Pyotr Ryabov. Source: “Vkontakte”.
The space for public discussion in Belarus is contracting. The news on 11 October that a Belarusian court had arrested Pyotr Ryabov, a Russian historian and member of the self-styled anarcho-communist alliance “Autonomous Action”. Ryabov was convicted of “petty hooliganism” and banned from entering the country for ten years for supposedly using abusive language and distributing extremist material. This is not the first time the authorities have shown an interest in Ryabov: he has previously been detained for picketing and prior to public lectures.
Pyotr Ryabov has a PhD in philosophy and is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy at Moscow’s Lenin State Pedagogical University. He lectures on Ancient Greece at Moscow’s Arhe cultural and educational centre and researches the history and philosophy of Anarchism. He is the author of several books on anarchism, history and Ancient Greece. At first glance, this looks ike a purely academic career, but Ryabov still posed a danger to Alexander Lukashenka’s regime.
