The open and closed library

July 5, 2016

In St Petersburg, a socio-cultural project known as Open Library: Dialogues has been expelled from the Mayakovsky State Library building, following a series of searches and threats by the FSB.

The FSB raids the Open Library inside the Mayakovsky Library

Sergey Orlov

Culturologist Natalia Solodnikova, the Open Library mastermind and organiser, has been threatened with criminal prosecution. According to the FSB, Mayakovsky Library deputy director Nikolai Solodnikov had been neglecting his professional duties and devoting his time exclusively to Open Library, and his entire salary must therefore be considered an unlawful misappropriation of public funds. Experts believe that the project paid the price for its daring format, predicated on regular and wholly uncensored debates of controversial issues.

The Dialogues project has been evolving under the Open Library aegis since 2014. During this period, over 100 speakers have taken part in some eighty (invariably well-attended) debates. The project teamed up with Echo of Moscow and Meduza, with both of these popular media outlets publishing debate videos and transcripts on their respective sites, and thereby massively expanding its audience.

The project’s organisers, who’d always made plain their desire to create a space where “anyone would have the opportunity to enter into dialogue with anyone else,” invited all manner of people to participate. From protectionist minister Vladimir Medinsky to liberal-minded ex-minister Alexei Kudrin; from patriotic writer Zakhar Prilepin to Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich; from homophobic lawmaker Vitaly Milonov to tolerant filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, an entire spectrum of prominent figures ended up taking part. “When it comes to civil society,” noted Echo of Moscow editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov, “this is exactly the sort of format that it’s sorely lacking – debates […] involving live audiences.”

The FSB visits

The security agencies, of course, have only ever perceived this sort of unbiased debate platform as a threat. One issue they’ve always been particularly concerned about is this: firstly, who is the project’s financial backer, and could the nominal similarity between Open Library and Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia be more than a mere accident? Secondly, why is it that Solodnikov spends so much of his time in Latvia, and is the source of the project’s funding therefore to be found in Riga?

Nikolai Solodnikov, whose personal acquaintance FSB personnel were in no hurry to make, answered the secret services through the media. The Open Library project, he said, acquired its name when Mikhail Khodorkovsky was still behind bars, and had absolutely nothing to do with his Open Russia movement. As regards the issue of funding, Solodnikov stated the following: the project was inexpensive to run and he succeeded in keeping it afloat out of his own pocket and through loans from friends. The “Riga question” was an even easier one to field: Solodnikov’s wife, journalist Katerina Gordeyeva, worked there, and the couple’s fifth child was born in Latvia. Finally, Solodnikov brushed aside allegations that the project was being funded by foreign backers.

On June 23, however, the FSB moved from words to actions and instigated a search of Mayakovsky Library. (Solodnikov, it must be noted, believes that the security agencies have been monitoring his mobile-phone conversations for at least the past year while also keeping close tabs on all his movements.) The search was ordered by none other than Alexander Rodionov, chief of the St Petersburg and Leningrad Region FSB Directorate, and conducted – wait for it – by FSB counter-terrorism agents. When he found out what was going on, Solodnikov penned a voluntary resignation statement in an effort to avoid leaving the rest of the library staff high and dry.

“All debates must be regulated, guests must be green-lighted in advance”

According to journalist and Dialogues participant Dmitry Gubin, these events have been autonomously orchestrated by the local Petersburg authorities. Conversely, Echo of Moscow editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov insists that none of this would have been possible without an initial green light from Moscow: “It’s obvious that in this case the FSB is nothing more than an instrument, and that this is a political decision that’s been taken in Moscow and not in St Petersburg. Platforms for free debate, now non-existent in Moscow and limited in St Petersburg to the Open Library project, aren’t exactly popular with the current regime. All debates must be regulated, guests must be green-lighted in advance, the debate topics mustn’t ruffle any feathers, and as for any conclusions – well, it’d be preferable if none were drawn at all.”

Journalist and Dialogues participant Oleg Kashin also believes the Open Library project has been singled out for punishment due to the freethinking tendencies of its organisers: “In all likelihood, the regime and the authorities just cannot tolerate any form of vitality, of vigorous living – they can’t stand the idea that people would attend an event not because they’ve been paid or ordered to do so, but simply because it’s piqued their interest. Solodnikov is to blame for having created this form of vitality – that’s his transgression against the regime. Such is the current condition of our society; you don’t even have to be involved in politics or ‘terrorism’ to be branded an enemy of the state – you just need to be yourself and calmly give voice to what you really think. And Solodnikov is guilty of precisely that.”

