Legal Problems and Agamben‘s State of Emergency‖ in Post-February Russia: Methodological Analysis

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24234/wisdom.v30i2.1104

Keywords:

denunciation, anti-militarist persecution, bureaucracy, law enforcement, complaint, state of exception, Agamben

Abstract

This article presents document flow in the context of the “state of exception” (according to Giorgio Agamben), which abolishes the effect of the usual legal distinctions, when, for example, “it is impossible to draw a line between peace and war”. As a scientific contribution, the authors deepen the binary/bipolar dimension of complaints/denunciations to a plural and bureaucratic dimension and explore them from a plurality of perspectives: user, legislative and law enforcement.The statistics indicates that the vast majority of investigations are related to the anti-war Internet activity of the defendants, for registration and evidence of which predominantly automated search systems and screen-work by law enforcement bureaucrats are used, rather than a written or oral flow of grassroots/spontaneous complaints/denunciations. Research shows the diversity of government agencies/bodies involved and interdepartmental competition for quick quantitative results (the ratio of cases filed and sentences), as well as Agamben’s abolition of customary legal distinctions.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Agadjanian, A., & Dubrovsky, D. (2023). Freedom of Academia in and out: Social Sciences and Humanities in the Time of Geopolitical Crisis. A Review of the Conference Held at Yerevan State University on October 19-21, 2023. Analytical Bulletin (CCCS), 17: 78-85. DOI: https://doi.org/10.56673/18294502-23.17-78

Agamben, G. (1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Redwood City: Stanford University Press.

Berenson, M. (2010). Serving citizens: How comparable are polish and Russian “street-level” bureaucrats? Comparative Political Studies, 43(5), 578-605. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414009356174

Berenson, M. (2011). Russia-Decade of Reform: Administrative Reform and Public Service Delivery. World Bank.

Bogdanova, E. (2014). Researching Complaints: Traditions and Perspectives. Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research, 6(3), 4–7.

Bogdanova, E. (2021). Complaints to the Authorities in Russia: A Trap between Tradition and Legal Modernization. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315143088

Buffat, A. (2015). Street-level bureaucracy and e-government. Public Management Review 17.1, 149-161. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2013.771699

Cohen, S. (2011). Folk devils and moral panics. Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203828250

Douglas, M. (1986). How Institutions Think. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Dubrovskiy, D. (2020). Akademicheskoye soobshchestvo i “gumanitarnaya” sudebnaya ekspertiza po ekstremizmu v sovremennoy Rossii (The Academic Community And ‘humanitarian’ Forensic Expertise On Extremism In Modern Russia, in Russian). Zhurnal issledovaniy sotsial’noy politiki (The Journal of Social Policy Studies), 18(4), 721-736. https://doi.org/10.17323/727-0634-2020-18-4-721-736 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17323/727-0634-2020-18-4-721-736

Fedosova, K., & Kuksa T. (2024). Censorship, Denunciations, Silence Mode in Russian Academy: Informal Intimidation and Direct Pressure on Scholars. Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research, 16(3). In the process of publication

Fitzpatrick, S. (1996a). Supplicants, and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Slavic Review 55(1), 78-105. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2500979

Fitzpatrick, S. (1996b). Signals from Below: Soviet Letters of Denunciation of the 1930s. The Journal of Modern History, 68(4), 831-866. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/245396

Fitzpatrick, S., & Gellately, R. (1996). Introduction to the Practices of Denunciation in Modern European History. The Journal of Modern History, 68(4), 747-767. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/245392

Fitzpatrick, Sh. (1997a). Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789–1989. University of Chicago Press.

Fitzpatrick, Sh. (1997b). Editor’s Introduction: Petitions and Denunciations in Russian and Soviet History. Russian History, 24(1/2), 1-9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/187633197X00014

Fitzpatrick, Sh. (1997c). Readers’ Letters To “Krest’ianskaia Gazeta”, 1938. Russian History, 24(1/2), 149-170. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/187633197X00096

Fitzpatrick, Sh. (1997d). The Letter as a Work of Art: A Housing Claim in the Style of an “Anketa.” Russian History, 24(1/2), 189-202. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/187633197X00113

Fitzpatrick, Sh. (1999). Everyday Stalinism: ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia in the 30s. Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195050004.001.0001

Graham, M. (2002). Emotional Bureaucracies: Emotions Civil Servants, and Immigrants in the Swedish Welfare State. Ethos, 30(3), 199-226. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.2002.30.3.199

Hendley, K. (2017). Everyday law in Russia. Cornell University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501705243.001.0001

Herzfeld, M. (1992). The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Herzfeld, M. (2005). Political Optics and the Occlusion of Intimate Knowledge. American Anthropologist, 107(3), 369-76. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2005.107.3.369

Heyman, J. (2012). Deepening the Anthropology of Bureaucracy. Anthropological Quarterly, 85(4), 1269-1277. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2012.0067

Hoag, C. (2011). Assembling Partial Perspectives: Thoughts on the Anthropology of Bureaucracy. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 34(1), 81-94. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1555-2934.2011.01140.x

Ignatieff, M. (2019/ 2003). Prava cheloveka kak politika i kak idolopoklonstvo (Human rights as a politician and as idolatry, in Russian). Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.

