Justice in Putin’s Russia

After Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea, he was charged with trying to reconstitute the Soviet Union. Although the Russian president has not exactly dispelled this claim, it would be a mistake to cry “Evil Empire!” over one foreign excursion. Not that the critics are wrong — they are just looking in the wrong place for evidence.  Much more interesting is Putin’s domestic power-grabs, which seem to have risen alongside his newfound bellicosity on the world stage. As he seeks to further consolidate his grip on the state, something has to give way and cede autonomy. That entity is increasingly the courts, where corruption, bribery and politically motivated charges are deeply embedded. The result has been a series of high-profile trials characterized by partisan retribution. Stalin himself would have sighed with nostalgia.

Over the last few years, three trials have encapsulated the judiciary’s vulnerability to Kremlin meddling. The first and most commonly known – a fact that partially emanates from the defendant’s colorful moniker – is Pussy Riot. In 2012, three members of this punk rock band stormed into a main Russian church and proceeded to loudly denounce Vladimir Putin. Although their demonstration was untimely and perhaps ill-conceived, the state’s reflexive response was to see dissent and come down disproportionately hard. All three were charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” and subsequently sentenced to two years in a penal colony.

While Putin has obvious reasons for suppressing political discord, the prosecution’s aggression and arguments were surprising. Instead of acknowledging the political nature of Pussy Riot’s protest, the state filed a 2,800-page brief that exclusively focused on “religious hatred”. Since the Russian government seemed determined to ride roughshod over any greater political issues, Amnesty International and others condemned the heavy-handed punishment as a human rights abuse. To some, it seemed inexplicable for Putin to risk the teetering legitimacy of his regime to defend the sensibilities of churchgoers who say things like “[f]eminism is a mortal sin” (you can thank Yelena Pavlova, a lawyer for several audience members who were offended by Pussy Riot, for that gem). But in reality, it is a calculated power play. During his third term as president, Putin has been inching closer to the Russian Orthodox Church. He sees religious values as a throwback to the strength of old, traditional Russia and therefore a bulwark against the West. His Slavophilia has given rise to a symbiotic relationship, whereby Putin enacts anti-gay legislation and opposes “Western values” while the Church supports him on basically everything else. Even on something as irreligious and geopolitical as the invasion of Crimea, the two were bedfellows (although I am required by Russian law to inform you that this is merely a figure of speech). In such a nationalistic, sectarian climate, liberal democratic ideals will invariably be pushed out. The Pussy Riot case shows that due process rights and an independent judiciary are clearly on the chopping block.

The second big trial hits Russian politics much closer to home. Alexei Navalny is perhaps the most prolific and well-known anti-corruption crusader in Russia. His principal focus is on shadowy state-owned enterprises and the nexus between business dealings and political power. Navalny has already won several lawsuits against government-linked corporate giants, successes that are all the more impressive in a court system that caters to the well connected and powerful. Of course, those same oligarchs did not readily acquiesce to his quest for transparency. In 2011, almost a month after he exposed graft by the state-owned oil giant Transneft, Russian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against Navalny. Numerous procedural irregularities and aggressive prosecutorial tactics characterized the case: the defense could not call witnesses, the judge had never acquitted anyone and the state had no evidence except a few shaky testimonials. In most countries, the government would not have even bothered to bring charges. Yet that did not stop the head of the Investigative Committee, whom Navalny had previously exposed as corrupt. After years of litigation, and despite a serious lack of evidence, Navalny was sentenced to 5 years in prison. While the immediate effect of Navalny’s conviction was to conveniently interrupt his budding Moscow mayoral run, it was also the cumulative result of stepping on the toes of powerful kleptocrats. The blatant political motivations behind his punishment were even obvious to those of a more Machiavellian era: in reference to the Navalny conviction, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev stated, “[e]verything I know about this case — how it started, how it was closed, and then opened again, how it was considered in court — unfortunately confirms that we do not have an independent judiciary[.]”

Although he was released well before the end of his five-year sentence, Navalny continues to be dogged by charges. His courtroom saga illustrates the malleability of the judiciary, such that powerful people rig the outcomes. These people are determined to keep the courts as their stomping ground, even in the face of domestic criticism, protests and international media scrutiny. Yet in both the Pussy Riot and Navalny cases, the government showed some restraint. None of the defendants were kept in jail for their full sentences, and none were killed or maimed. Unfortunately, Sergei Magnitsky did not share their relatively good luck. Magnitsky, an auditor at a Moscow law firm, came forward with allegations of multimillion dollar fraud by Russian police and taxation officials in 2009. Very soon thereafter, he was detained on charges of tax fraud himself and died in detention. Despite pervasive evidence that Magnitsky had been beaten to death – a fact that was acknowledged by Russia’s Human Rights Council – Russian authorities made a feeble attempt at investigating. To this day no one has been convicted in connection with his treatment, and any pretense about finding out what happened has been totally eradicated. Magnitsky’s death was a loud and clear message to likeminded whistleblowers.

Until last summer, there was no trial in the Magnitsky saga. However, in response to America’s Magnitsky Act, which levied sanctions against officials connected with his death, Russia embarked on what can only be described as a posthumous show trial. The Investigative Committee resurrected the trumped-up corruption charges that had led to Magnitsky’s original detainment and, unsurprisingly, found him guilty. The uselessness and impracticality of trying a dead man betrays Russia’s intransigence on the issue of judicial reform. The West has heaped scorn on Putin, his cronies and his cadres over the Magnitsky issue, but the overwhelming response has been to stonewall; the powers that be are existentially invested in maintaining an unsustainable, unredeemable and flagrantly corrupt system of selective justice. To that effect, while politically motivated charges are often couched in some veil of superficial legitimacy, a stark level of open abuse characterizes the Magnitsky case.

Before Vladimir Putin’s recent resurgence, Russia was showing signs of incipient reform. However, that reform has stalled, if not regressed. Whereas the international community primarily witnesses this regression in Russia’s recent excursions into Ukraine, there are also signs of it in domestic trends. The court system – in which almost four out of every five Russians do not expect to find justice – is at the heart of the problem. It is largely beholden to well-placed political interests, and justice is administered by way of bribery and connections. These qualities were on full display during the Pussy Riot, Navalny and Magnitsky prosecutions, and they characterize the courtroom as a stage of retribution rather than truth seeking. Russians, along with everyone else, should be concerned about how such instances have been growing more common over the last few years. If Putin becomes inclined to imitate some of his Soviet predecessors, the world should be wary.