Sergei Belokonev, head of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh), said that the Selinger summer camp would be held in one European and one US location in addition to the original Russian one. He named Strasbourg, where the European Court of Human Rights is located, as a possible European site.

The agency has already set up a special commission and working group to organize Selinger abroad. Organizers say the basic goal of the camp is “to rally fellow countrymen living abroad.”

There are an estimated 35 million Russians currently living abroad.

“We are actively working towards this and are planning to initiate work with our compatriots, especially those who did not personally migrate, but were moved out of the country when they were still children,” Belokonev said. “I’ve talked to people who are abroad but are bigger patriots than people here of their same age.”

The agency chief denied that the camp’s expansion was an attempt to bring young émigrés back to Russia. On the contrary, he insisted that it was necessary for Russians to “build up the country’s economic power” from abroad.

“We need to attract our people to economic projects in Russian so that they become intermediaries, earn money working on these projects, get technology and investment into Russia and send products and services overseas,” Belokonev explained. The camps abroad, then, are needed for émigrés to develop projects to aid Russia, he said.

Belokonev also stipulated that Rosmolodezh would not be organizing the overseas camps by themselves.

Dmitri Sablin, a State Duma deputy involved in relations with the Russian diaspora, said that such camps can help the Russian government exercise leverage over foreign policy towards Russia.

“This is a relevant necessity, our compatriots abroad are defending their rights,” he said. “We need to understand that they’re still Russian even if they have passports from different countries.”

“If Russians living abroad are brought together in some sort of organized form, then European countries and the United States are undoubtedly going to think harder and choose more careful statements when making decisions that go against Russian interests. Then we won’t have things like the Magnitsky Act, which doesn’t do anything but satisfy someone’s ambitions. It has no meaning besides to foment hostility,” Sablin explained.

Nadezhda Nelipa, executive director of Verrus, an organization that supports the Russian-speaking population in Europe, suspects that the camp is destined to fail if run by the Russian side.

“There’s a bunch of people in Germany who deal with the organization of such events, but the style of work and life differs so greatly in Europe that none of it was successful,” Nelipa explained. “Even the ones in the consulate don’t understand it, they look at it like this is Soviet territory. There’s an entirely different approach to things here: if they need a lot of students to participate in the camp, it requires a lot of time, you can’t do it in 3-4 months. These students have their own rhythm of life, they study very hard. They don’t have any vacation time before summer; sometimes they can allow themselves a couple of weeks in the summer. They plan their semesters a half year in advance.”

Political analyst Mikhail Vinogradov believes that Rosmolodezh is simply leeching off of the recent popularity in Russia of support for the Russian diaspora. He was also certain that Rosmolodezh’s strategy to stimulate entrepreneurialism among young Russians only has potential in Russia and will not be successful in the West.

“Rosmolodezh has a choice right now between two strategies: it can continue stressing political, ideological projects or it can attract young people by supporting their business projects. The agency has recently been drifting towards the second direction,” Vinogradov said.

The youth camp Seliger was first held at a lake by the same name in Tverskaya region in 2005. Founded as a training camp for Nashi, it only allowed non-members to participate starting in 2009. The camp has been heavily criticized for indoctrinating young Russians with a paranoid Kremlin ideology and comparing human rights advocates to Nazis, as well as for leaving a great deal of garbage at the lake.

Yekaterina Samutsevich, the one arrested member of the punk group Pussy Riot who has been released on probation, has announced plans to take part in federal proceedings to determine whether a video of her group’s “punk prayer” should be qualified as “extremist.” The news came on Thursday from the activist’s lawyer, legal analyst Irina Khrunova of the Agora human rights association. The case is set to be heard in Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky Court.

Samutsevich, who had been sentenced to two years in a penal colony for “hooliganism fueled by religious hatred,” decided to exercise her right to take part in the proceedings as an interested person, as covered under article 263 of Russia’s Civil Procedural Code.

The activist believes that her rights and legal interests could be impacted if the video is deemed extremist, and has requested copies of all the materials involved in the case. She has also requested adequate time to prepare for the court session.

Khrunova said that her client’s parole status doesn’t prevent her from asking the court to take part in the case in this way.

