The trial of the Seventh Studio case is over - and perhaps with an unexpected result: suspended sentences and fines for the defendants. We’re now in a situation where a suspended sentence seems like a win for common sense and justice.
Everyone who has followed this case knows what’s happened over the past three years of persecution, house arrest and investigative detention. The investigation and judge has pressured witnesses, engaged in outright lying and manipulation of documents. The people who found themselves in the dock – director Kirill Serebrennikov, director of the Russian Academic Youth Theatre Sofiya Apfelbaum, Gogol Center director Alexey Malobrodsky and Seventh Studio general director Yuri Itin – did not engage in a conspiracy to defraud or consciously commit a crime. Yes, there were accounting violations in Seventh Studio’s books. But Russia’s legislation governing cultural institutions is written in such a way that it’s very easy to break it, even without any intention.
Russia’s Ministry of Culture is formally considered an aggrieved party in the Seventh Studio trial. But if we want to talk about accounting violations, then the ministry is no less responsible – the ministry as an institution, not its former employee Sofiya Apfelbaum.
