The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

"A friend has been entrapped by Occupy Pedophilia." Lyosha had heard something about this. Occupy Pedophilia was the skinhead version of the online entrapment movement. He knew it was operating in different cities, but he did not know about incidents in Perm. Lyosha looked up the Occupy Pedophilia/Perm page on VK.

"Our next safari will take place on Thursday. Open to all. Entry fee 250 rubles."

The group included more than two thousand members. Lyosha recognized many of the names: he had graded their papers.

He clicked on a video. It showed Darya's friend Valeriy*—Lyosha had met him too. He stood against a tiled wall—it looked like a pedestrian underpass or perhaps the basement of a shopping center, flanked by two large young men. At the beginning of the clip he stated his full name, age, and place of work: he was thirty and taught at a trade school.

"We used to treat pedophilia with urinotherapy," one of the thugs said about halfway through the ten-minute clip. "But especially for you, we have chosen the banana treatment. This is a sacred banana."

From that point on, Valeriy stood with a half-peeled banana in his hands.

first thug: Have you been gay a long time? valeriy: Since I was eighteen. first thug: What made you that way? valeriy: Nothing.

second thug: How is that possible? Did you grow up with both of

your parents? VALERIY: Yes.

second thug: Maybe something went wrong for you with a girl?

valeriy: Not really.

second thug: Do you believe in God?

VALERIY: Yes.

first thug: What's your religion? valeriy: I am Orthodox. second thug: What was it that Jesus said? first thug: His kind must be stoned.

There was a splice and then you could see Valeriy squatting, as instructed by the thugs, and eating the banana as they guffawed.²⁶

In another clip the thugs had filmed themselves barging into the apartment of Mikhail, an older man Lyosha had seen around for years. The clip had been edited down to twelve minutes and fifty-six seconds from what must have been a much longer ordeal. In that time, the man went from telling the thugs sternly to get out to begging for mercy. Lyosha could see repeated flashes of a taser gun. Most of the clip had been filmed through the open apartment door. At

one point, someone must have been walking up or down the stairs, because the thugs called out: "Hey, did you know you have a pedophile living here?" That was when Mikhail looked terrified for the first time and said for the first time, not yet pleadingly, "That's enough."

A few minutes later in the clip Mikhail was on the floor. He had been beaten. The words "I'm fag" had been written in ballpoint pen on his bald head. The thugs pulled him up and propped him against the wall because he could no longer stand on his own. Then they took him around the building, knocking on doors and informing neighbors that he was a pedophile. The thugs introduced themselves as representing "the social movement to prevent pedophilia." The neighbors were receptive. One man in a T-shirt and jeans, with a good haircut—he looked like a young banker or maybe a marketing executive—took down the name of the site where he would be able to watch the video. An older woman in a housecoat popped out of her apartment to testify: "I've seen it! He's got young men coming around all the time!"

The clip ended with Mikhail on his knees, promising never to correspond with boys and saying, "Long live Occupy Pedophilia." He also said, "Death to blacks," and "Glory to Russia."²⁷

The was also a clip shot on a sunny afternoon on a busy Perm street. Another acquaintance, Andrei, was being held, yelled at, and tasered by two thugs while two more looked on in view of the camera. Andrei kept calling out to passersby, asking them to call the police. No one stopped, it seemed. But Andrei kept refusing to answer questions about his sexual orientation, or about what he thought of people from the Caucasus. The taser gun kept crackling, and he kept saying, in response to every question, "What does it matter." In the end, the thugs called the police themselves. The clip ended with Andrei being pushed into the back of a police car by two officers and two Occupy thugs.²⁸

The thugs in each clip were different. They must have taken turns starring. And then there were the people off-camera, who had paid 250 rubles (roughly eight dollars) a pop to watch.

Lyosha got up and checked the door. Living alone had all at once lost all sense of accomplishment and romance. The door was locked, but it looked useless to Lyosha now. It would take but a few minutes to break down this door, and no one would know.

Darya told him that Valeriy went to the police to try to report having been kidnapped and tortured, but the police threatened him with arrest. He resigned his job at the trade school without waiting for the video to be posted online.