“Samutsevich isn’t losing anything. In accordance with the court verdict, it has been established that she participated in the video as an actress. Nobody’s saying that she edited or distributed it. Therefore, if the video, with her participation (as an actress) is declared extremist, it’s going to affect her rights,” Khrunova explained. She added that it wasn’t clear yet whether the court would actually grant the request. The two other Pussy Riot members who were sentenced to prison – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina – could also choose to take part through proxies.

Tolokonnikova’s lawyer, Mark Feygin, said that he hadn’t heard of Samutsevich’s appeal and so hadn’t discussed it with his client.

Feygin said he couldn’t respond unequivocally to the question of whether it’s worth it for the Pussy Riot prisoners to get involved in the case. “The fact that Samutsevich wants to participate as an interested person isn’t a bad thing. And I understand that she and her lawyer would be able to defend the interests of all three girls in regards to the court possibly declaring the video to be extremist,” Feygin said. “We’d be glad to let her act as our so-called ‘correspondent’ [meaning ‘proxy’ – Gazeta.ru],” he added.

On the other hand, the lawyer said that getting involved in the case could ultimately harm the activists.

“If we get involved in the process right now as interested persons, we thereby legally confirm a direct link between our defendants and this video,” Feygin said. “I’m not sure that we should admit a legal connection with this video right now, since it could affect their punishment, particularly the possibility of parole.”

Tolokonnikova’s husband, Pyotr Verzilov, said that he and the two remaining jailed Pussy Riot members know about Samutsevich’s appeal. “Nadya was told about this today, and now she needs to discuss it with her lawyer. They’ll decide together what to do,” he said.

Verzilov said that he just met with his wife on Thursday. “Nadya was assigned to the seventh unit, and she’s been working in the sewing shop for two days now. Relations here are good, correct, everything is remarkably good so far,” he explained. “Her cellmates treat her very well, despite reports that there would be problems. The penal colony management deals with us with apprehension and astonishment, but at the same time they’re very friendly and respectful,” he added.

The news that the Prosecutor General had agreed to check the video of Pussy Riot’s performance for extremism came out on November 2.

The clip was a recording of the band’s February 21, 2012, performance in Moscow’s Church of Christ the Savior: five girls in brightly colored dresses and balaclavas stepped onto the altar and performed about one minute of a song calling for the Virgin Mary to “banish” Vladimir Putin. Liberal Democratic Party State Duma Deputy Aleksandr Starovoytov requested that the video, along with Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Temptation of Christ,” be checked for extremism. In his opinion, “the videos offend the feelings of millions of believers, negatively influence social ethics and morality, and watching them carries negative consequences.” Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Grin said that a check had been ordered by the Moscow Procurator. In the end, a “psycho-linguistic analysis” of the Pussy Riot video was carried out, the results of which led the procurator to send the Zamoskvoretsky Court a statement about declaring it extremist.

Neither the Zamoskvoretsky Court nor the Procurator General offered comment to Gazeta.ru.

According to VTsIOM sociologists, 44 percent of citizens feel that the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church could seep over into the spiritual and moral life of the public. Another third believe that the church’s activities should be limited exclusively to religious and faith-based issues.

The number of people who saw the active participation of religious institutions in all spheres of public life, including politics, as acceptable ranked at only 16-17 percent.

“Those in favor of limiting the influence of the church to issues of faith were mostly young people, highly-educated people, and those who don’t trust church ministers,” said the report. “Conversely, proponents of political subjectivity on the part of the church included those who trust church ministers, respondents above pension age, those without higher education, and residents of rural areas.”

VTsIOM pointed out that the level of trust in church ministers has fallen 15 percent over the past two years.

The question of the church’s participation in Russian political life became widely discussed following the arrests of three members of the punk band Pussy Riot in March. Two weeks earlier, the group performed a protest song in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior criticizing Patriarch Kirill’s calls to vote for Vladimir Putin for president. If convicted, the women face up to seven years in prison; prosecutors are asking for three. The verdict in their case is set to be delivered on Friday.

The activist was part of a crowd of between 30 and 100 people who arrived at the statue of Kazakh poet Abay Qunanbayuli to celebrate his birthday and attempt to renew the atmosphere of the protest movement.

As a message on the group’s Facebook page explained: “On August 10, in honor of the 167th birthday of Abay Qunanbayuli, the movement Occupy Moscow invites everyone to take part in an improvisational festival on Chistoprudny Boulevard. With your help, we would like to renew the atmosphere of the May camp of Occupy Abay, at least for a little while.”

