[<<Renaissance] [Archive] LECHAIIM JANUARY 2005 TEVES 5765 – 1 (153)
Impunity breeds lawlessness
On November 24, in the Timiryazevsky District Court of Moscow, the verdict was announced in the criminal case of the editor of the Rusich magazine, Viktor Korchagin, a publisher of Nazi and anti-Semitic literature.
On charges under Article 282, Part 1 (“inciting national and religious hatred”), the court sentenced the publisher of Hitler’s works, who called for the deportation of Jews from Russia, to one year of suspended imprisonment. Due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, Korchagin was released from punishment. This court decision gives the Nazi the right to continue to carry out his activities. The country has never created a precedent for convicting a fascist for his antisocial acts.
Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar expressed his “ambivalent attitude” in connection with the outcome of the trial of the anti-Semitic Korchagin. “I feel a certain satisfaction that the court found that Korchagin’s actions were illegal,” the rabbi said. – The court drew a fairly clear line between anti-Semitic incitement, insulting the people on the one hand, and “freedom of speech” on the other. Freedom of speech must have limits: you cannot hide behind “freedom of speech” in order to insult, incite pogroms or deportations. But I am very concerned that the culprit was not punished. What is alarming is the fact that in this case the principle of mandatory punishment for a crime did not work. Impunity breeds lawlessness – President Putin once again reminded us of this recently.”
One of the plaintiffs in the Korchagin case, a war veteran, member of the Union of Disabled Jews and Veterans of the Great Patriotic War, Boris Grigorievich Stambler, commented on the results of the trial in a conversation with journalist Anna Baskakova.
“Hateful ideas should not have a statute of limitations,” he said. – I believe that judge Oleg Borisov deliberately delayed the trial so that the statute of limitations could be declared. This verdict is a mockery of common sense, facts and the law. Korchagin flooded the country with extremist, fascist literature and must suffer more severe punishment. His place is behind bars. I am not thirsty for blood, but not fining Korchagin and not even banning him from publishing is outright blasphemy, mockery, humiliation of us, front-line soldiers who shed blood in the fight against fascism. In fact, Korchagin has been given the green light to continue his anti-Semitic activities.”
Boris Stambler went through almost the entire war, served in the 237th Guards Rifle Regiment, was a mortarman, took part in the capture of Orel and Kursk; During the crossing of the Dnieper he was seriously wounded. Despite the wound, he continued to fire. Subsequently, for his soldierly feat, he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War. At the end of 1944, Boris Grigorievich was discharged from the hospital and soon entered the Moscow Civil Engineering Institute. Kuibysheva. After graduating from the institute, he worked at the Giprokhim Institute for 33 years. “I designed a large number of factories, restored a destroyed country,” the veteran says bitterly. “And now the publishers of anti-Semitic literature are proposing to expel me, a patriot of my homeland, from the country on ethnic grounds. They propose to expel the entire Jewish population of the country! It’s hard to imagine a greater humiliation for us.”
B.G. Stambler.
“Guys of different nationalities fought at the front - Russians, Georgians, Jews, Tatars,” continued Boris Stambler. “We all ate from the same pot, and everyone’s blood was the same color.” And now the country that has defeated fascism allows fascism to revive!”
The irreconcilable struggle of B. Stambler and his fellow veterans against manifestations of Russian anti-Semitism did not begin yesterday. “Back in the early 1990s, reading Pamyat publications and seeing anti-Semitic leaflets, I could not pass by, I could not help but react. I repeatedly turned to Gorbachev, but received no answers to my statements that ethnic hatred was being incited in the country. I joined the Union of Disabled Jews and War Veterans. Together with Efim Gokhberg and Ilya Sobol, who, unfortunately, have already passed away, we fought against this evil. We wrote to the Prosecutor General's Office and... received replies. The Prosecutor General’s Office openly condoned anti-Semites and took them under its protection.”
“Korchagin published the newspaper Russkie Vedomosti, and repeatedly published false information about Jews in it, as well as in the brochure The Essence of Zionism,” B. Stambler continued his story. – In 1995, I became one of those who contributed to the initiation of a criminal case against Korchagin. The Timiryazevsky court convicted him of deliberately inciting ethnic hatred. And the judge gave him the maximum sentence at that time. Ironically, the fascist Korchagin was amnestied in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people over fascism!”
As the veteran said, after the amnesty, Korchagin did not calm down; on the contrary, he intensified his illegal activities: he published “Russian Vedomosti”, which was closed in 2002 for inciting ethnic hatred, the magazines “Rusich-1”, “Rusich-2” and “Rusich-2”. 3". For all these publications he received warnings from law enforcement agencies. Korchagin’s case was initiated and dismissed many times, finally in 2003 it was initiated again after the publication of a collection entitled: “Jew-Masons. Rusich-3". The applicants were Boris Stambler and historian Viktor Dashevsky. The case contains the conclusion of professor, doctor of sociology Lionel Dodiani that in Korchagin’s publications there is incitement of interethnic and interreligious hatred, as well as insult and humiliation of the Russian people... The absurd verdict of the court drew a line under the trial.
“It takes all my time to fight anti-Semitism,” the veteran finished his story. “I cannot come to terms with the fact that so-called “patriots” are distributing slanderous, false publications against Jews.”
Based on materials from AEN
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