August 13, 2022

Fighting Extremism, or Censoring the Truth?


Fighting Extremism, or Censoring the Truth?
Can you hear the *click* and *clack*? Pexels, Markus Winkler

On August 8, Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov reported that 138,000 websites, including Instagram and Facebook, have been either banned or deleted in Russia. According to Krasnov, websites are being censored by Roskomnadzor at an increased rate in order to fight off terrorism, extremism, and “fake news.” 

Roskomnadzor is an agency of the Russian Federation tasked with censoring and controlling mass media. It is no secret that the Kremlin seeks to create a false reality regarding the invasion of Ukraine through the media. For example, the Kremlin refers to the deadly invasion as a “special military operation” rather than a "war." Anything reported through mass media differing from the perspective the Kremlin seeks to convey is taken down.

New legislation even allows for the prosecution of individuals for spreading “misinformation” or “fake news.” This may include information that criticizes the Kremlin or the invasion of Ukraine.

The standard sentence for those who break this law is fifteen years.

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Survival Russian
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Survival Russian is an intensely practical guide to conversational, colloquial and culture-rich Russian. It uses humor, current events and thematically-driven essays to deepen readers’ understanding of Russian language and culture. This enlarged Second Edition of Survival Russian includes over 90 essays and illuminates over 2000 invaluable Russian phrases and words.

Marooned in Moscow
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Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

White Magic
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White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.

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Fish
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Fish

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