A number of poets and Kazakh activists were slated to speak at the event, including Kirill Medvedev, Matvei Krylov, ArsPegas, and others. A musical performance and pop-up art exhibit were also planned.

Although the original Russian Occupy movement was overtly political, organizers said they saw no reason to request permission from local authorities to hold the celebration.

Aleksei Mayorov, head of the city’s regional safety department, said before the event that police would “consider the form and content of the event” while present. He promised not to interfere so long as public order was maintained and the gathering did not seem political in nature.

A number of police cars and four paddy wagons could be seen parked nearby the poet’s statue throughout the evening.

While there was no chanting of political slogans on the part of the celebration’s participants, one activist did unfurl a poster demanding the release of the three arrested members of the punk group Pussy Riot. As of Friday night, it was unclear what charges the arrestee might face.

Because of the Russian Occupy movement, Abay Qunanbayuli has become one of the main symbols of the country’s recently energized anti-governmental protest movement. In May, OMON riot police broke up a camp around the statue that had dubbed itself “Occupy Abay” only ten day after its inception. An attempt to renew the camp lasted less than one day when police charged organizers with lacking the proper documentation to distribute food and water.

It’s possible that many people are seeing our behavior as impudence and insolence. It is not.

We are in a desperate situation, the kind where it’s difficult to remain aloof.

It’s been heartwarming to hear of those who are supporting us during this process, but the harshness and rudeness of our opponents is hard to understand even now. Either way, we want to express our gratitude towards the people who have been understanding and merciful, and call both sides to dialogue, not mutual condemnation.

We’d like to stress that we do not support violence, we have no grudges against anyone, our laughter is in some sense laughter through tears, and our sarcasm is a reaction to judicial lawlessness.

We ask both our defenders and those who are accusing us to be tactful, as painful and difficult as this may be.

Y. Samutsevich
N. Tolokonnikova
M. Alyokhina

Pussy Riot

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

A report written by Yury Kostanov of the Independent Judicial Expertise Council was released today by the Presidential Council on the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights.

“The actions that Tolokonnikova, Samutsevich and Alekhina are incriminated of are certainly at least reproachable, but they do not constitute criminally prosecutable hooliganism,” says the report.

The conclusion was reached after the experts analyzed the decree written by investigators announcing that the women were being charged and the lyrics to the song they performed in the Church of Christ the Savior – the event that sparked the investigation.

“After accusing Tolokonnikova, Samutsevich, and Alekhina of collectively committing the actions they are incriminated of by motivation of religious hatred and enmity, the investigator did not conclude that there were any grounds for this,” the report goes on to say.

“Judging by the lyrics of the song performed, the enmity expressed towards V. V. Putin and V. M. Gundyaev is not religious in nature. Religious hatred in the sense of article 213 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation means hatred towards members of a certain religion precisely because of their religious leanings, an active rejection of religious ideals or an assertion of their own religion, or because of atheistic views. Presenting one’s views in a shocking way does not in and of itself constitute a manifestation of hatred towards the Christian (or any other) religion,” Kostanov wrote.

“The decree likely contains the investigator’s expression of judgment of the offense rather than a description of a way of committing a crime,” it concludes.

Yesterday, Moscow’s Tagansky Court extended the pre-trial detention of the three alleged members of Pussy Riot, who have already been held since March 2012. The three face up to seven years in prison for charges of “hooliganism.” Protests outside the court on Wednesday ended numerous arrests.

According to a source close to Yakemenko, “Vasily announced that the structure of the Nashi movement is being disbanded and that he says ‘thank you to everyone, you’re all free to go,’ and that something will be formed later but for now nobody knows what it’s going to be.”

Yakemenko allegedly explained his decision as the result of the fact that “the movement was heavily compromised before the elections and there’s no point in continuing it in this form.”

One source said that in Nashi’s place there will be a different organization to be headed by Artur Omarov, former head of the Stal movement. Stal was the group responsible for a controversial display of Russian opposition figures juxtaposed with Nazi symbolism at a Nashi summer camp in 2010.

Sources close to Yakemenko in Russia’s youth affairs agency, Rosmolodezh, told Gazeta.ru that there was talk of either a total freeze on the Nashi project and a cessation of funding or possible restructuring of the movement. The sources agreed that Nashi’s brand image will be cast aside and did not rule out the possibility that a political group based on the movement might be formed.

A public announcement of this decision is expected to be made in about two weeks.

