Reprisals like in Stalin’s period, in 1937, were unleashed against civil society by Vladimir Gundyayev, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church

Blog post by Sergei Mitrokhin, 14.11.2016

Today at 6 a.m., riot police under the supervision of the Federal Security Service broke into the apartments of civil activists defending Torfyanka Park [located in North-East of Moscow and virtually expropriated by the Russian Orthodox Church despite loud protests by local residents] and arrested ten families. Those who refused to open the doors found their doors broken. [In violation of the law] the police gave no explanations, orders, etc.

The police came without a call to the Fyodorovs family, leaders of the initiative group defending the park, and cut down their door lock with a grinder. Then the riot police with dogs followed by correspondents from the [pro-government] NTV channel broke in. “Shut up! Lie on the floor faces down!” During the search the police planted some flash-card in the apartment. The police arrested and took to the police station the whole family together with their 17 years-old daughter Daria.

However, parallels with Stalin’s reprisals of 1937 did not end there. THEY ARRESTED AND TOOK TO POLICE WHOLE FAMILIES, INCLUDING CHILREN. They took them away without explaining where.

Marina Verigina, Natalia Fyodorova, Evgeny Lebedev, Vladimir Brechaninov were also among the arrested, as well as ten more people. The arrests go on.

The names of these ten people are still unknown. According to some information, the police arrested and took away along with Marina Verigina and her husband, her nephew, aged 16, who had had no relation to Torfyanka Park. The police also confiscated all their computers.

Only one of the detained managed to call his relatives and tell them that investigators were going to accuse him under Article 148 of the Criminal Code “Insulting the feelings of religious believers”. [This article was introduced into the Criminal Code in response to the Pussy Riot girls band dance in a church].

Whoever could have predict even in a nightmare that another 1937 [the year Stalin’s purges and reprisals were unleashed] would come to us in a cassock and with a cross?

Three weeks ago, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church accused the defenders of the park [which the church intended to take out of public lands under construction of another church building] of sectarianism and the “neo-paganism”. Today the NTV channel reporting on the arrests repeated this rubbish with a triumphant malicious joy.