Soviet and Non-Soviet: The scale of repression in Russia at the beginning of 2024 has decreased slightly, but the regime’s level of repressiveness remains high

Repression and repressiveness

OVD-Info's summary of ‘anti-war repression’ for January-May of this year confirms that the intensity of repression in Russia has somewhat decreased since the second half of last year (→ Re:Russia: From War to Prison). At the same time, there is almost no evidence of a continuation of this trend, i.e. a decrease in the scale of repression compared to the end of 2023. Moreover, a decrease in the intensity of repression in late 2023 and early 2024 compared to the previous period does not indicate a decrease in the regime’s level of repressiveness. 

The intensity of repression is a measure that quantifies the immediate scale (number) of repression, whereas the level of repressiveness reflects citizens' expectations regarding the likelihood and severity of punishment in case of disloyalty and crossing ‘red lines’. The very nature of these ‘red lines’ - the forms of disloyalty that the regime deems necessary to prosecute — also matters. They can shift in one direction or another, which also affects the level of repressiveness.

For example, in the 1970s and early 1980s, political persecution in the USSR was almost ‘piecemeal’. According to official data, about 90 people a year were convicted under political Articles 70 and 190 of the Criminal Code of the USSR from 1975 to 1985 (Reference No. 5/5-167 of the 5th Department of the KGB of the USSR dated 4 March 1988). However, the regime remained fully dictatorial in terms of the inevitability of punishment for crossing ‘red lines’. In addition, there were up to 200 ‘preventive’ measures per convict, who were interviewed by the KGB and subjected to various forms of ‘preventive’ pressure (dismissal from work, etc.), according to Alexander Cherkasov, Chairman of the board of the Memorial Human Rights Centre (which has been liquidated by the Russian authorities). On average, about 19,000 people a year were subjected to preventive measures, according to the annual notes of the KGB chairman to the Politburo (→ Power and Dissidents. From documents of the KGB and the CPSU Central Committee). At the same time, the ‘red lines’ of the late Soviet era had themselves receded somewhat: unlike during the Stalinist dictatorship, public disloyalty or ‘dissemination’ of undesirable views and information were punished, but people were not imprisoned for ‘jokes’, i.e. disloyalty in private circles was not penalised.

Detentions and administrative prosecutions

Several trends can be identified in the dynamics of repression from January to May 2024. The number of detentions for publicly expressing anti-war views has become very insignificant in 2024, with only 41 cases, according to OVD-Info. In 2022, about 20,000 people were detained (19,682), while in 2023 there were just 381. This indicates that, due to high risks, citizens have practically stopped resorting to forms of protest such as collective actions, individual pickets, and so on.

As analysis by OVD-Info and Mediazona shows, 96 people were criminally prosecuted for participating in mass protests and single pickets in 2019 (protests related to the Moscow City Duma elections), 69 in 2020, 184 in 2021 (mass actions in support of Navalny), and 91 in 2022. In 2023, there was a sharp decline in both protests and prosecutions (34 criminal cases).

The rare cases of detention in 2024 are usually associated not with targeted protests, but with semi-public displays of disloyalty to the war (e.g., conversations in the courtyard of an apartment building, saying the phrase ‘no to war’ near Red Square, etc.). In other words, citizens have internalised the new norm imposed by repression and the ban on purposeful public actions of dissent (protests), but the ‘red lines’ have shifted, and a loud conversation overheard by neighbours can become a reason for detention.

The dynamics of administrative cases opened under Article 20.3.3 (‘discrediting the army’) has seen a similar downward trend, but much less pronounced. In 2022 there were 5600 cases, in 2023 there were about 3000, and in the first five months of 2024 just 917. Thus, the intensity of using this form of prosecution in 2022 (March-December) was 18 cases per day, in 2023 eight cases per day and in the first five months of 2024 it was six cases per day. 

Administrative prosecution is practised for both semi-public and private statements against the war or in support of Ukraine, as well as for various ways of expressing such opinions on social media. The decrease in the number of cases in 2023 is due to a reduction in the number of public statements (demonstrations, pickets), while prosecutions for statements on social networks are, on the contrary, quite systematic. Moreover, the practice of such cases also indicates a shift in the ‘red lines’: one can receive an administrative case even for a like, and the reason for it is often posts or reactions from 2022-2023. This last circumstance indicates that law enforcement probably has normative indicators for drawing such cases.

Criminal prosecutions

Finally, the number of individuals involved in criminal cases for holding anti-war views, identified by OVD-Info since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, reached 935 by June 2024. In 2022, 495 verdicts were issued in such cases (a little more than half of the total), in 2023 the number was 365, and from January to May 2024 this figure was 75. If we normalise these statistics, we could say that, in 2022, there were 1.6 sentences per day, in 2023 there was one, and in early 2024 this had fallen to 0.5. However, the data for recent months is almost certainly incomplete and the number of sentences will increase as the statistics are updated, and the difference with the intensity of sentencing in 2023 will narrow. Of the 2024 sentences, 31 involved imprisonment and a further eight involved imprisonment in absentia (for those who have left the country). Thus, the proportion remains the same as in 2023, as slightly more than half of the verdicts involve imprisonment.

