The world is turning to conservatism. In the US, Europe and even Asia, conservatives are winning victory after victory. Russia was no exception, where conservatism at the state level finally took shape several years ago.

The world is turning to conservatism. In the US, Europe and even Asia, conservatives are winning victory after victory. Russia was no exception, where conservatism at the state level finally took shape several years ago. At the same time, conservative processes are not at all spontaneous: behind them there are very specific factors, among which scientific and technological progress is not the least important. Gazeta Nedeli spoke more about this with Kirill Martynov, editor of the politics department of Novaya Gazeta, associate professor of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Higher School of Economics.

Kirill, you are of the opinion that the world is turning towards conservatism. What do you understand by conservatism and how does this turn manifest itself?

By conservatism in the broad sense of the word I mean a type of politics that asserts that there was a certain exemplary period in the past to which it would now be good to return. Right now, political figures are becoming increasingly popular in the world who say that once in our great past there was a moment, a return to which will save us all from a frightening present and an even more frightening future. There are plenty of examples of this.

First of all, this is the election of Donald Trump, known for his conservative rhetoric. Next, the decision to withdraw Great Britain from the European Union. His supporters, among others, played the card of returning “good old England.” This year we will have elections in France and Germany. In France, thanks to the efforts of the current president, Francois Hollande, the socialists finally lost popularity. And although the radical right National Front party, led by Marine Le Pen, is unlikely to win, political competition in these elections will still unfold on the conservative flank: between moderate and radical conservatives. In Germany, amid terrorist attacks and migrant scandals, the popularity of the Alternative for Germany party is growing. This is such a typically anti-migrant project: they say, let's close the borders and return to Germany of the 20th century, isolated from the world and ethnically homogeneous. While the party’s popularity is relatively low, they can already become a stable minority in parliament, which in itself is significant. There are also a number of conservative processes taking place in Asia and Latin America. The rise to power in India of Narendra Modi with his specific Hindu nationalism fits well into this.

- Perhaps we are talking not so much about conservatives taking over the world, but about populists?

These concepts often overlap. The idea of ​​returning to the “great happy past” fits perfectly into the concept of populism. After all, populism is precisely the willingness to say what people want to hear, without being able to fulfill these promises. The slogan “Let's go back to the industrial America of 1955, bring back the American dream and make our country great again” is, of course, what a significant part of Americans now wants to hear. However, in practice, it is apparently simply impossible to implement this slogan.

- What is the reason for the world turn to conservatism?

Logically, there are three possible answers here. First: the Conservatives are indeed right, and voters feel it. Second: the conservative electorate is uneducated people, fools, rednecks (residents of rural areas of the United States, an analogue of the Russian word “hillbilly.” - Note ed.) and so on, who do not understand anything. And three: conservatism is a simplistic answer to a set of deep problems facing the world for which we do not yet have solutions. That’s why conservatives come to the fore because they were the first to find an answer: “We need to go back to the past and hide from problems there.” Personally, I prefer the last option. I don’t trust conservatives, but I don’t think people are fools either.

- What are the deep problems that society faces?

I think there are three interrelated reasons why Western-style political systems are in crisis. First: significant changes in the global economy. In a nutshell, the end of the industrial world is coming. We in Russia are very familiar with the concept of deindustrialization: in the 90s, factories were closed, many Russians were left without work, and it was difficult both for individuals and for entire cities and regions. The whole world is experiencing similar processes today.

Trump voters are largely citizens who have lost their jobs. There are depressed regions in the United States where people receive food cards from the government. Trump says we need to return industrial production to the United States and thereby return to the American way of life of the middle of the last century. But now, even in China, people in factories, under the influence of natural market laws - expanding domestic demand and increasing labor productivity - began to receive too much. Therefore, sites for cheaper production are being sought in South Asia. Yes, Apple is indeed discussing the possibility of moving assembly lines to the United States - and it would seem that this is Trump's dream come true. But there is one problem: this will be an automated process with minimal human intervention. Such a factory will not be able to create many jobs. In the current conditions, everything is heading exactly towards this: it doesn’t matter where your production is located, but what matters is what technologies you use. So the revival of production will still not allow us to solve social problems.

- And over time, production automation will continue to increase...

