Moscow Invents “Enemies of the People”
“Extremist”
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
At the request of the Ministry of Justice, Russia's Constitutional Court on 7 June 2024 classified an “anti-Russian separatist movement” as “extremist”. At the end of July, the ministry published a list of 55 organizations that allegedly belong to this “movement” and are therefore now listed as “extremist”. One of these is the German Association for the Study of Eastern Europe. The classification is to be seen in connection with an issue of the association’s journal Osteuropa entitled “The Peoples of Russia”. This category constitutes the basis for criminal prosecution and is a further attack on academic freedom on the part of the increasingly repressive regime in Moscow. The actual target of this repressive act, however, are organizations of the non-Russian peoples of Russia.
(Osteuropa 6-7/2024, pp. 105–110)