In June 2016, 37-year-old Vladimir Luzgin was found guilty in court of “rehabilitating Nazism” and fined 200,000 roubles (approx. $2500 US at the time).
He had shared an article on-line that was based on the August 23, 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (MRP), in which the Soviet Union had agreed as an ally with Nazi-Germany to invade Poland and others later.
The court declared that Luzgin had ‘knowingly shared false information’, a finding upheld by the Russian Supreme Court. The decision followed a law passed by the Russian Parliament in 2014 which criminalized anything that ‘desecrates Russian military glory’.
By 2018, 6,662 cases had been prosecuted under a statute prohibiting the propagation of Nazi symbols both in public and in private. This would include the sharing of historic photos and war time cartoons. Documents related to Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera was also a part of a registry of extremist material, a federal listing of all banned material.
(Pikemalt saab lugeda Eesti Elu 19. augusti 2022 paber- ja PDF/digilehest)
