Levada Opinion Polling Center Accuses Anti-Maidan of Libel for Claim It ‘Works for US Defense Department’

The Russian Investigative Committee has opened up a case against Dmitry Pavlov, a citizen of Belarus who is the leader of the neo-Nazi group Misanthropic Division, a group banned in Russia, Gazeta reports, citing the agency’s press release.

Pavlov is currently in Germany, and Russian authorities are preparing an extradition request to German law-enforcement.

The Investigative Committee, in cooperation with the Federal Security Service (FSB), has been conductding searches of a number of persons said to be involved in the Misanthropic Division in Moscow, Arkhangelsk Region, Bashkiria and elsewhere.

Misanthropic Division became known in connection with the war in Ukraine in 2014 and reportedly has chapters in 19 countries including Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Germany, France, Poland, the UK and elsewhere.

The Investigative Committee has reported that Misanthropic Division took part in the EuroMaidan protests as well as in combat in eastern Ukraine:

“Along with this, they have conducted a popularization of the Bandera ideology, the national-radicalized and armed forations of Ukraine (Right Sector, the Azov Regiment) and also recruited to their ranks.”

Russian authorities exaggerate the role of the ultraright groups Right Sector and Azov in both Maidan protests and later combat against Russian-backed separatists forces, but these groups have been linked with neo-Nazi ideology and activities.

As we reported last year, Misanthropic Division was involved in a report claiming mass graves of combatants killed in battle in Rostov-on-Don cemetery which was challenged by Gazeta.

Despite the ban, a number of groups with the name “Misanthropic Division” can be found on VKontakte, Russia’s most popular social network, as well as videos and other content.

But some such as “Misanthropic Division Novorossiya” are shown as blocked by the Russian government.

Translation: This material is blocked on the basis of a demand from the Russian Federation Prosecutor General’s Office from 7.21.2016 No. 27-31-2015/Id2313-15

The Siberian group for example carried a notice that Right Sector and Azov members mourned the death in battle of a fighter by the nom de guerre Ratibor at Shirokino.

He was described as supporting the nationalists of Ukraine as well as independence for Siberia:

Kolovrat, a group popular among Russian nationalists, takes its name from the word for a swastika-like symbol used by Russian neo-Nazis and neo-pagans.

The Anti-Maidan movement has appealed  in a public statement to the Ministry of Justice to investigate the Levada Center, a respected polling organization, for failing to register as a “foreign agent,” Novaya Gazeta reported.

The Anti-Maidan group was founded in 2014 with government support to counter any protest in Russia resembling Ukraine’s EuroMaidan protests that brought down the Yanukovych government. It consists of ultra-rightists, Cossacks, the Night Wolves bikers and others supportive of the Kremlin and antagonistic to liberal groups.

Lev Gudkov, director of the Levada Center, commented on Anti-Maidan’s claim:

Gudkov is referring to a tactic that a number of groups used to work around the notorious “foreign agents” law passed by President Vladimir Putin in 2013, mandating that any group with foreign funding involved in vaguely-defined “politics” has to register as a foreign agent.

By converting from grants to fee-based consulting or contract work as a business, the law — aimed at non-profit organizations — could be circumvented. The Russian government did not seem to have a problem with profit-making activity involving foreign companies; it was only opposed to NGOs that might be directly or indirectly involved in elections or political work (i,e, anything disliked by the government).

The investigation of the Levada Center signals that the Kremlin may now scrutinize those who switched to commercial contracts.

Dmitry Gudkov, a deputy of the State Duma commented on his Facebook page that the Anti-Maidan statement is like a donos, (a Soviet-style informers’ report to the secret police). He connected the Anti-Maidan complaint to a new law banning foreign companies from measuring and analyzing television audiences in Russia.

He said that the Levada Center created an affiliate that would measure all television ratings, a “monopoly in the purest form.” Said Gudkov:

“Ratings — that’s advertising, and advertising, that’s money. So they are pouring into VTsIOM like a river. It’s hard not to see a connection between the efforts of one competitor on the market of our dying sociology and the destruction of another which would count percentages less than 146%.

And now (if the Ministry of Justice reacts, about which there are no particular doubts), those who do the counting will be those who are needed, and in the way it is needed. And they will get money from where it is needed.”

In other words, the Kremlin will put the Levada Center out of business if it will not do its bidding.

The All-Russian Center for Public Opinion (VTsIOM) is known as the Levada Center for Yury Levada, a political scientist who worked at the Academy of Sciences for many years, was dismissed from his post during the Brezhnev-era purge of sociologists, and who was among the founders of the Center in 1988. Levada directed VTsIOM from 1992 to until 2003, and was subsequently editor of Social and Economic Changes: Monitoring Public Opinion until his death in 2006. VTsIOM is a company founded with 100% of the shares owned by the government.

— Catherine A. Fitzpatrick