Evgeny Roizman, former mayor of Ekaterinburg, at the Kafka and Orwell Forum, Kaliningrad. Source: Gleb Fedotov / Facebook. This year, it seemed like the Kafka and Orwell intellectual forum — now in its sixth year — was going to come off without a hitch. There would be no incidents, and its participants could make their way home safely. Alas, this wasn’t the case.
The methods the Russian authorities use to defend their monopoly on public discussion of society and politics are acquiring harsher and harsher forms. The latest forum, which ran from 14-16 September in Svetlogorsk, Kaliningrad, turned into a testing ground for a new genre of police intervention — “police raid on camera”. Here, Russian riot and armed police played the role of “masked men”; and the cameras recording the proceedings were provided by Evgeny Prigozhin’s “media factory”.
Since 2012, forum participants have travelled to the Kaliningrad region to discuss the fate of Russia and the wider world. Members of the Kaliningrad branch of Transparency International – Russia have been the driving force, although the organisation itself isn’t officially involved. (Indeed, TI-R was recognised as a “foreign agent” in Russia in 2015.) This year, the forum was organised together with the Committee of Civic Initiatives and the Kaliningrad businessman Igor Pleshkov, who is also the chairman of the regional branch of liberal political party Yabloko.
