Russia is increasingly adopting brutal Soviet-era practices, characterized by the erasure of judicial records, severe sentencing for minor dissent, and the rehabilitation of the architects of the “Red Terror.”
- The Russian Supreme Court has deleted two decades of judicial statistics from its official website.
- Political prisoner counts rose to 1,217 by the end of 2025, up from 805 at the end of 2024.
- A new decree allows security bodies to arrest and detain war opponents without a court decision.
Political Repression in Russia and Judicial Transparency
The Russian Supreme Court has removed all judicial statistics from the past two decades from its website. The court failed to publish required new data by April 20 and subsequently removed existing records, replacing them with a message regarding “temporary unavailability.”
These statistics served as a critical tool for mapping the scale of state repressions. The deleted data included conviction numbers, demographic breakdowns, and the specific articles of the criminal code used to impose sentences.
Political scientist Yekaterina Shulman noted that these records were a key window into the judiciary, allowing observers to track year-on-year trends and assess how Russian courts operate.
Escalating Repressive Measures
Recent court cases highlight a sharp increase in harsh sentencing. Sergei Veselov was sentenced to 13 years in prison for writing the approximate number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine on a bus-stop shelter wall. The court classified the act as vandalism motivated by political hatred and the spreading of “fake news.”
Other critics have faced financial and legal penalties. Sociologist Salavat Abyzalikov was fined 5,000 roubles for an interview regarding Russia’s demographic crisis, which suggested the population could fall to between 57 million and 90 million by 2100.
In some instances, the state has pursued prosecution despite clear errors. Activist Pavel Andreyev faces criminal charges after investigators confused him with a namesake from another city, continuing the case despite the mistake.
The Scale of State Repression
From the start of the invasion of Ukraine through September 2025, 692 people were criminally prosecuted on charges of “spreading false information” or “discrediting” the army.
Beyond these charges, a new decree approved by President Vladimir Putin allows security bodies to arrest critics of the war without a court decision. Under this mandate, opponents of the war can be transported to and held in detention centers without trial.
The Rehabilitation of Felix Dzerzhinsky
The Kremlin has further signaled a return to Stalin-era practices by renaming the FSB Academy. The secret service training institution now bears the honorary name of Felix Dzerzhinsky.
Dzerzhinsky served as the head of the first Soviet secret police and was the primary organizer of the “Red Terror” following the 1917 revolution.
The Institute for the Study of War described the renaming as a symbolic return to the brutal internal security practices of the Soviet era.
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