Correctness at the Lobnoye Place or Everything is as before...

Mikhail Kalishevsky

(photo by Igor Stomakhin)

It seems that president's verbose hints of the "corrupt" media that want to make a political capital on the "Kursk" tragedy are perceived as a signal for quite concrete actions. The authority doesn't satisfy itself already with just lying and making secrets from everything connected with the death of the sailors. It needs that as less as possible be known even about how various public forces appraise its own, to put it mildly, inadequate actions during the rescue operation.

The authority doesn't want that become known that somebody doesn't approve it. And not only doesn't approve, but demands resignments and even indictment of "high-ranked liars in admiral full-dress coats" because they lied to all the country and all the world not permitting to rescue". These were the demands of 17 activists of the Transnational Radical Party and the Antimilitarist Radical Association (ARA) who gathered on August 24 near the Lobnoye Mesto in Moscow. True, they hadn't a permission, therefore in few minutes the militia and men in civvies took away the placards from the manifestants and four of latters (Nikolay Khramov, Alyona Asayeva, Yaroslav Litvinenko and Andrey Rodionov) were brought to the militia station "Kitay-gorod". There the statements of the case were drawn up, the radicals were accused of violation of the art. 166-1 of the Administrative Code ("Violation of the law of the Russian Federation on assemblies, meetings, demonstrations, rallies and pickets").

The militia's actions were correct. And at first sight, according to the law. But only at first sight. The matter is that the photographer of the "Inostranets" Igor Stomakhin was detained together with the manifestants. Of course, he didn't take part in the demonstration, he was just performing his professional duties - on the instruction of his editor he was taking photos of the radicals' action. It is to be noted that he was immediately prevented from the performance of his duties - an unknown man in civvies very drastically blocked up with his body the object-glass.

Then, the same unknown man, now together with the uniformed militiamen, detained the reporter: he ordered "to pass with them and examine everything". The reporter had to pass, because neither the reporter's statement that he wasn't privy to the action but, on the contrary, was privy to the press, nor his newspaper identification card impressed the guards of the order. And one would pay dearly for resistance to the guards.

While "passing" to the militia station, the same unknown man in civvies delicately removed from the reporter's pocket the cassette and in the same delicate manner calmed him: nothing will happen to your film, we'll just look at what you have filmed, and if everything is OK, we'll return it. And they did return it, when after half an hour the reporter was released from the station. The negotiations with his boss in the newspaper were conducted in the same correct form. Firstly they promissed that the reporter "would be immediately released", and then informed that Stomakhin had been released already, "and he wasn't detained at all". It isn't clear, though, how is possible to release a person who never was detained.

To our regret, the correctness of the militia doesn't deliver us from the necessity to point out the crying unlawful action in respect of Igor Stomakhin. And this is much more than the offenses of the radicals which according to the art. 166 involve a warning or a fine (the hearing of the case is adjourned because of the absence in Moscow of the ARA's lawyer). One can clearly see in the actions of the order's guards unlawful detention, prevention from the performance of one's professional duties, prevention from receiving the information, unlawful confiscation of property, censorship. The list can probably be continued.

But there is an obvious progress concerning correctness. On August 25, 1968, the demonstrators were beaten with boots and then put in the prison. A photographer, if he tried to photo all this, would get his camera shoved into his throat. And one wouldn't like to recall what happened to those who exposed the tsar Ivan the Terrible near the Lobnoye Place.

And now everything is just great. And our readers can see what Igor Stomakhin photoed near the Lobnoye Place.