Putin revives Stalin’s state of informers and snitches

Vladimir Putin has called for ‘scum and traitors’ to be ‘spat out like a gnat’ as part of a necessary self-detoxification of society — and there are many willing volunteers.

Police officers stand in front of graffiti depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Simferopol. Picture: AFP

During the Stalinist purges in the Soviet Union of the 1930s a boy named Pavel Morozov became a national hero for denouncing his father and then allegedly being killed in revenge by relatives.

Morozov, known as Pavlik, was said to have informed on his father for selling state documents to “bandits and enemies of the Soviet state”. The boy’s deeply mythologised story was used to encourage other Soviet bloc children to inform on their parents.

Almost a century later the practice of denunciation is undergoing a significant revival in President Putin’s Russia.

Last week a Russian anthropologist, a linguist and the BBC Russian Service announced that they had established the identity of a “serial snitch” who boasted of sending 1357 denunciations between February and September last year, dispatching them to agencies such as the prosecutor-general’s office, military prosecutors, the federal security service, the prison service and the justice ministry.

Russian police detain an anti-war protester in Moscow. Picture: AFP

The snitch posed as a woman named Anna Korobkova, a patriot who revels in reporting people for “discrediting the use of the Russian armed forces” – a crime under a law approved by Putin after his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Alexandra Arkhipova, the anthropologist, began investigating “Korobkova” after the latter wrote to her employer, a university in Moscow, demanding that the anthropologist be sacked for referring to the “war” in Ukraine during a television appearance rather than using Putin’s euphemism, “special military operation”.

Arkhipova left for France shortly afterwards.

However, Korobkova said in November last year that six people had been sacked from their jobs and 15 others given administrative charges and fined due to “her” denunciations, which continue.

Using comparative analysis of the language that the prolific informer used in 74 denunciations and other messages, Arkhipova and Daniil Skorinkin, the linguist, concluded that “Korobkova” was Ivan Abaturov, a former college lecturer in Yekaterinburg in the Urals and an admirer of Stalin.

A woman walks in front of riot police during a rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2021. Picture: AFP

The BBC said it confirmed that a letter from Abaturov and a denunciation from “Korobkova” were sent from the same IP address, a unique number that identifies a device.

Abaturov’s alleged targets include teachers, academics, professors, human rights activists, doctors and lawyers, but he has said that he is not involved.

On Sunday he denied the allegations in a social media post, saying the investigators were mistaken and added: “I do not admit that I wrote any text in the name of Anna Korobkova.”

The veracity of Pavlik Morozov’s story and his supposed heroism came under question with perestroika in the 1980s. He may not have informed at all, it transpired, but the cult of denunciation still led to hundreds of thousands of people being sent to the gulag.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, the role of the informer has once more become a matter of pride.

In the letters signed by Korobkova, the author said their knack for squealing came from the fact that their grandfather had been an informer for the Soviet NKVD, or secret police.

Putin has called for “scum and traitors” to be “spat out like a gnat” as part of a “necessary self-detoxification of society” and there are many willing volunteers.

A mother of a 10-year-old boy may spend the next 15 years in prison for speaking out against the war in Ukraine.

Anna Alexandrova, a hairdresser from St. Petersburg, found herself in this nightmare after a neighbor reported her social media posts. (Read on) pic.twitter.com/kDKrxgM9pC

— Mikhail Khodorkovsky (@khodorkovsky_en) December 9, 2024

Anna Alexandrova, 46, a hairdresser from St Petersburg, was prosecuted for “publicly disseminating” false information about the Russian army in online messages, after a neighbour wrote a complaint to the authorities.

The neighbour, who is a prosecution witness, was reported to have been in dispute with Alexandrova over a plot of land.

Analysts have said that grudges are often fodder for the stukach, or knocker, as informers are called in Russian.

Police detain a participant in an anti-war rally in Gorky Park, in Bishkek. Picture: AFP

In another case a 68-year-old pediatrician in Moscow was sent to a penal colony for five and a half years last month for allegedly telling a patient’s mother that her husband “was a legitimate target of Ukraine” after he died fighting there. The woman reported the doctor, who denied making the comment.

Konstantin Sonin, a Russian economist and political commentator at the University of Chicago, said Arkhipova’s investigation about Korobkova was “amazing” and could indicate that the snitching phenomenon was more organised than previously suspected.

“There is one simple conclusion – denunciations are being written not by everyone or by lots of Russians, but by a small group of activists,” he said.

The Times