Another source added that Nashi employees are concerned that they may not be paid for pre-electoral projects that have already been completed: “The organization’s equipment might be inherited by Vasily Grigorievich’s [Yakemenko’s – ed.] new organizations, but the organization’s debt won’t be taken up by anyone.”

Gazeta.ru had previously reported that Yakemenko might step down as the head of Rosmolodezh since his influence has drastically fallen with the recent reassignment of Kremlin ideologue Vladislav Surkov.

Originally scheduled to set off at 1:00 pm, lawyer Violetta Volkova said that police confiscated the bus driver’s documents and blocked the road with police cars, accusing the activists of holding an unsanctioned protest. Only late in the evening was the bus – whose riders insisted that they were holding an excursion, not a protest – allowed to proceed.

The bus, dubbed the Party Riot Bus, was decorated with drawings and posters in support of the all-female band. Participants included a variety of activists and journalists, including Pyotr Verzilov, husband of arrested group member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and member of the anti-establishment art group Voina.

Three members of Pussy Riot were arrested after performing an anti-government prayer of sorts titled “Mother of God, Banish Putin” at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. According to Kasparov.ru, they face up to seven years in prison for “hooliganism.” A Facebook page in defense of the women says that the three arrestees do not actually admit to being members of the group, who as a rule wear colored masks during all of their performances.

The group, which is called Pussy Riot, played a song titled “Putin Pissed Himself” while perched on Red Square’s Place of Skulls, a platform historically used for announcing imperial decrees. After the 1:38 minute song was over, FSB officers ran up to the group and brought three of the eight girls away to a Kremlin police checkpoint. Five of the girls were arrested in all.

After the incident, police immediately cordoned off the Place of Skulls “to carry out investigative work.”

According to one member of the band, the song calls on Russian citizens “to occupy key places in the country and achieve political changes.”

The singer explained: “The song has the line ‘Punishment with the whip for your freedom and ours.’ We were recalling the dissident protest on Red Square in 1968 [against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia], after which the dissidents were tortured and sent to psychiatric hospitals, prison, and exile. The line ‘Patients are invited to conform’ is a reference to the types of punishment that were used in the USSR, and also to the fact that the government in Russia today thinks of its citizens as psychiatric patients incapable of making their own decisions.'”

Interfax later reported that the activists were charged with violating the law on holding public demonstrations. They were released from holding, but must appear in court on January 24.

Pussy Riot is well-known for holding impromptu protest concerts. They also participated in a concert on December 17 in support of oppositionists arrested during protests against falsified elections for the State Duma.

Photographs from the concert can be seen on the group’s LiveJournal page.

A letter dated July 8, 2011 from the Karelian Ministry of Education, signed by Minister Irina Kuvshinova and sent to schools throughout the republic orders a thorough ban on any possible form of Halloween celebrations. The text of the letter, which is available online, was sent to Kasparov.ru on Wednesday by the Karelian branch of the Youth Human Rights Group.

Civil servants justified the move by demonizing Halloween as a pagan, non-Christian holiday that contradicts the “secularist character of education” and promotes “Satanism and extremism.”

According to the Ministry of Education, “it is necessary to create new forms of joint school holidays that correspond with the basic values of Russian culture.” Given that Halloween has its roots in ancient Irish and Scottish history, Minister Kuvshinova suggested that teachers limit themselves to providing students with factual descriptions of associated Gaelic holidays, such as Samhain and Beltine, when teaching the histories of those counties.

Kuvshinova also proposed teaching the “special role of Christianity in culture and traditions,” citing examples such as Boxing Day in Great Britain, St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland, and Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving in the United States [editor’s note: Thanksgiving is not actually a Christian holiday].

The letter goes on to say that the issue of holding Halloween celebrations in schools is a matter under the jurisdiction of the Karelian Prosecutor’s Office, and that school administrators must therefore send the Ministry of Education information confirming that the recommendations have been carried out by November 1, 2011.

In recent years, Russian officials have used wanton charges of “extremism” as an excuse to stifle oppositionist dissent, a trend that critics say abuses legislation that defines the term too broadly. Such charges have been filed against at least one poet, the families of victims in the Beslan school massacre, opposition leader Garry Kasparov, many newspapers, a television channel that airs South Park, and countless political oppositionists.

Also in the spirit of vague bans, Russian legislators attempted to outlaw the emo subculture in 2008.