“You know very well what you did,” some muscular guys in black told an employee of a Moscow art centre as they prevented him from leaving the gallery. “People like you are the disgrace of the nation!” the owner of a beauty salon told a hairdresser, before pushing her into the street. “You betrayed your Motherland!” a teacher told his colleague, after refusing to keep working with her.
These are just some of the stories shared with openDemocracy by Russians who have lost their jobs or been treated differently at work after raising objections to the invasion of Ukraine.
According to a recent report by the Russian Ministry of Labour, in the near future, around 59,000 Russian citizens will be “released from work” – a new euphemism that means being fired. This ‘release’ is due to a crisis of the Russian economy, which is stagnating under increased isolation from the West.
