Unanimous Russia

Following on the heels of Russia's lightning-annexation of Crimea (in what some on the peninsula are calling a “Russian Spring”), a new domestic policy has emerged. In lockstep with the opinions voiced by President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin seems to be on the hunt for “traitors,” “fifth columnists,” and any other “hostile elements” that dare to disrupt the smooth, neo-Soviet consolidation of Russian society.

Two days before Putin addressed the nation, a referendum in Crimea delivered a 96 percent result in favor of the peninsula breaking loose from Ukraine to become Russia's new federal subject. Despite the fact that the vote violates Ukraine's constitution (which requires a nationwide vote on secession), annexation seems all but a done deal.

Meanwhile, failure to toe the party line on Crimean annexation or other state policies is rapidly becoming as risky as dissent in the Soviet era. New legislation is being considered which would punish media that publish material deemed “anti-Russian,” treating such journalism as tantamount to crimes against the state. And some lawmakers have petitioned to evict fellow Duma members who dared vote against ratification of Crimea's annexation.

Only one member, Ilya Ponomaryov, voted against the measure, while three others abstained – Dmitry Gudkov, Valery Zubov, and Sergei Petrov.

“They have positioned themselves against society as a whole,” pronounced Alexander Degtyarev, head of the committee on ethics. Degtyarev said he cannot understand why a lawmaker would put himself in “a boat with different sails.” He stopped short, however, of supporting a move to strip the four members of their mandates.

Former Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov once famously said that the Duma was “no place for discussion,” a candid recognition of a reality that has reigned for several years. It may only be a matter of time before parliamentary dissent is completely banned.

In fact, within days of the Crimean annexation, the future began to reveal itself...

Andrei Zubov, a respected professor at MGIMO, Moscow's prestigious institute of international relations, wrote an opinion piece for Vedomosti that drew parallels between Russia's annexation of Crimea and Hitler's 1938 German-Austrian Anschluss. Zubov's article, “We Have Seen This Before,” argued that Putin's move in Crimea threatened the entire postwar system of international treaties. Needless to say, Zubov was immediately reprimanded for views that “go against foreign policy… [and] harm the educational process.” A few weeks later, MGIMO issued an official statement that Zubov had been fired for violating school policies. MGIMO is under the bureaucratic jurisdiction of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

An anonymous group has created a website to catalogue “traitors” and encourage denunciation. Called predatel.net (predatel is the Russian word for traitor), the site lists a dozen opposition figures, highlighting quotes by them that criticize Russia's actions in Crimea. The bottom of the page invites users to propose other traitors.

By press time, the Duma had revived a bill that makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to question the Soviet Union's World War II record. The bill aims to explicitly criminalize the “rehabilitation of Nazism,” such as publicly denying the facts established by the Nuremberg tribunal. Yet it also contains a clause that allows punishment for those who “disseminate false information about Soviet actions” during the war.

The law dates to 2009, when, on the heels of Russia's actions in Georgia, the United Russia party proposed a law to make it a culpable offence to “violate the historical memory of events that took place during the Second World War.” According to an early draft, the law was to hold force within the borders of the former USSR as of June 22, 1941. The measure languished for being too vague, resurfacing when the need arose to use history as a tool of politics, in both 2010 and 2013.

Recent events appear to have given it new life.