Once a year, on the eve of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Reprisals, people [in Russia] come to the Solovetsky Stone [monument representing a stone brought from one of the GULAG labour camps] in Lubyanka Square [the office of the Federal Security Service, former NKVD-KGB]  to remember the millions of people who perished in the years of the Bolshevik political terror, so that to return their names [reading out loud the names of the victims of the Stalin’s political regime]. It is very important. Because all this can happen again. And it is recurring.

In April 2015, Professor Yevgeny Vasiliyevich Afanasyev died in the penal colony of the city of Dimitrovgrad. Russian physicist, doctor of technical sciences was 62 years old. In the colony, Professor Afanasyev was serving a term on charges of treason. In 2012, the court sentenced him together with Svyatoslav Bobyshev, his colleague from the St. Petersburg Baltic Technological University, to 12 years of a strict regime for allegedly transferring secret information about the Bulava missile system to the Chinese. Seventy Russian scientists spoke out in defense of Afanasyev and Bobyshev. There is no doubt that dozens of Russian scientists understand what they are talking about, and they know what state secrets and national interests are, better than many officials in uniform or without, but the authorities cynically ignored their opinion. Three years later, Professor Afanasyev died of a heart attack, but did not admit his guilt. 65-year-old professor Svyatoslav Bobyshev is still serving the term in the penal colony. 

According to official data and the report of the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, in 2016-2017, 23 people were convicted of treason and espionage. Most of these cases were heard in closed court. And according to human rights activists, recently information about those accused of treason has not even been included in the database of courts. There have been no acquittals on these cases. 

In the summer of 2018, there came news on detentions of several people on charges of treason:

Viktor Prozorov, 70 years old. There is no information about the identity of the arrested. In fact, there is a note «top secret» on the file. He is detained in the Lefortovo detention centre [in Moscow]. 

Andrei Zhukov, 39, captain of the reserve of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, fan of hystory, participant of the Internet forum on the history of the Russian army. He is detained in the Lefortovo detention centre. 

Antonina Zimina, Director of the Baltic Centre for the Dialogue of Cultures in Kaliningrad. She is detained in the Lefortovo detention centre. 

Alexei Timirev, 64, professor at the South Russian Polytechnic University in Novocherkassk. He is detained in the Lefortovo detention centre. 

Victor Kudryavtsev, 74, physicist and employee of the Central Research Institute of Machinery. He is detained in the Lefortovo detention centre. 

Past week hot water (in Moscow in the 21st century!) was piped to a few freshly renovated cells in Lefortovo. The number of lucky prisoners transferred to the «luxury» cells, and 74-year-old scientist Viktor Kudryavtsev got into the number of these lucky. At the same time, for over a month already Viktor Kudryavtsev can not get warm clothes which he could wear during his walks in the prison yard, and the consultation of a nephrologist, which has been appointed over a month ago, has not yet been allowed. There is  another scientist, 70-year-old Viktor Prozorov, held in Lefortovo who answers the question about his health, “Still alive”. 

Rare news about the condition of health of scientists suspected of espionage reaches us only thanks to the Public Monitoring Commission. The media virtually do not publicise this news, a few references sink somewhere in the deep waters of two or three news agencies. Also there is little known about the cases. From time to time scraps of information of what the accused in treason are charged with get into press through the lawyers of the detainees. The charges base, as a rule, on the contacts the detainees with Western scientists. All the detainees are in the Lefortovo detention facility supervised by the Federal Security Service (FSB). They are mandatory and routinely brought here [to this detention facility] from all over Russia – from St.Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Novocherkassk. Certainly, local authorities will receive thanks [for finding “spies”], but career encouragement in Moscow is several times higher: each new sentence means a new star on shoulder straps and new financial opportunities. It is simply impossible to believe in the validity of these cases. There is no longer has any confidence in the investigating authorities, courts, special services and everything that comes from the Russian authorities (see the article “Memoirs of the Future» of July 2018 https://www.yavlinsky.ru/https://www.yavlinsky.ru/news/rossia/scientists about the recurrence of the Bolshevik reprisals and persecution of scientists of the 1930s) against the background of total state lies (lies about the wars in Ukraine and Syria, about various PMC groups in Libya and the Central African Republic, about the tricks of the Russia’s military intelligence agency – GRU – in different countries, the situation in the economy, the alleged guilt of [Ukrainian film producer] Oleg Sentsov [imprisoned in Russia for 20 years] and [imprisoned heads of the Chechen and the Karelian branches of the Memorial human rights society] Oyub Titiyev and Yuri Dmitriev and the defendants in the case The New Greatness [when young people were imprisoned for simply discussing politics]) acquiring new forms every day. 

The attention of press to these cases is, as a rule, exclusively situational – from one court hearing to another court hearing. The court extended the period of detention – it is reported. The court refused to change the measure of restraint – they wrote about it. But weeks and months pass between the trials. And people of old age with aggravated diseases threatening their lives are kept in a remand prison. These people have no high-ranking patrons, no millions of roubles, no thousands of admirers and no spectacular international resonance, and their families and friends do not have the strength and ability to conduct public campaigns in their defence. As a result, these people are quietly dying away behind bars. 

According to human rights activists, about a hundred people have been condemned for treason and espionage in Russia over the past twenty years. 278 people were sentenced for disclosing state secrets. Only one acquittal was made on these cases for twenty years. 

Tomorrow any of us may find himself in the place of these people. The totalitarian repressive machine works like this: rooting fear and hate in people. Anyone can be made an executioner and anyone can be a victim in this system. We need to remember this and resist – write, talk and demand.