Because it was Christmas when I wrote this part of the email, I am legally obligated by my settlement with the Kingdom of Sweden to mention the Gävle Goat, and to promise not to burn it down again. I promise, but make no allowances for others. Vår dag kommer.

Anyway, Alexey Navalny has been in the news recently for the attempt on his life, the investigation that followed (and the subsequent phone call, which saw Navalny impersonate a senior FSB official in order to get an agent to sing like a canary), and new, likely fraudulent charges against him. So, now’s as good a time as any to talk about opposition in Russia. A different kind of opposition.

Antifascism in Russia is alive and well, though the Russian state and its allies are doing their best to throw it into an early grave. I’m going to talk about a few people involved in antifascist activism in Russia and what happened to them, because it’s important and because you can’t stop me. Anastasia Baburova was a Ukrainian-Russian journalist and anarcho-communist activist. As a journalist, she investigated neo-nazi and ultranationalist groups in Russia. She fought for environmental protection, antifascism, and workers’ rights. On January 19, 2009, she and antifascist human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov were shot in the back of the head by neo-nazi Nikita Tikhonov, with assistance from Yevgenia Khasis and Ilya Goryachev. The murders took place in the middle of Moscow, not even half a mile from the Kremlin. Here is a short article about them from a Russian antifascist.

Viktor Filinkov is an antifascist, anarchist, Linux-using Kazakhstani computer scientist. He became friends with a very loose network of Russian anarchists who discussed mutual aid together. On January 23rd, 2018, he was abducted by the FSB, tossed into a van, tortured for 5 hours, and then thrown into prison, where he was tortured even more. He was accused of being part of a fictional plot against the World Cup and the Lenin Mausoleum. On June 22nd, 2020, Filinkov was found guilty of terrorism and sentenced to 7 years in a penal colony. Here’s another article about his arrest and the arrests of other defendants in the so-called “Network” case.

I’ll see you all at practice,

Lev “You Can’t Kill an Idea” Bernstein

Secretary, Quiz Bowl at the Gävle Southern Merchants, 1966-2020