{"id":932465,"date":"2026-05-02T07:49:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T07:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/932465\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T07:49:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T07:49:34","slug":"putin-identifies-with-the-founder-of-the-cheka-in-some-ways-his-regime-is-more-brutal-russian-historian-said-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/932465\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin identifies with the founder of the Cheka. In some ways, his regime is more brutal, Russian historian said \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

From sentencing a citizen to 13 years for a bus stop graffiti and erasing court records to rehabilitating the architect of the \u2018Red Terror,\u2019 Felix Dzerzhinsky, Russia is rapidly backsliding into its most brutal Soviet-era habits.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the surface, these are two unrelated events. Both, however, showed this month how political repression in Russia is escalating and how Putin\u2019s regime is increasingly using the harshest practices of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

The regime erases its own repression<\/p>\n

First, the independent Russian website Viorstka noticed all judicial statistics for the past two decades had disappeared from the website of the Russian Supreme Court. The court was obliged to publish new data by 20 April for the second half of 2025. It did not do so, and all existing records vanished from the section as well.<\/p>\n

Reporters noticed that they had been replaced by a message<\/a> about \u201ctemporary unavailability\u201d.<\/p>\n

The statistics were one of the last remaining tools that made it possible to map the scale of the Russian state\u2019s repressions against its own citizens. <\/p>\n

This finding is all the more serious because, since Russian president Vladimir Putin launched his all-out war against Ukraine in February 2022, political and personal freedoms in Russia have narrowed significantly and the number of arrests for offences such as treason, spreading \u201cfake news\u201d about the army, \u201cdiscrediting\u201d the army or sabotage has sharply increased.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the most absurd cases is the story of Sergei Veselov<\/a>. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison for writing the approximate number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine on the wall of a bus-stop shelter.<\/p>\n

The court sentencing him described this as an act of vandalism motivated by political hatred, the spreading of \u201cfake news\u201d about the army, and evidence of his alleged participation in a unit of Russian citizens fighting on Ukraine\u2019s side.<\/p>\n

Another example shows the enormous effort to silence critics and inconvenient facts about the country\u2019s decline. Sociologist Salavat Abyzalikov was fined 5,000 roubles (\u20ac55) for giving an interview<\/a> about Russia\u2019s demographic crisis. He himself lives abroad and has no plans to return to Russia.<\/p>\n

Reporters from Meduza spoke with him about how, by 2100, Russia\u2019s population could fall to 90 million people, and under a pessimistic scenario to only 57 million. The Russian Federation currently has roughly 146 million inhabitants.<\/p>\n

Particularly bizarre is the case of activist Pavel Andreyev<\/a> from Syktyvkar. He faces criminal prosecution because investigators confused him with a namesake from Ulyanovsk. They do not want to admit their mistake, and so the case continues.<\/p>\n

The end of a window into Russian justice<\/p>\n

These are far from isolated cases. According to the Russian human rights organisation OVD-Info<\/a>, from the start of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine until the end of September 2025, 692 people were criminally prosecuted on fabricated charges of \u201cspreading false information\u201d or \u201cdiscrediting\u201d the army.<\/p>\n

Last year, the number of political prisoners rose to 1,217, compared with 805 at the end of 2024. As Human Rights Watch pointed out<\/a>, these are only documented cases. <\/p>\n

With the disappearance of judicial statistics, it is harder to determine the real figure.<\/p>\n

The data that the Supreme Court deleted included the number of people convicted, their demographic breakdown, the sentences imposed under individual articles of the criminal code, and information on civil and administrative proceedings. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese statistics were a key window into the reality of the Russian judiciary. They made it possible to compile a ranking of the most frequently used articles, track year-on-year trends and assess how courts in Russia actually operate,\u201d respected Russian political scientist Yekaterina Shulman explained to the investigative website The Insider<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In addition, as the human rights project First Department discovered, president Putin approved a decree<\/a> allowing Russian security bodies to arrest people for criticising the war without a court decision. <\/p>\n

\u201cOn the basis of Putin\u2019s decision, people considered \u2018opponents\u2019 of the war may be \u2018transported and placed\u2019 in facilities functioning as detention centres,\u201d Meduza wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rehabilitating Iron Felix<\/p>\n

Putin showed where he was looking for inspiration with another decision. He granted the FSB Academy, the training institution of the Russian secret service, an honorary name after Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the first Soviet secret police, and the organiser of the so\u2011called \u201cRed Terror\u201d after the 1917 revolution.<\/p>\n

\"\"Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the first Soviet secret police, and the organiser of the so\u2011called \u201cRed Terror\u201d after the 1917 revolution (Source: Wikimedia<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The roots of the academy go back to 1921, when Dzerzhinsky\u2019s secret police set up a special institute for the operational training of its agents, gradually changing its name in line with the reorganisation of Soviet security services.<\/p>\n

The Institute for the Study of War described the renaming after Dzerzhinsky<\/a> as a symbolic return by the Kremlin to the practices of the Stalin era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From sentencing a citizen to 13 years for a bus stop graffiti and erasing court records to rehabilitating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[217083,260780,218481,223473,223471,218479,260778,332,223472,218480,260779],"class_list":{"0":"post-932465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-typedefinedterm","9":"tag-identifier4090","10":"tag-identifier4308","11":"tag-identifier4417","12":"tag-namegeopolitics","13":"tag-namerussia","14":"tag-namesecurity","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-termcodegeopolitics","17":"tag-termcoderussia","18":"tag-termcodesecurity"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116503889086058744","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}