If you know your internet memes, you’ve probably already met Eduard Hill, the ‘Soviet Rick Astley’ whose somewhat sinister lip-synched song is being sent by scores of bemused American hipsters to their unwitting friends.
Meanwhile, their counterparts in the Russian blogosphere are getting fired up by a much more literal car crash; in which a senior LukOil executive collided with a car carrying a respected doctor and her daughter, killing them both.
As is often the case, a cover up appears to have taken place. In response,reported the Moscow Times,
a public outcry began to swell as Moscow radio stations dedicated hours of debate to whether the accident showed that the notoriously corrupt police were little more than a force to protect the country’s strong from ordinary citizens. The crash quickly became the most-discussed topic in the Russian blogosphere.
Even if the internet outcry will force e-justice to be served, the incident exposes a failing that, more than ‘Kremlin authoritarianism’, poses the greatest obstacle to democracy in Russia: it is this rudimentary lack of rule of law, or rather, a rule of law that so crudely mirrors and reproduces the power divisions of a highly fractured society.
On Thursday, three more people died ‘mysteriously’ in police custody, the cop that killed a journalist got off lightly, and innocent people continue to get swept up in law enforcement operations, without redress.
Last week, at the start of his Strasbourg challenge, Khodorkovsky said that ‘Russia’s law enforcement system — from field detective work to court verdict — “is in essence a business that deals in legalizing the use of force”.
Whatever one may think of Khodorkovsky and his guilt or innocence, it is hard not to agree.
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