And in the future, this could deal a serious blow not only to ordinary workers, but also to the middle class. Another symptom of economic problems: a giant leap in wealth inequality around the world. The famous Gini coefficient (a statistical indicator of the degree of stratification of society. - Note ed.) is now growing everywhere, including Europe, the USA and Russia. And people don’t like it for good reason.

The second reason for the global crisis: the modern economy imposes stringent demands on the labor market. In fact, these are the same requirements that we place on services and capital: a person must be extremely flexible, infinitely mobile and not subject to nostalgic desires to live in one place. But people themselves are not too ready to live in such a world. A situation arises when, on the one hand, a person needs to look for a job where they will pay him more, but on the other hand, he does not want to do this. However, more mobile people had already come to his city in search of a better life, and they found this life.

For example, now in Moscow there are huge numbers of immigrants from Kyrgyzstan working in cafes. Workers from Central Asia are gradually beginning to apply for better-paid jobs in the service sector - not everyone is already working as illegal immigrants on construction sites. It becomes difficult for people to live in such a multicultural and highly competitive society, they do not have enough skills to do so. If the United States was created as a country of migrants, then, for example, in Europe there were completely different conditions: for centuries, stable ethnic groups professing the same faith lived there in each specific territory.

- And the third reason?

It is connected with the development of the Internet. In recent years, everyone has come online, not just the educated part of society. And then it turned out that on such an Internet, the majority of the inhabitants are exactly the same conservative as in the real world. The logic “fashionable kids hang out online, while the rest of us watch TV” no longer works. It became clear that the Internet is perfect not only for liberal, but also for conservative mobilization. This was shown by Trump, who conducted his election campaign on social networks, although ten years ago his electorate was almost non-existent on the Internet.

Previously, there was an illusion that as soon as you connected the Internet somewhere, liberal freedoms would immediately begin to flourish: Obama-style democracy, the legalization of gay marriage, tolerance and free-thinking. As it turns out, this is not the case. Moreover, we find ourselves in a world where a huge portion of the media sphere is controlled by just a few private companies. And, for example, the rules of Facebook, the largest media with an audience of more than a billion users, and the desires of its owners can influence the entire media situation. Well, the Internet, due to its horizontal structure, has turned out to be a very toxic environment where trolls, “white noise” and generally any nonsense can flourish. In such conditions, the old institution of expert knowledge, the old democracy of mass newspapers and television are destroyed.

- What’s wrong with the institution of expert knowledge? Is anyone disputing it?

An expert in the 20th century is a person who, say, a prestigious radio station gave time on the air, he came to the editorial office and said something smart. And you, the radio listener, listen to him. But with the advent of the Internet, anyone has the opportunity to become an expert. Now everyone can write notes about politics on a blog, they will even invite you on TV later. And many have already made a career out of it. For example, I have an acquaintance who wrote on Twitter for a long time, then went to the Public Chamber and is now broadcasting something on TV about our national interests. Moreover, he does not even have a higher education.

But the main thing is that now we know for sure that the experts are wrong. Today we can easily find on the Internet what an expert said before Trump was elected president and see that he was most likely wrong. This is a crisis of expertocracy. Previously, experts explained to you how everything works, but now you see at close range on the Internet that they are just some talkers. Now you have your own experts on Facebook who have their own point of view on everything.

- Has such a global turn to conservatism ever happened in the world? And how did it end?

An analogy with the events of the mid-19th century comes to mind. At that time, developed industrial capitalism already reigned in certain parts of the world, but alongside it, old feudal empires existed in parallel. The world was changing, but in some places people responded to these new challenges with attempts to restore the monarchy, support the class regime, and clung to religion as a sign of political stability. However, in the end, all these structures that relied on conservation died. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but it seems to me that now the scale of the problem is no less: the economic changes that are leading to social changes are so serious that it still won’t be possible to cover them up with a conservative agenda. This will only delay facing the problems in full.

- We talked about America, Europe and even India. Is there a conservative turn in Russia?

