Enemies Among Us

Back in the USSR?

The Soviet-era label “enemy of the people” – used to describe everyone from suspected saboteurs and spies to prosperous farmers and Old Guard communists – is well-known to anyone with even a passing knowledge of Russian history. Such enemies were persecuted, imprisoned, and even executed. Some were also exiled and had their Soviet citizenship revoked.

In modern Russia, crimes against the “constitutional foundation” of the Russian state include treason, mutiny, and several other offenses, including “extremism.” And the state’s own statistics show that it is on something of a conviction spree.

Statistics published by the Russian Supreme Court this summer show that the number of people convicted on such charges has risen from 21 in 2003 to 588 in 2016 – a 28-fold increase. There has been a particularly strong upsurge in convictions since 2011.

These numbers worry human rights lawyers and activists, who are concerned about the impact of criminalizing certain types of online activity: one can now be tried for retweeting or sharing information seen as damaging to the state. In a July report, Human Rights Watch said that Russian authorities have “increasingly conflated criticism of the government with ‘extremism,’ especially on certain topics such as the occupation of Crimea, criticism or satire regarding the Russian Orthodox Church, or Russia’s armed intervention in Syria.”

Between 2014 and 2016, some 85 percent of convictions for “extremist expression” were for online statements. And from September 2015 to February 2017 alone, 40 people were given prison time for extremist speech, the NGO said, calling it a “crackdown on freedom of expression.”

As if that were not enough, in a throwback to the Soviet era, at press time the Duma passed a bill that outlines procedures whereby individuals convicted of certain crimes can be stripped of their Russian citizenship. In the last week of its summer session, the lower house of parliament passed amendments to the law on Russian citizenship that will make it possible to annul the citizenship of naturalized foreigners convicted on charges of extremism or terrorism.

The law, which President Vladimir Putin apparently supports, is based on the logic that foreigners seeking Russian citizenship pledge on their application that they will abide by the country’s constitution. Therefore, if they commit a crime undermining Russia’s “constitutional foundations,” it is as if they have broken their pledge (or lied on their application). Therefore, it is not the citizenship that is being revoked, lawmakers argue, it is simply that the original application is rendered invalid. Ironically, the Russian constitution clearly states that it is illegal to revoke Russian citizenship.

“In their quest to protect the constitution’s foundations, our lawmakers have violated those very foundations,” wrote lawyer Ivan Pavlov, who frequently works on high-profile cases of treason and other crimes against the state.

In the most recent case in this realm, a Russian court ruled that Demyan Kudryavtsev, the owner of Russia’s independent daily Vedomosti – which is openly critical of the Kremlin – provided incorrect information when applying for his Russian citizenship in 1992. Originally a Soviet citizen, Kudryavtsev emigrated to Israel during the perestroika era, then applied for Russian citizenship as an Israeli citizen. He has worked in Russia most of his life on various media projects and denies any wrongdoing.

Notably, if Kudryavtsev is stripped of his Russian citizenship, that would complicate matters for Vedomosti, as another new law restricts foreign ownership of Russian media.