Grigory Pasko: New and Old Enemies of the People

…And 70,000 “Enemies of the People” Grigory Pasko, journalist Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. On the internet you can find even today a list of enemies of the Russian people. I write the word “enemies” without quotation marks, just like it’s written on the site. It was written long ago: this list has been hanging there since the year 2005. Three years it’s been there. And it doesn’t appear to bother any one within the power. The list was prepared by a former (at that time – current) State Duma deputy, a certain Kuryanovich. On the list are 100 people: politicians, journalists, human rights advocates… Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Nemtsov, Irina Hakamada, Yegor Gaidar, Anatoly Chubais, Sergey Kovalev, Svetlana Gannushkina… The journalists Latynina, Minkin, Radzikhovsky, Panyushkin. You can also find there the name of Oleg Kozlovsky, well-known to readers of our blog for his many publications here. The list includes people who have already been murdered (but who were still alive at the time the list appeared) – SD deputy Sergey Yushenkov, Anna Politkovskaya. It also includes the journalist Boris Stomakhin, who back then was still a free man, but is now sitting in a colony for supposed “extremist activity.” What I’m getting at here is that the list… works. Someone is slowly and quietly plucking people out of it and annihilating them.

This is not the first list, nor the only one. The first was published in the year 1990 and they had prepared it in the bowels of Russian National Unity (RNE) – a nationalist organization which was headed by the nationalist Barkashov, who remains alive and well to this day.And there are other lists too. The authors of such lists don’t hide themselves. One way or another, they’re connected with such organizations as the Union of Orthodox Gonfaloniers, the Slavic Script Foundation, the Black Hundred, Orthodox Rus’, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI)…From history it is known that persons become enemies of the people for various reasons. Even in Roman law there existed the term hostis publacae – public enemy. With this term they would designate enemies of the Roman empire – as a rule, the soldiers of armies fighting against the Romans.In the year 1789, the leaders of the French Revolution remembered about this term and came up with one of their own – l’ennemi du peuple – the enemy of the people. The Jacobins nurtured the seeds of hate not towards external enemies, but towards internal ones. Louis Antoine Saint-Just called for «punishing not only enemies, but also the indifferent». «Friend of the people» (according to the name of the newspaper issued by him) Jean Paul Marat called for the beheading of 100 thousand enemies of the people. Georges Jacques Danton and Maximilian Robespierre too did not stand on ceremony with opponents of the revolution.Those who sowed thunder reaped a storm: Saint-Just, Robespierre, and Danton were all beheaded on the guillotine (the last as an English spy). Marat was stabbed in the jacuzzi by Charlotte Corday. Revolutions have a habit of devouring their creators.The executioner Stalin, whom under Putin they started to call an «effective manager», recalled the terror of the French Revolution and put to death tens of millions of Russians. Into use came both old terms, already tested by time and the scaffold – like «enemy of the people» and «spy», and new ones: wreckers, plunderers, killer-doctors, saboteurs.Need we recall that later to the enemies of the people were added such executioners as Yezhov and Beria and many other enkavedeshniki [NKVD-niks—Trans.]?In new times, the first to publicly apply the term «enemy of the people» was former minister of defense Pavel Grachev, having called thus the human-rights advocate and SD deputy Sergey Kovalev, who protested against the senseless Chechen war.It should be said that in modern-day Russia, «spies» appeared under Yeltsin: the first were the scientists Vil Mirzoyanov and Lev Fedorov. Subsequently – former military man become ecologist Alexander Nikitin, who despite the laws of the repressive system was nevertheless acquitted.Then «spies» appeared in Vladivostok: Soifer, Shchurov, the author of these lines… Under Putin, the dam of spy-mania burst. Nowadays 15 scientists alone are sitting out wild terms in the camps of the undying GULAG.In the year 2004 after the tragedy in Beslan president Putin spoke about outside forces and their helpers, who «want to rip apart the country». Then, in the thick of the pre-election campaign of the year 2007, he will say the phrase about marginals [fringe elements—Trans.] from the number of the opposition, who «hang around like jackals at foreign embassies». Thus was delineated and expanded the circle of enemies of the people.(What is funny is that on one of the lists of enemies of the people I found the surname of Putin himself: for giving away the Russian islands near Khabarovsk to China).It is known that the leaders of the SPS and the Moscow Helsinki group had applied to the Procuracy-General and to the FSB with an official inquiry with respect to lists of enemies of the people. From there came replies: an element of crimes in the presence of such lists is not uncovered. And the fact that these lists, in essence, called for the lynching of the indicated persons is something the law-enforcers preferred not to notice.This was before they murdered Politkovskaya, Yushenkov, locked up Stomakhin, shaved Kozlovsky into the army, arrested Kasparov…The power had given a carte blanche to the persecution of those who think differently and to oppositioneers. And this carte blanche remains in effect to this day.The mass revival of Soviet phobias took place precisely under Putin. Now you can systematize enemies of the people in the way that the pro-Putin forces imagine them to be.1. opposition politicians: Kasparov, Kasyanov, Limonov, Ryzhkov, Mitrokhin…2. human rights advocates: Alexeyeva, Ponomarev, Kovalev, Samodurov, Cherny, Gannushkina…3. civic organizations that receive grants from abroad and are not integrated into the vertical of power a la Putin4. environmentalists and environmental organizations not integrated… (see above)5. scientist-spies: Reshetin, Babkin, Soifer, Sutyagin, Danilov…6. the lawyers of human-rights advocates and of YUKOS case figurants7. countries: the Baltic states, Poland, Georgia, Ukraine, the USA, Japan…8. the leaders of these countries, whom the Russian mass information media show as complete idiots, chewing on neckties (Saakashvili) or speaking exclusively senseless babble (Bush) or fascists (the leaders of the Baltic states)9. all political prisoners and everybody who supports them.If we consider that YUKOS case prisoner Svetlana Bakhmina was supported by over 70 000 people on the internet, then it’s not hard to assume that from the point of view of the state they are all – enemies of the people.Of course, 70 000 – that’s a drop in the bucket of 140 million indifferent persons. If my people is so indifferent, then I – am an enemy of such a people. If the people unquestioningly allows itself to be run by corruptioneers and villains, then I am an enemy of such a people. If the people stupidly and silently returns to the slavery of the KGB and single-mindedness, then I am an enemy of such a people.If the «gonfaloniers» and the «black hundreds» aren’t being pursued by either the procuracy or the FSBG, while the Ministry of Justice is not outlawing them and not shutting them down, that means the Putinite power needs them?Images of enemies are being cultivated. They think them up, concoct bad documentary-artistic films about them, like about the «British stone»… In the masses they cultivate hatred towards non-conformist thought, racism, religious intolerance, xenophobia… And all under the pretext of patriotism and the eternal living Soviet postulate about how «the majority is always right».How can we not recall here the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. One of the heroes of his play said thus:

“The majority never has right on its side… That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent man must wage war… Stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over… The majority has might on its side – unfortunately, but right it has not. The minority is always in the right”.

The name of Ibsen’s play? “An Enemy of the People.” (Citation from Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” translated by Farquharson Sharp, taken from the Project Gutenberg website)Image: Soviet-era poster of Felix Dzerzhinsky, with the secret police founder’s catchphrase: “Be watchful and vigilant.” The times they aren’t a changin’…