Russia's conservative turn has already occurred, and it has been accomplished in less than 10 years. In 2007, its first lines were outlined, and in 2013-2014 it expanded to its full potential. In Russia, the path to conservatism was especially rapid and difficult.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Vladimir Putin, with his good German, made a splash in the Bundestag when he talked about how close democracy was to him and what a modern country Russia had become. In the West, he developed the image of a brilliant young democratic president. But then at some point we found ourselves in a situation of developed authoritarianism - this is such an ironic allusion to the term “developed socialism.”

In order to explain to the people the reasons why a narrow group of friends, classmates and old acquaintances remained in power for almost two decades, the use of ideological models was required. They became rhetoric about the collapse of the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” and about restoring our “wounded pride” on the foreign policy scene. By the way, I believe that such a problem as “post-imperial trauma” is quite real.

In parallel, the theme of “traditional values” developed, explaining the differences between “us” and “them.” Why has one group of people been in power in Russia for a long time? Yes, because everything here is completely different from that in this despicable Europe. We have order. And the people who guard it also protect our values. By the way, it seems to me that the Russian example clearly shows the lie of this conservative rhetoric about traditional values. Because we consider the Netherlands to be the source of evil, where soft drugs, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia are legalized. But if we look at the number of divorces in Russia and the Netherlands, we will see that in the Netherlands there are significantly fewer of them. And there are no orphans there whom no one wants to take from orphanages.

"This is the best thing that has happened to the country in recent years: people who decided to openly fight for their children, rather than curry favor with investigators. It seemed that this was the beginning of a long struggle, appeal courts and thousands of hours of human time. Yesterday" Moscow case" fell apart .

I wrote a petition that was signed by more than 150 thousand people. It said that there were no riots in Moscow, and criminal cases are political terror. Now Bastrykin’s department has actually signed a petition addressed to themselves. Several people are still in prison under Article 212, but four criminal cases have been dropped, and the prospect of the remaining charges is sad; people have begun to be released.

Bastrykin still has in his hands people accused of 318, violence against government officials (read the story of Pavel Ustinov, who they want to give 10 years for standing near the metro), and also “extremists.” The fight for them will continue.

We have been hammering and will continue to hammer home the same point: in seeking the release of everyone, we spoke first of all about the absence of mass unrest, and most of all we talked about Yegor Zhukov - based on his example, everyone understands that the criminal case was invented. Lawyers and journalists proved that Zhukov did not participate in the riots. But now he will be held as a hostage on principle, so that we will all be discouraged from defending our own. Therefore it placed under house arrest with the 280th “extremist” article.

Now they will argue that Zhukov should be tried not for exercising the citizens’ right to freedom of assembly, but for the right to freedom of opinion. And if earlier this was a “political matter” that concerned activists, now it is becoming a general civil matter. By protecting blogger Zhukov, we will protect ourselves. Doing this will be especially easy from a moral point of view, given that the investigation has nothing - that’s why they had to read the student’s coursework about nonviolent protest.

The most important conclusion from this story is that Russian citizens fundamentally deny the authorities the right to criminally prosecute peaceful demonstrators. We all have the right to protest, no matter what laws “our elected representatives” adopt: this is a political choice that has already been made by the people.

And no one is afraid. The terror turned out to be organized by the troikas."

Kirill Martynov was born on April 25, 1981 in the city of Kemerovo. In 1988-1998 he studied at secondary school No. 28 in Kemerovo. In 2003, he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, Department of Ontology and Theory of Knowledge, majoring in Philosophy.

In 2003-2007 - assistant at the Department of Philosophy and Psychology at Moscow State Technical University "MAMI". Since 2007 - senior lecturer, then associate professor of the department of ontology, logic and theory of knowledge of the Faculty of Humanities / School of Philosophy of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. He was a senior lecturer at the Department of Humanities at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation.

In 2007, at M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, under the scientific supervision of Doctor of Philosophy, Professor Z. A. Sokuler, defended his dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Philosophy on the topic “Intentionality as a unified problem field of analytical philosophy of consciousness and phenomenology.” The official opponents are Doctor of Philosophy, Professor V.V. Vasiliev and Candidate of Philosophy, Associate Professor S.V. Danko. The leading organization is the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia. The work conducted a study devoted to the fact that the philosophy of consciousness, developing in the space of analytical philosophy, quite often refers to such a concept as intentionality, which acts as a distinctive feature of consciousness, such as, for example, by Daniel Dennett. This gives rise to a common field of the problem posed and the possibility of mutual exchange of ideas and mutual influence of phenomenology and analytical philosophy.

