Update 11/11/10: Fuller context added to Pleshcheyeva’s remarks.

Members of Russian law enforcement, mass media, government agencies, advocacy groups, and pro-Kremlin youth organizations spoke yesterday during a Public Chamber session dedicated to the ghastly beating of Kommersant journalist Oleg Kashin. While most presentations denounced the attack and focused on the need to step up efforts to prosecute assailants of Russian journalists, one speaker accused the journalists of bringing these attacks on themselves.

According to the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, passions ran high during the two-hour session, with journalists, lawyers, and activists decrying Russia’s chronic failure to solve cases of attacks on journalists. Editor-in-Chief Yevgeniya Albats of the New Times magazine spoke directly to representatives of law enforcement present in the auditorium, saying that the government has provided vast amounts of support to large organizations that have long been hounding Kashin and numerous other journalists.

The editor was referring to government-sponsored pro-Kremlin youth movements that routinely harass journalists whose views contradict their own, some of whose representatives were present at the session. Nashi Commissar Irina Pleshcheyeva turned out to be an actual member of the Public Chamber, and issued a sharp rebuke against those who she felt practice “political terrorism.” Noting that she did not consider Kashin to be a talented journalist, the commissar argued that the journalists themselves are responsible for such attacks:

When a journalist is attacked or murdered per order, when he’s dealing with some case, then journalists take it, come together, and continue the case. They don’t need to provide reasons to murder them. Not everyone is going to be killed. If a person – the people who commit crimes – they don’t think they’re going to be caught. None of the criminals think they’re going to be caught. But if their goal is to change the situation – so that a person doesn’t write, doesn’t investigate – he should know that, in the future, the journalists are going to take the case and continue it. The editorial staff will take it. All the journalists will take it. I don’t know. But that investigation will continue. Then there won’t be any necessity to explain to people that fists don’t solve anything.

Pleshcheyeva went on to say that she herself feared being attacked for what she wrote on blogs and other Internet media, and that this is a problem shared by Russian society on the whole. Moreover, she argued, lots of people get killed in Russia while fulfilling their professional duties – soldiers, businessmen, teachers, doctors – so journalists are no exception. While the commissar briefly touched upon the importance of investigating such attacks, she stressed that society has to focus on the fact that “they don’t let us speak,” and not “that somebody got crippled.”

The speech was disturbingly reminiscent of remarks by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in August that opposition protesters intentionally provoke the police into “bludgeoning them upside the head.”

Also present at the session was Andrei Tatarinov, a leading member of the pro-Kremlin youth group Young Guard and member of the Public Chamber. He supported Pleshcheyeva and added that while his organization has not always been on great terms with Kashin, its website has posted condolences and denounced the attack. He did not explain, however, why this page was accompanied by what Nezavisimaya Gazeta described as “staged photographs mocking people expressing sympathy.”

A presentation by Moscow’s chief investigator, Vadim Yakovenko, provided an abrupt summary of Kashin’s case: the work is ongoing; 30 witnesses have been questioned; there is a wealth of information.

Vladimir Vasiliev, head of the State Duma Committee on Safety, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the auditorium was clearly unsatisfied with Yakovenko’s laconic speech. Therefore, Vasiliev spoke about the lack of sufficient budgetary funds for the needs of Russia’s law enforcement system, which results in complex cases being doled out to “boys” to solve. According to the newspaper, Vasiliev’s remarks were taken as evidence that we shouldn’t count on seeing any results from the investigation in the foreseeable future.

After undergoing two operations on his skull and a partial amputation of one of his pinky fingers, Oleg Kashin awoke from a coma Wednesday morning in a Moscow hospital. Doctors say his condition is critical but stable, and that he should be able to talk in the coming days. Colleagues and supporters continued calling for his perpetrators to be found and brought to justice for the fifth day in a row.

Update 1/26/10: Excavators resumed house demolitions Tuesday morning, reneging on a statement on Monday that residents would be given several days to voluntarily leave their homes and for recent subzero temperatures to subside. Authorities say that as a court had ordered the demolitions, continuing to halt the demolitions would be in violation of judicial authority.

Meanwhile, residents have largely run out of food and fuel, and fear that they will not be allowed back into their homes if they leave to purchase more. They have additionally sent a delegation to the German and American embassies with a request to be taken in as refugees.

Also on Tuesday, Sergei Udaltsov, an activist leader supporting the residents, was arrested in Rechnik on unclear charges of extremism.

Residents of Rechnik, a small village on the outskirts of Moscow, have pledged “to stand until death” in the face of a city order to demolish their homes, reports Gazeta.ru.

At a meeting on Saturday between residents, activists, police, and government deputies, residents of the small village demanded that authorities put a moratorium on the demolition of their homes, which began Thursday night and is due to continue on Monday morning after a weekend break, as well as create a conciliation committee. They also voiced concern that police were not allowing ambulances through to the village.

On Thursday night, two Rechnik residents were hospitalized and about 25 detained after attempting to stop workers from bulldozing their homes. On Friday, home owners barricaded themselves inside one of several building slated to be razed, but were unable to hinder workers from continuing to demolish other homes. As of Sunday night, altogether six had been taken down.

Moscow city authorities brought the village to court after an environmental watchdog investigated Rechnik in 2006, concluding that the houses had been illegally built on land that had been set aside for collective gardens during Soviet times. Despite being illegal when they were built at the end of the 1950s, the houses in Rechnik were never torn down. Residents say that while other similar villages have long since been legalized through a “dacha amnesty” program, Rechnik had simply been forgotten. Moreover, they say, the village had not been notified of the court’s decision to tear down their homes and had not been invited to contest it.

“The village Vodnik and other similar garden associations also exist in rural Moscow, and it was a difficult situation, but they all fell under the amnesty,” said one resident. “But it’s as if we’re the only ones.” Despite promises that the houses would be replaced with a park, numerous residents expressed certainty that they would be replaced with “some kind of elite housing.”

Sergei Udaltsov, leader of the Left Front political organization and present at Saturday’s meeting in support of the protesters, said that the residents must necessarily be granted a moratorium until Moscow’s recent subzero temperatures subside. “This is simply inhumane – to kick people out into the streets in such cold,” he said.

Rechnik residents promised to use any means possible to stop police from evicting them, including blocking entrances to buildings by pouring water over the walkways, rendering them too icy to walk on. Additionally, one resident veteran threatened to set himself on fire, and another resident said that he would employ his pet leopard against police if necessary.

“We’re going to stand until death,” said Sergei Bobyshev, the leopard’s owner. “Yes, the leopard Cleopatra lives in my house, a very affectionate pet cat with the manners of a dog – she’s already four years old,” he said, adding that he had all the necessary legal documents for the unusual pet.

The village has additionally issued an appeal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to personally intervene in the situation, apparently following the example of the town of Pikalevo, where residents successfully appealed to the prime minister in May after being denied long unpaid wages.

Vladimir Vasiliev, head of the State Duma commission on safety, urged residents to bring him all of the home ownership documents that they could find. Owners of the demolished buildings promptly handed him a large packet of papers. Public Chamber representative Anatoly Kuchern promised to investigate whether or not Rechnik was eligible for dacha amnesty.

Despite the weekend moratorium on demolitions, police had blocked off one of the only two roads to Rechnik on Sunday night, preventing residents from returning to their homes. Police claimed that they were blocking the road because a nearby nature preserve was closed.

Russia’s Prosecutor General and Internal Ministry are meanwhile investigating accusations of police misconduct during the demolitions on Thursday and Friday.