Nor have the difficulties facing Open Library come as any great surprise to journalist Sergei Parkhomenko: “Civically engaged citizens are a source of fear for the Russian regime. Any form of engagement – from fire victim assistance to scientific research – terrifies them. Any independent initiative is met with mistrust and apprehension. In this sense, the debates in Mayakovsky Library had been a real phenomenon over the last couple of years, and that couldn’t have continued indefinitely.”

The public view

What of the attitudes of Russian citizens at large? Predictably enough, opinions are sharply divided on the matter. Notably, those who champion the cause of Open Library frequently reference Nazi and communist repressions in their appraisals of the current crackdown.

Jorgen: “The Bolshevik regime began with the destruction of dissenters. Which is what the Putin regime – an outgrowth of its Bolshevik predecessor – will most likely end up doing.”

A user with the screen name Doverchivy [Trustful]: “A wonderful carbon copy of 1933 Germany.”

Sceptics and detractors, conversely, maintain that the debates were conducted by inappropriate people in an inappropriate environment while focusing on no less inappropriate topics.

Barkas: “They’ve shut them down, and rightly so. They can discuss these things around the kitchen table, but not within state institutions.”

Dmitry A.: “Round tables at Mayakovsky Library. Took part in one myself. Was taught to respect gays.”

Dymokh: “‘Liberals’ ‘debating’ with ‘democrats’ […]. That wasn’t a discussion forum, it was a place for people of similar views to get chummy with each other.”

Many experts believe that the zeal with which the FSB has garrotted the project may be directly attributed to the fact that the Duma elections are fast approaching. “I believe we’re seeing pre-election twitchiness on the part of the law-enforcement agencies,” writes political analyst Yekaterina Shulman. “They’re concerned by activities whose nature remains obscure to them, and they’d prefer it if these activities just didn’t exist at all. Better simply to put an end to them rather than have to second-guess things.”

“All this reminds me of past eras, of things I’ve already lived through. I never doubted it’d all return – and so it has…”

Distinguished Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov is of a similar view: “They’re laying the pre-election groundwork. […][The regime] is implementing its objective of stifling civic existence. Not only is this unconstitutional, it’s also politically illiterate to do this instead of cultivating civic debate. All this reminds me of past eras, of things I’ve already lived through. I never doubted it’d all return – and so it has…”

Dialogue

In fact, the events that would shape the destiny of Open Library were set in motion back in May 2015, when the project’s organisers, bowing to the strident threats being directed against them, cancelled the appearance at a Dialogues event of Ukrainian politician, journalist and Euromaidan orchestrator Mustafa Nayyem. But Narodny Sobor [People’s Assembly] and Antimaidan activists, who’d been intent on cutting Nayyem down to size, made it to Mayakovsky Library under their own inertia. And although they wound up at a very different debate, they neglected to remain silent.

It is a debate Nikolai Solodnikov will remember forever: “People who’d come to fret and fume ended up imploring forgiveness for the overly vociferous conduct of their associates. You could actually see their faces change as the speakers answered their questions. […] When we hold a collective discussion under the same roof, it turns out that the common ground between us is actually rather extensive. We might be “rightists” or “leftists,” but we all believe, for example, that any Russian soldier killed in an undeclared war ought to be buried with military honours. We managed to create a genuine dialogue […]. It might have been heavy-going, tense, emotionally charged, but it was a dialogue all the same. And if dialogues of this sort were given air-time on a federal channel – a weekly slot over a twelve-month period, say – I can assure you that we’d be living in a completely different country.”

Culturologist Daniel Dondurei describes this phenomenon as follows: “The Dialogues project constituted an alternative to television, radio and newspapers, all of which present information with a ‘particular slant.’ People would hear out the experts in the library and thereby come into their own understanding of various aspects of reality […] in contemporary Russia.”

The Kremlin isn’t afraid of its highbrow intellectual opponents. Dissenters – even those who manage to make their voices heard via the still-liberal platform of Echo of Moscow – can easily be drowned out with a little help from the federal channels. In this sense, the ultimately elitist debates around the country’s destiny held under the Open Library aegis never presented a threat to the regime. On the other hand, the Dialogues project did become a space where social factions normally at loggerheads with one another managed, against all odds, to hear out each other’s views and find a modicum of common ground. Which is precisely what the Kremlin has found so unpardonable: after doing everything in its power to sow intra-societal discord, the regime isn’t about to sit back and look on as people calmly converse with their opponents instead of going straight for the jugular.

Further reading