Author of articles in the magazines “Domestic Notes” and “Russian Journal”, newspapers “Moskovskie Novosti” and “Novaya Gazeta”, on the RBC Internet portal and columnist for the Internet publication “Vzglyad.ru”. Participated in the development of the Internet portal Liberty.ru. He was the editor-in-chief of the online publication “Mneniya.ru”.

He worked at the Effective Policy Foundation, press secretary of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs, and was also the coordinator of the liberal club “United Russia”. He was editor of the politics department of the Russian Journal. Currently he is the editor of the political department of Novaya Gazeta.

Expert at the School of Effective Communications "Repnoe", expert at the Center for Political Analysis, expert at the online publication "Actual Comments" of the Center for Political Conjuncture of Russia.

Her professional interests include such areas of scientific knowledge as political philosophy, sociology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Speaks English and German.

16 August 2015, 18:31

We are talking about the “Novgorod Case” - a sensational criminal case against Antonina Fedorova (Martynova), a 21-year-old girl from Veliky Novgorod, who was accused of attempted murder of her child. The story is very strange and vague, there are a lot of discussions on the Internet, which, however, ended in 2012; what the fate of Antonina and her daughter is now is unknown. In the post I will give a retelling of events from Wikipedia and some other sources (LJ, Antonina’s husband’s blog) and my own reasoning.

At the center of this story is a family consisting of three people: Antonina, a young girl from Veliky Novgorod, her daughter from her first marriage, Alisa (2.7 months), and Antonina’s husband, Kirill Martynov, a teacher at a Moscow university. At the beginning of February 2007, Antonina and her daughter went to their hometown to visit the girl’s mother.

On February 26, Antonina’s mother, Ninel Bulatovna, went to work, and they decided not to close the door to the stairwell, since the neighbors’ children were knocking loudly on it (the woman lives in a sectional dormitory).

When Antonina went to the bathroom, Alice ran out onto the landing and climbed over the railing. Antonina, running out onto the landing, did not have time to grab her, and the girl fell down two flights of stairs. Fortunately, Alice escaped with minor injuries (which were later classified as “mild injuries”). Antonina ran downstairs and called an ambulance.

At the same time, there was an 11-year-old boy, Yegor K., on the staircase, who ran to the neighbors and said that he saw “one girl pushing another girl.” The neighbors called the police. The police arrived at the hospital and took some statements from Antonina - which ones, the girl could not remember, because... was in a state of shock and did not remember the questions that were asked to her. Three days later, the girl and her daughter had to leave the hospital due to lack of space. The girl decided not to return to Moscow for some time, because... Alice had a Novgorod policy. In order not to return to the scene of the tragic incident, they rented an apartment in the suburbs of Novgorod.
Almost a month passed, Antonina and Alisa were getting ready to return home to Moscow, when a police operative came to the girl and handed her a summons to the prosecutor’s office with the words that everyone was sure that Alisa’s fall was not an accident, and the young mother would be prosecuted under Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Murder”) ").

The girl gave evidence to the investigator, after which she came to Moscow and underwent an independent polygraphic test (lie detector), which showed that the girl had no malicious intentions. (The later investigation refused to recognize the results of this study, but did not conduct their own lie detector examination).

On March 22, 2007, a criminal case was initiated under Article 30, Part 3, Art. 105, part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
On April 19, the girl was arrested. In the evening of this day, Kirill Martynov publishes a message about this criminal case on his blog. The case is receiving wide publicity on the Internet, and a community is being created on LiveJournal in support of Antonina and her family.
According to investigators, the main motive for the crime was that the little daughter allegedly interfered with the construction of her personal life. It was obvious to many that such a motive was nothing more than a fiction - Antonina and Kirill had been in a relationship since 2005, began living together in 2006, Alice called her stepfather dad.

During the investigation, all kinds of pressure were put on the young girl, including threats of reclassification to another, “execution” article, and she signed an undertaking not to disclose the data of the preliminary investigation.

