму Оленичеву — но если бы Шлосберг лет двадцать назад бросил валять дурака, сдал экзамены и стал адвокатом, сегодня он греб бы деньги лопатой в Москве или в Санкт-Петербурге.

Но Лев Маркович патриот Пскова — это его выбор.

* Entered the Russian authorities in the register of "foreign regents".