Expropriations: Russia reverting to Stalinism?
Artists, media professionals and others who are critical of the government are finding life increasingly difficult in Russia: the State Duma has passed a law allowing property to be expropriated in cases where the owner "defames the army" or commits other "subversive" acts, on top of the prison sentences and fines that were already applied as punishment. Commentators see an apparatus of repression similar to that under Stalin developing in Russia.
Getting the people used to judicial terror
In a Facebook post, journalist Sergei Aslanyan fears that the repression will intensify:
“Not so long ago the idea of being sentenced to prison for reposting posts on [Russian social media platform] VKontakte seemed absurd. Now it's normal judicial practice. Arresting a director [Yevgenia Berkovich] for a play she staged four years ago is absurd. But the investigators see a current justification for terrorism. ... The conditioning of the population continues. When 1937 returns, we are meant to have the right understanding of the justice of the judgement - so that we see it as the norm, the truth and a legitimate punishment. So that we regard shootings as something normal.”
Non-conformists mercilessly persecuted
Gazeta Wyborcza sees clear parallels with Stalinism:
“Putin's cultural revolution is gaining momentum. Unruly artists are now criminals. ... This draconian law, as if taken from the Stalinist law books, is also to be accompanied by 'protective provisions'. For example, a flat in Russia may only be sold or gifted to another person in the presence of the owner. An opposition activist who has fled abroad to escape persecution would therefore have to appear before a Moscow notary to sell his flat, and risk being arrested.”
Confiscating people's way of thinking
Intellectual property is also expropriated in a Stalinist system of repression, explains The Insider:
“When we say today that 'the state is taking a Soviet-style approach', we are thinking mainly of universal harshness and violence. We forget that 'Soviet-style' is also based on a particular attitude towards the concept of property, a key concept of Marxism–Leninism. Nothing is privately owned - all property belongs to the people (and in fact, of course, to the state). This economic dogma is automatically expressed in the attitude towards the individual: the totalitarian state also owns bodies, souls and ideas. ... The state treats artists like things - and does what it wants with them.”