The Ivanovo Regional Court approved a fine of two million rubles, which was previously imposed on local architect Sergei Volkov because of a post that Stalin “abandoned” Stalingrad. The relevant information is displayed in the case card.
In September 2023, Volkov was fined under the article on the rehabilitation of Nazism (clause “c” of Part 2 of Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code) after a jury verdict that he was guilty. The man’s defenders noted that the panel assembled initially was going to find the man innocent.
The architect faced criminal prosecution in May 2022. According to the prosecution, in 2021, he published two posts in the telegram channel “Slavic-Pagan Culture Today” with arguments that Joseph Stalin abandoned Leningrad, and the USSR authorities were no less to blame than the Germans for the outbreak of World War II.
According to the examination available in the case, these publications contradict “the scientific paradigm of the Great Patriotic War in Russian historiography” and “contain attempts to discredit the highest military-political leadership of the USSR for inaction, cowardice or inhumane actions towards its population.”
- After the start of the war with Ukraine, the number of cases under the article on the rehabilitation of Nazism (Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code) increased sharply - presumably, security forces use this article to put pressure on those who could potentially oppose the “special operation” in Ukraine and its “denazification.” According to the SOVA Information and Analytical Center, many cases under Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code are initiated unlawfully and should be classified under other articles of the Criminal Code or resolved within the framework of civil rather than criminal proceedings.