As a result of #Russia ’s war in #Ukraine, average Russians are now repeating a scary part of Soviet history (the Great #Purge / Great #Terror of the late 1930s). Now, in 2023, snitching on or denouncing each other is becoming more common, so Russian citizens are self-censoring their speech and activities in order to avoid arrest and imprisonment.
From the WaPo article: “This wave of denunciations is one of the signs of totalitarianism, when people understand what is good — from the point of view of the president — and what is bad, so ‘Who is against us must be prosecuted,’” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
During the Terror, the slippery slope of denunciations started with high-ranking Communist officials. Eventually, average Soviet citizens were encouraged to report any activity that was considered suspicious. Neighbors disappeared in the middle of the night, taken away by the KGB. The estimated number of people arrested during and sent to the gulags during the Terror varies greatly somewhere between 2.6-7 million. The best estimates are that at least 1.3 million were sentenced to death and 700,000 executed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/27/russia-denunciations-arrests-informants-war/
Just over a year ago, #Memorial, an organization documenting Soviet repression, was shut down by the Kremlin. They had been holding ceremonies at the #SolovetskyStone for years. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59853010
In response, the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 was awarded to Memorial.
https://www.nobelprize.org/.../peace/2022/memorial/lecture/
#Russia