On May 7, 2007, Antonina was released from the pre-trial detention center on her own recognizance. During her imprisonment, the girl’s health deteriorated significantly; she lost weight to 36 kg.

As for the main witness, whose testimony formed the basis of the criminal case, in his interviews the boy gets confused in the evidence. According to one of his versions, Antonina pushed her daughter through the railing and let her go, while shouting something, according to another version, everything happened in complete silence (it’s strange that the almost three-year-old daughter did not make a sound, while the mother forcibly dragged her towards the opening). According to the third version, his friend Artem was also an eyewitness to the murder attempt. Due to his age, the witness was not involved in a polygraph questioning.

I will not retell the progress of the investigation and the prosecution’s version in detail; all the information is on the Internet, including a very detailed article with all links on Wikipedia. You can also find a lot of information in a special community on LiveJournal and in Kirill Martynov’s blog.

It is known that the investigation was very subjective in nature - the testimony of neighbors in the hostel was involved, who gave Antonina fictitious, superficial characteristics. These characteristics served to create a certain image of a young girl - they say, an unemployed single mother who strives at all costs to marry her Moscow partner. The only obstacle to this goal is a young daughter from a previous marriage. Objective data confirming the couple’s relationship, love for each other and for their daughter, who became Kirill’s own, and the absence of financial problems, were not considered.
At the end of July 2008, a jury found the girl guilty and not deserving of leniency.

Kirill Martynov assures that he knows nothing about their whereabouts. Mother and daughter are put on the federal wanted list. Whether it was an escape or a kidnapping is unknown.

In October 2008, a certain Oleg published a scan of a letter from Antonina, in which she wrote that everything was fine with her and her daughter, and asked to send financial assistance through this same Oleg, who created a special community to coordinate fundraising. Kirill recognized Antonina's handwriting, but noted that the writing style was not typical for Antonina. He is sure that his wife wrote this letter under duress. It is also strange that the girl does not mention Kirill in her letter.
All that is known about Oleg is that he lives in Israel and may be a member of an Islamist organization. Kirill is convinced that his wife and daughter were kidnapped in order to receive monthly payments.

This letter is the last message from Antonina. In LiveJournal, I saw Oleg’s messages dated 2010, in which he recalled the material need of Antonina and Alisa, but he no longer received any response to them. Kirill Martynov stopped commenting on this situation at the end of 2008 - beginning of 2009.

Present tense:

Kirill Martynov continues to lead an active social life - he has thousands of subscribers on Twitter, LiveJournal and Facebook. I subscribed to him after he started lecturing on my course (a couple of years ago), but I didn’t see a single mention of that case.
His personal impression is generally positive - interesting, very educated, albeit a little arrogant. Cheerfulness is in full swing - and there is no hint of a tragic past.

Yesterday I wondered if Tonya really was what the prosecution tried to portray her as - calculating and greedy - and I looked into her LiveJournal (last updated in 2008). I liked the entries - humorous, touching (especially about my daughter and husband), and not without grace. I believe that there was no calculation on her part - she and Kirill really seemed to be in love and alike in many ways. Following Kirill, Tonya wanted to become a philosopher and in the year of those terrible events she was preparing to enter Moscow State University.

In general, I have no doubt about her innocence, but one thing is unclear to me in this wild and dark story - so where did Tonya and Alice go? What role did Kirill play in their escape? And what kind of Oleg appeared on the horizon - a blackmailer or a really kind guy who wanted to save two defenseless girls?

In one of his comments on LiveJournal, Kirill expressed doubts as to whether his wife and daughter were alive. Indeed, is it possible that in our world, where it is easy to track all money transfers and calls, people could so easily evaporate? Has Antonina really cut off contact not only with her husband, but also with her mother and other relatives?

And wasn’t it reckless to write a letter revealing your whereabouts while being wanted? But Antonina, apparently, was not a stupid girl...

There are also questions for the investigation: the representatives of the prosecution took up the case so zealously that they did not even allow the girl to go to Moscow for exams (although she had not yet been found guilty), they sent her for a psychiatric examination, kept her in a cell... But it was worth the mother and daughter to disappear, as everything was immediately released on the brakes. It’s as if they crossed it out, threw the folder in the trash and decided not to bother anymore. What was that, comrades? Has your enthusiasm faded? Or what?...

