The Pskov Newsfeed, 20.02.2024

Photo: Lev Shlosberg / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The epidemic of denunciation shows that the state manipulates society, inciting hatred towards dissidents, and those people who use denunciation understand that this is how they can realise themselves, become successful, build a career and get a positive assessment. Everyone strives for a positive assessment, including that from the state. Millions of certificates of honour, gratitude, and letters of gratitude did not grow out of nowhere.

When the state makes it clear that there are strangers, there are “enemies of the people” who threaten social stability, state success, and the happiness of the people, in every country there emerges a community professionally engaged in writing denunciations. In Russia there is such an “Anna Korobkova”, who has already written hundreds of denunciations. She has been even interviewed, but it is unclear who she really is.

The state is taking a huge risks by letting this genie out of the bottle. It creates incentives for false self-realisation. Positive self-realisation of a person is when he/she realises his/her abilities, talents, opportunities, ideas and proposals, when a person’s talents are brought to light. Self-realisation through denunciation, when a person achieves a goal by destroying another person or causing him misfortune, is destructive self-realisation.

The fact that there is a growing tide of loyal denunciations in our country now means virtually corrupting people, creating unnatural incentives for human intentions. This is very dangerous, but, apparently, the authorities do not think about it, they are delighted to see the flow of these denunciations, they believe that the law enforcement cannot cope, but vigilant citizens will notice everything and report it. This is a terrible swirl that draws in increasingly more people, and according to the law of all the swirls, it gradually begins to affect those who raised this moloch and put it into motion.

Only the state can stop this wave, because it is the state who ordered denunciations. This requires political effort. But now I don’t see a politician in power who would show this will, the country is rushing in the other direction.

Stirring up this wave involved little political effort. In order for the water to flow along some channel, it is enough to lift the sluice, and the water will flow out on its own. But in order to stop this flow, titanic efforts are needed. I would compare it to a mudslide, when the elements fly along the slopes of a mountain, without making out where people are, where houses are, where cars are.

The system of denunciation will develop in a society where meanness, blows from around the corner, and lies are welcomed, because the vast majority of denunciations contain lies. People understand that the state will react to this socially expected lie, and then one should try to prove that one is not a “foreign agent.” I say this with full knowledge, because I know how my case developed, who wrote the denunciations and how it was all organised.

But this flow is like a boomerang. Therefore, all that decent people need to do now is look around, try not to enter into personal relationships with people who look, behave and smell like informers. Most likely, they are informers. But in the electronic age, no one has protection.

Let me give you one example. Until 2013, Russian law enforcement did not have the right to consider anonymous requests or those where the person who signed the document could not be reliably identified. And then it was decided to work with anonymous requests. This was a key moment for the birth of the wave of denunciations welcomed by the state. Society was made to understand that one can write anything, against anyone, and not bear any responsibility for it. At that time, few people imagined the scale this could reach. Now we see the scale, and it shows the abyss into which society is falling. When people do immoral things, they destroy themselves. If there are many such people, it affects social morals.

I am not sure that this downward movement is close to completion, I have no reason to say so yet. We have to survive this.

Source: the Pskov Newsfeed