However, these statistics only cover anti-war prosecutions and convictions; the statistics on politically motivated prosecution (for more information on what cases are considered as such, see here), reflected in the OVD-Info database, are much broader. In 2022, 775 criminal prosecutions were recorded, in 2023 there were 624, and in the first five months of 2024 just 263. Normalising these figures for comparison, one might say that, in 2022, there were 2.1 politically motivated cases per day, in 2023 there were 1.7, and at the beginning of 2024, 1.75 (and this figure will also increase further as the statistics are updated). For comparison, in the three years preceding the war, the average number of politically motivated cases per day was 1.2.

Normalised intensity of politically motivated repression, 2016-2024, number of criminal cases per day

It should be noted that the so-called Baymak case—mass prosecutions of protest participants in Bashkortostan—significantly influenced the repressive statistics at the beginning of 2024. The OVD-Info database lists 78 individuals involved in this case of ‘mass riots’, which accounts for almost 30% of all political cases in early 2024. The second most widespread case in January-May 2024 was the ‘terrorist’ Article 205, involving 53 defendants. Of these, 36 are being prosecuted under Article 205.2, for the ‘justification of terrorism’ (for more on the peculiarities of prosecutions under terrorist articles in today's Russia, see → Re: Russia: The fictitious anti-terror industry). Another 60 people are being prosecuted under extremist articles 280 and 282.

Soviet and non-Soviet: profiles of repressiveness

Thus, verdicts in politically motivated cases were issued at least twice as often in early 2024, and on average five times more frequently in 2022-2023, compared to the late Soviet period (there were 0.25 verdicts per day in 1975-1985). The total number of repressions (administrative and criminal cases) per year was about 7,000 in 2022, 3500 in 2023, and is estimated to be around 3000 in 2024 (1,200 cases in five months). This is significantly less than the coverage of preventive measures of the late Soviet era (about 19,000 people).

At the same time, the practice of initiating criminal cases today is much broader than in the late Soviet era, and the ‘red lines’ more extensively encompass the private sphere. Both administrative and criminal cases are initiated based on anti-war statements made in private conversations. For example, the case of paediatrician Nadezhda Buynova, a 68-year-old woman being tried for allegedly making disrespectful comments about a patient's father who died in the war, has gained wide resonance in recent months.

Generally speaking, the peculiar symbolic mobilisation of the current repressive regime should also be noted. For example, the OVD-Info database includes a criminal case for spitting on the Russian flag. The statistics for criminal prosecutions for the first months of 2024 show 17 cases brought under Article 354.1 (‘rehabilitation of Nazism’); the reason for initiating such a case could include ‘lighting a cigarette from the eternal flame’, ‘desecration’ of the ‘St George's ribbon’ or burning an image of the letter ‘Z’. Such criminal cases were hardly possible in the late Soviet period.

However, it should be noted that not all criminal cases go to court, and of those that do (apparently, about 60-65%), only about half of the verdicts involve imprisonment. Thus, the practice of initiating criminal cases is aimed at ‘prevention’ through intimidation and resonating character of repression. The regime does not seek to fill prisons with prisoners, but rather to accustom the population to new norms of behavioural loyalty.

Finally, an important trend in 2023 and the first months of 2024 was the return to the late Soviet practices of punitive medicine. According to calculations by the publication ‘Agency’, between 2013 and 2022 there were 55 cases of politically motivated cases of individuals being sent to psychiatric hospitals. In 2023, 25 such cases were recorded, and by the end of May 2024 there was information about eight more decisions of this nature. As in Soviet times, this practice has a dual purpose: both intimidation and the de-heroisation of opposition behaviour.

At the same time, unlike the late Soviet repressive regime, the current one is characterised by a high level of unregulated violence by the police and FSIN officers. A review by OVD-Info mentions 13 reports of torture and beatings of persecuted individuals, and of the approximately 80 detainees in the ‘Baymak’ case, two people died shortly after detention, and another fell into a coma.

In the late USSR, citizens dealt with an established repressive regime, its routine practices, and relatively well-established rules. The regime appeared stable and, while maintaining a certain (planned) level of repression, did not seek to popularise it, quite the opposite. The current repressiveness, on the contrary, is still in its infancy. It is designed to get citizens accustomed to the new norms of behaviour, so it is largely aimed at having a demonstrative effect. This effect is achieved both through demonstrative cruelty (long sentences, physical violence) and through the disproportion of the prosecutions and their reasons. To a significant extent, Putin's repressive measures are reactive, indicating that the regime faces new challenges and feels insufficiently secure.