I think that in this strange and muddy story there will be only question marks.

Novaya Gazeta is a well-known Russian socio-political publication that has been published since 1993 and has specialized in investigative journalism since the beginning of its existence. The publication has more than once found itself at the center of scandals, including due to more than dubious statements by its employees, as well as due to the appearance on its pages of unverified or subsequently recognized false information.

Who pays for the music

If you believe information from open sources, a controlling stake in Novaya Gazeta (76%) belongs to the publication’s staff, 14% belongs to a notorious businessman (in particular, for a public fight with the subsequent serving of a criminal sentence). Alexander Lebedev, 10% - to the first and only president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev.

At the beginning of the 2000s, there was talk that a foundation had a hand in financing Novaya Gazeta. George Soros, and according to Izvestia, the publication also received “sponsorship” from the Dutch government. The data was given for 2015, when the downed Malaysian Boeing was mentioned in more than a hundred Novaya publications and the bulk of these materials were anti-Russian in nature, Izvestia reports.

Also, judging by information from open sources, one of the financial donors of Novaya Gazeta is the co-owner of Yota Devices Sergey Adoniev.

Thinning ranks

Novaya Gazeta was created in the spring of 1993 by a group of journalists who left Komsomolskaya Pravda. At the origins of newspapers stood Dmitry Muratov, who headed the publication until 2017, Pavel Voshchanov, Akram Murtazaev, Dmitry Sabov and others.

Gave his first money to the newspaper Mikhail Gorbachev, who used part of the funds from his Nobel Prize to buy eight computers for Novaya.

In November 2017, Dmitry Muratov left the post of editor-in-chief; now the editor-in-chief of Novaya is Sergei Kozheurov.

Yes, Novaya Gazeta has long been considered a leader in investigative journalism. Yes, the list of awards of its journalists does not fit on two printed pages. But, alas, in recent years this publication has increasingly become a refuge for losers, and the “old staff” is slowly, as they say, running out of steam.

A little dead

The most striking example of exactly what kind of people have found and are finding refuge in this publication is a former participant in two Chechen campaigns, a once good war correspondent Arkady Babchenko, who today from Kyiv is pouring out abuse on Russia and Russians. But most of all, Babchenko, of course, “became famous” for his imaginary death. This story did not just cover Babchenko with indelible shame. The noise will settle down sooner or later, the media will forget about this story, but Arkady Babchenko will never again have the chance to work as a journalist either at Novaya Gazeta or in any even remotely decent publication. Now they won’t let him near any hot spot even within range of a cannon shot. For potential employers, he is now a man who has lost confidence, a loser.

Unpleasant episode

Novaya Gazeta has always actively commented on the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. At the same time, the publication’s publications often included “information” about the alleged “presence” of Russian military personnel there (recall that Moscow has repeatedly stated that it is not a party to the conflict in Donbass and that there are no active Russian military personnel there).

Once a journalist from Novaya Pavel Kanygin, commenting live on a Ukrainian channel on the situation in Donbass, he did this while presumably in a state of drug intoxication. Pavel started talking, behaved inappropriately, involuntarily jerked his head and hands, which, according to experts, could indicate his use of certain chemical substances. Moscow narcologist Nikolay Vlatsky in a comment to the Reedus agency, he stated that Kanygin’s condition, judging by the video, “is 99% similar to drug intoxication.”

Let us note that Kanygin himself denied the fact of drug intoxication and claimed that he had a cold.

Expulsion of Khudoberdi Nurmatov (Ali Feruza)

Journalist at Novaya Gazeta Khudoberdi Nurmatov(nickname - Ali Feruz) caused a lot of problems for his employers. He arrived in Russia illegally in 2011, and since 2012 he has been in the country without any identification documents at all. According to him, he “lost” his expired Uzbekistan passport and for five years he has not been able to restore it. Since 2015, Nurmatov worked at Novaya Gazeta without having any documents or work permit, which predictably attracted the attention of Russian law enforcement officers, who began the process of extraditing him to his homeland - Uzbekistan.

