Mariia Vasilevskaia
Sociologist, Head of research at OVD-Info, Founder of the Hannah Arendt Research Centre
"Knowingly False Information": How Trials Construct Memories of the Present
Article 207.3 of the Russian Criminal Code, which de facto restricts freedom of speech on the actions of the Russian Armed Forces (also known as the "'army fakes' article"), was passed in its first version on 25 March 2022 and, as of March 2024, had resulted in 118 court judgements. Since the article does not set out the criteria by which the "knowingly false information" prohibited by it from being disseminated could be defined, the quest for such criteria has become a matter of law enforcement practice. Given that the article entered into force only a month after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is reasonable to assume that all participants in the trial: judges, defendants, defense lawyers, witnesses and experts from the defense and prosecution sides, etc., at the "fake" trials were forced to build arguments "from scratch", without relying on the established precedents.
Paradoxically, in a situation where statements about the Russian armed forces carry the risk of criminal prosecution, the hearings under the "fakes" article, which restricts the freedom to speak about them, are almost the last manifestation in Russia of any public discussion on the topic of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Public discussions, in turn, are capable of shaping the "memory of the present", i.e. perceptions of the historical, on the basis of which historical memory will be built up in the future. In this respect, it is important to ask how exactly the narratives about Russia's actions in Ukraine, voiced in the "fake stories" trials by various actors, are constructed. What symbols and protagonists are included in these narratives and can we trace their sources? What determines which narrative a litigant resorts to? Do statements about warfare made in court contain moral judgments, and which logics of argumentation do they resort to?
To address these issues, we used the "Judicial Monster" program developed by the OVD-Info team and downloaded conviction records relating to Article 207.3 from the official justice website, and then selected those that contained the verdict texts. The texts received (N=36) were manually coded and then analyzed, focusing on such narrative characteristics as perpetrator and victim, terms and symbols and other discourse elements, together with the publicly available information about the parties involved. Then, drawing on the theory of the justification of justice formulated by L. Boltanski and L. Thévenot, we analyzed the moral judgments present in the case files. In this report, we present the results of this mini-research.
Paradoxically, in a situation where statements about the Russian armed forces carry the risk of criminal prosecution, the hearings under the "fakes" article, which restricts the freedom to speak about them, are almost the last manifestation in Russia of any public discussion on the topic of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Public discussions, in turn, are capable of shaping the "memory of the present", i.e. perceptions of the historical, on the basis of which historical memory will be built up in the future. In this respect, it is important to ask how exactly the narratives about Russia's actions in Ukraine, voiced in the "fake stories" trials by various actors, are constructed. What symbols and protagonists are included in these narratives and can we trace their sources? What determines which narrative a litigant resorts to? Do statements about warfare made in court contain moral judgments, and which logics of argumentation do they resort to?
To address these issues, we used the "Judicial Monster" program developed by the OVD-Info team and downloaded conviction records relating to Article 207.3 from the official justice website, and then selected those that contained the verdict texts. The texts received (N=36) were manually coded and then analyzed, focusing on such narrative characteristics as perpetrator and victim, terms and symbols and other discourse elements, together with the publicly available information about the parties involved. Then, drawing on the theory of the justification of justice formulated by L. Boltanski and L. Thévenot, we analyzed the moral judgments present in the case files. In this report, we present the results of this mini-research.
Mariia Vasilevskaia
Sociologist, Head of research at OVD-Info, Founder of the Hannah Arendt Research Centre
"Knowingly False Information": How Trials Construct Memories of the Present
Article 207.3 of the Russian Criminal Code, which de facto restricts freedom of speech on the actions of the Russian Armed Forces (also known as the "'army fakes' article"), was passed in its first version on 25 March 2022 and, as of March 2024, had resulted in 118 court judgements. Since the article does not set out the criteria by which the "knowingly false information" prohibited by it from being disseminated could be defined, the quest for such criteria has become a matter of law enforcement practice. Given that the article entered into force only a month after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is reasonable to assume that all participants in the trial: judges, defendants, defense lawyers, witnesses and experts from the defense and prosecution sides, etc., at the "fake" trials were forced to build arguments "from scratch", without relying on the established precedents.
Paradoxically, in a situation where statements about the Russian armed forces carry the risk of criminal prosecution, the hearings under the "fakes" article, which restricts the freedom to speak about them, are almost the last manifestation in Russia of any public discussion on the topic of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Public discussions, in turn, are capable of shaping the "memory of the present", i.e. perceptions of the historical, on the basis of which historical memory will be built up in the future. In this respect, it is important to ask how exactly the narratives about Russia's actions in Ukraine, voiced in the "fake stories" trials by various actors, are constructed. What symbols and protagonists are included in these narratives and can we trace their sources? What determines which narrative a litigant resorts to? Do statements about warfare made in court contain moral judgments, and which logics of argumentation do they resort to?
To address these issues, we used the "Judicial Monster" program developed by the OVD-Info team and downloaded conviction records relating to Article 207.3 from the official justice website, and then selected those that contained the verdict texts. The texts received (N=36) were manually coded and then analyzed, focusing on such narrative characteristics as perpetrator and victim, terms and symbols and other discourse elements, together with the publicly available information about the parties involved. Then, drawing on the theory of the justification of justice formulated by L. Boltanski and L. Thévenot, we analyzed the moral judgments present in the case files. In this report, we present the results of this mini-research.
Paradoxically, in a situation where statements about the Russian armed forces carry the risk of criminal prosecution, the hearings under the "fakes" article, which restricts the freedom to speak about them, are almost the last manifestation in Russia of any public discussion on the topic of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Public discussions, in turn, are capable of shaping the "memory of the present", i.e. perceptions of the historical, on the basis of which historical memory will be built up in the future. In this respect, it is important to ask how exactly the narratives about Russia's actions in Ukraine, voiced in the "fake stories" trials by various actors, are constructed. What symbols and protagonists are included in these narratives and can we trace their sources? What determines which narrative a litigant resorts to? Do statements about warfare made in court contain moral judgments, and which logics of argumentation do they resort to?
To address these issues, we used the "Judicial Monster" program developed by the OVD-Info team and downloaded conviction records relating to Article 207.3 from the official justice website, and then selected those that contained the verdict texts. The texts received (N=36) were manually coded and then analyzed, focusing on such narrative characteristics as perpetrator and victim, terms and symbols and other discourse elements, together with the publicly available information about the parties involved. Then, drawing on the theory of the justification of justice formulated by L. Boltanski and L. Thévenot, we analyzed the moral judgments present in the case files. In this report, we present the results of this mini-research.