Three and a half years probation, received a 22-year-old video blogger Ruslan Sokolovsky, who caught the pokemon in Ekaterinburg the temple and posted a video of his “performance” (the prosecution demanded to give him a real term).
I already wrote about this on our portal, but I’ll repeat. Sokolowski is a radical atheist and “personal enemy of God”, who despite his young age has already managed to gain popularity after a series of publications, resembling the orientation of the Polish magazine NIE, Jerzy urban (Jerzy Urban). Their action he arranged is not in a simple Cathedral, and the temple, built on the site of the house where in 1918 the Bolsheviks captured and executed the entire Royal family, including her minor members.
Sokolowski made a video in which he talks about what he decided to do, and then catches in the temple of pokemon. Background music serve as stylized hymns with sarcastic and full of foul language text. Then the blogger says that he has failed to catch the main pokemon of Christ, adding that he went with a smartphone to Church because television was warned that it was there to play the game is prohibited by law.
The video instantly became popular. The current Russian government, as you know, entered into an Alliance with the Orthodox Church, in turn, the liberal opposition is with the Russian Orthodox Church in the conflict and largely consists of people not just anti-clerical but even of anti-religious views. Not surprisingly, the authorities ‘ response was not long in coming: Sokolovsky was arrested and charged him with extremism (this concept is interpreted in Russia are very wide). He spent several months in jail and then under house arrest. On Thursday, all over, made the above verdict.
I don’t want to speculate here, whether it is soft, harsh or quite adequate. I would rather pay attention to the actions of the Russian liberal opposition — one that adheres to the radical anti-system views, and one that somehow finds a place in the Putin regime. She supported from the very beginning Sokolowski, presenting him as a completely innocent victim and even a hero, and never retreated from this position to the end. For blogger stood up the color of Moscow and St. Petersburg opposition movement. The circumstances of his action and the fact that he was a known anti-religious activist, was carefully suppressed, and Sokolovsky was portrayed as an innocent young man who just decided to catch the pokémon…
The court took the trouble to come personally to the mayor of Ekaterinburg — poet, painter, liberal and opposition activist Yevgeny Roizman (Yes, in Putin’s Russia still survived a few Islands, where power remains in the hands of opposing the Kremlin Democrats). He urged the court not to give the accused a real term, and promised to employ Sokolovsky at a local hospice. Of course, for re-education.
At the same time advocates of the blogger often resorted to a media and intellectual cheating, bordering on a lie. Example? For example, on Thursday a hit in a democratic Internet has become quotation from the reasons for the verdict: the court calls the action Sokolovsky extremist because he denied the existence of Jesus Christ and the prophet Muhammad (the blogger half Tartar). Democratic the Internet is choked with indignation: the court in its verdict declared that the person can be blamed for the fact that he is an unbeliever.
If it was in fact, the indignation of the Russian liberals should, of course, to share. However, turning to more expanded citations of the document, to put it mildly, complicates the picture. The court considered a manifestation of extremism, not the fact that Sokolowski in the video denied the existence of Christ and of the prophet Muhammad, and the fact that he did this by using exceptionally strong language (that is offensive to believers). It is somewhat light on the matter, right? Changes, but the reader of the democratic portals, which do not bother to search the full text of the reasons for the verdict or a more complete quote from him about this he will not see.
Anyway, the farce pokémon came to an end. Ruslan Sokolovsky, when released, will begin to help Roizman to open a hospice, and in the future may become one of the leaders of the Russian democratic Pro-Western opposition.