According to RIA Novosti, Nurmatov at one time held radical Islamist views and even recruited people into the Islamist underground. According to the publication, in 2008, Ali Feruz was involved in the case of recruitment into the extremist organization At Takfir wal-Hijra, banned in the Russian Federation.

In August last year, the Basmanny Court of Moscow decided to expel Nurmatov from Russia to his homeland for violating the regime of stay in the country. During the hearing, right in the courtroom, the journalist attempted suicide, he was so afraid, according to his friends, to return to his native Uzbekistan. As a result, Nurmatov was met halfway and allowed to leave for the country of his choice.

Later, the Basmanny Court of Moscow found the editorial office of Novaya Gazeta guilty of illegally recruiting a foreigner to work and fined the publication 400 thousand rubles.

"Gay" theme

Journalist at Novaya Gazeta Elena Milashina quite well known in the Chechen Republic. But recently, serious complaints have arisen against her in connection with the topic of alleged “persecution” of LGBT people in Chechnya. Elena was repeatedly accused of bias.

It got to the point that in 2017, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy Shamsail Saraliev sent parliamentary requests to the Prosecutor General, the head of the Investigative Committee and the head of Roskomnadzor with a request to check Novaya Gazeta for the presence of extremism and incitement of ethnic hatred in Milashina’s article “Panic and sabotage in Chechnya.”

Saraliev found signs of violation of the law in phrases from the article:

“Not only Chechens, but also Russians became victims of the anti-gay campaign in Chechnya,” “they later began to look for this man and killed him on Russian territory.”

According to the deputy, these fragments of material contain a contrast between people based on nationality, as well as an attempt to incite ethnic hatred and call into question the territorial integrity of Russia.

Earlier - in May 2015 - the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Chechnya announced its intention to go to court for spreading slander if Elena Milashina did not report who exactly advised her to “closely monitor her personal safety.” Then the journalist stated that while in Chechnya, she allegedly received threats.

Currently, Elena Milashina travels to Chechnya quite calmly and no longer accuses the Chechen authorities of “excessive attention” to her person.

Has Europe gone nuts?

One of the “pillars” of Novaya Gazeta Yulia Latynina has repeatedly caused sharp criticism with its more than dubious statements.

Latynina was criticized for her racist views and contempt for the lower strata of society even by representatives of the liberal camp. Yes, journalist Andrey Loshak called Latynina’s views “wild and morally outdated.”

Earlier - in October 2010 - representatives of the Russian Muslim community accused Latynina of Islamophobia and inciting interfaith hatred.

Many critics point to negligence, manipulation of facts and outright errors in Latynina’s articles and books, as well as in her statements on the air (she regularly appears on the Ekho Moskvy radio station).

Hater of Crimea

Editor of the political department of Novaya Gazeta Kirill Martynov also became famous for his scandalous statements. So, in July 2014, while on vacation in Crimea (which had just reunited with the Russian Federation), Martynov wrote a series of rather rude comments on the microblog on Twitter about the state of the peninsula and the people who vacation there.

Here is an example of Martynov’s statements: “The peninsula is occupied by cattle,” “Redneckness, hatred of one’s business, the desire to cheat a sucker, inactivity, fear of the boss.”

Martynov is or was married to Antonina Martynova (Fedorova), a participant in the so-called “Novgorod case,” which was widely discussed in 2007–2008 in the then still active Live Journal.

Fedorova was accused of attempted murder of her three-year-old daughter Alisa from her first marriage. Currently, the whereabouts of the woman and her daughter are unknown; they have been on the federal wanted list since July 2008. The disappearance was preceded by Antonina's failure to appear at the trial, at which the jury returned a guilty verdict. Martynov himself claimed that his wife and adopted daughter were allegedly kidnapped by unknown people.

In January 2017, poet and publicist Lyubava Malysheva wrote a harsh article for the Radio Liberty website, in which she sharply attacked Martynov for his allegedly anti-feminist views, and also reminded him of the “Novgorod Affair”. According to Malysheva, in the story of the alleged attempt on the life of a child, there were people on Martynov’s side who “knew little about his past,” which helped him take a significant position in Novaya Gazeta.

It seems that Novaya Gazeta often attracts individuals with deviant behavior, with strange, to put it mildly, views, and simply losers who find it difficult to fit in in any other publication.