July 22, 2008 By Robert Amsterdam

Andrei Novikov: On Self Censorship

terentievEditor’s note: Recently the Syktyvkar city court in northern Russia found local resident Savva Terentiev guilty of inflaming social discord with his comment and sentenced him to one year of deprivation of liberty, suspended. We will remind our readers that in February of this year, Terentiev, a user of the internet-resource LiveJournal (which in Russia is usually known as «Zhivoy zhurnal» or simply called by its Russian initials ЖЖ) left a rather aggressive comment about the work of the police on the page of local journalist Boris Suranov. When someone in the police force came across the comment, they decided that this statement was deeply offensive, and opened up a criminal case against the blogger.. Terentiev claims he did not leave this comment just out of the blue. “On 14 February employees of division «K» of the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs, of which the police are a part—Trans.] of the republic rolled up to the editorial office of the Inta newspaper «Iskra» and seized hard disks with supposedly counterfeit software. Boris Suranov’s blog included a link to this article,” he said. “I left a comment on this account.”