Kozlov, V. (1996). Denunciation and Its Functions in Soviet Governance: A Study of Denunciations and Their Bureaucratic Handling from Soviet Police Archives, 1944–1953. The Journal of Modern History, 68(4), 867-898. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/245397

Kozlova, I. (2022). Antivoyennyye protesty: kakiye motivy u protestuyushchikh protiv voyny? (Anti-war protests: What are the motives of anti-war protesters?). In Dalekaya blizkaya voyna: Kak rossiyane vosprinimayut voyennyye deystviya v Ukraine fevral-iyun’ 2022. (A far near war: How Russians perceive military actions in Ukraine February-June 2022, in Russian). Analytical report based on the results of a qualitative sociological study. (S. Yerpylyova & N. Savelyeva, Eds.). RetrievedApril 4, 2024 from http://publicsociology.tilda.ws/war_report

Kozlova, I., & Levochskaya, E. (2023). I Felt Frightened and Then I Started Singing’: Songs at Russian Protest Actions. Folklorica, Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association, 27, 51-80. https://journals.ku.edu/folklorica/article/view/21550 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17161/folklorica.v27i.21550

Kuksa, T. (2011). Rol’ i mesto protsedur dosudebnogo obzhalovaniya v kontrole za sferoy gosudarstvennogo upravleniya, ili perspektivnyye napravleniya administrativnoy i sudebnoy reform (The role and place of pre-trial appeal procedures in the control of public administration, or promising areas of administrative and judicial reform, in Russian). Public Administration Issues, 1, 81-96.

Kuksa, T. (2020). Chrezvychaynoye gosudarstvennoye regulirovaniye predotvrashcheniya rasprostraneniya COVID-19 v Rossii: byurokraticheskaya logika prinyatiya resheniy i medikalizatsiya povsednevnosti v nachale pandemii (Emergency state regulation to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Russia: bureaucratic logic of decision-making and medicalization of everyday life at the beginning of the pandemic, in Russian). The Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology, 23(4), 183-203.

Kuksa, T. (2022). Activism and Patient Vulnerability: Resistance to Medical Authority and Regulation in Russia. Folklorica, Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association, 26, 1-33. https://doi.org/10.17161/folklorica.v26i.18369 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17161/folklorica.v26i.18369

Lipsky, M. (1969). Toward a Theory of Street-level Bureaucracy. Madison, WI: Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin. (Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers, no. 48).

Lipsky, M. (2010). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public service. Russell Sage Foundation.

McKay, R. (2012). Documentary Disorders: Managing Medical Multiplicity in Maputo, Mozambique. American Ethnologist, 39(3), 545-61. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01380.x

Muradyan, S. (2023). Voprosy primeneniya stat'i 280.3 UK RF o diskreditacii ispol'zovaniya Vooruzhennyh Sil Rossijskoj Federacii ili ispolneniya gosudarstvennymi organami svoih polnomochij (Issues of Application of Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on Discrediting the Use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation or the Execution by State Authorities of their Powers, in Russian). Criminological journal, 1, 87-94.

Orlova, G. (2004). Rossiyskiy donos i ego metamorfozy: Zametki o poetike politicheskoy kommunikatsii. (Russian denunciation and its metamorphoses: Notes on the poetics of political communication, in Russian). Polis: Politicheskiye issledovaniya, 2, 133-145. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2004.02.13

Paneyakh, E. (2011). Traektoriya ugolovnogo dela i obvinitel’nyi uklon v rossiiskom sude (The trajectory of the criminal case and the indictment in a Russian court). In V.V. Volkova (Ed.), Pravo i pravoprimenenie v Rossii: mezhdistsiplinarnye issledovaniya. Pod red. V.V. Volkova. (Law and enforcement in Russia: interdisciplinary research, in Russian) (pp. 150-177). Moscow: Statut.

Paneyakh, E., Titaev, K., Volkov, V., & Primakov, D. (2010). Obvinitel’nyi uklon v ugolovnom protsesse: faktor prokurora (The accusatory bias in the criminal process: the factor of the prosecutor, in Russian). St. Petersburg: EU St. Petersburg.

Serebrennikov, D. (2023). Gaze Ex Machina: Kratkaya istoriya sistem policejskogo videonablyudeniya v Rossii i za rubezhom (Gaze Ex Machina: Brief History of the Police CCTV Surveillance in Russia and Western Countries, in Russian). Urban Studies and Practices, 8(3), 101-112. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17323/usp832023101-112

Shamaev, A. & Boloban, M. (2022). Issues of Law Enforcement Practice in the Qualification of Acts Falling Under Art. 280.3. Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Public Actions Aimed at Discrediting the Use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”. Obrazovaniye I Pravo, 4, 186-190.

Shklyaruk, M., Skugarevsky, D., Dmitriyeva, A., Skifsky, I., & Begtin, I. (2015). Kriminal’naya statistika-cherez otkrytost’ k upravlyayemosti (Criminal Statistics: Mechanisms of Formation, Causes of Distortion, and Ways to Reform. Research Report, in Russian). Saint-Petersburg, Moscow: “Norma, Tsentr nezavisimykh sotsialnykh issledovany i obrazovaniya”.

Stepkin, R., & Ryapukhina, I. (2022). Some law enforcement practice issues in case of bringing to administrative responsibility under part 1 of the article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation. Vestnik of Putilin Belgorod Law Institute of Ministry of the Interior of Russia, 3, 83-87.

Tendryakova, M. (2010). Detskiye donosy i yuvenal’naya yustitsiya (Children’s denunciations and juvenile justice, in Russian). Educational Policy, 9-10(47), 106-114.

Utekhin, I. (2004). Iz nablyudeniy nad poetikoy zhaloby (From observations on the poetics of complaint, in Russian). Studia Ethnologica: Trudy fakul’teta etnologii, lingvistika i poetika, 2, 274-305.

Yurchak, Al. (2014). Eto bylo navsegda, poka ne konchilos’: Posledneye sovetskoye pokoleniye (Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The last Soviet generation, in Russian). Moscow: “Novoye literaturnoye obozreniye”. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400849109

Zhulin, A., Kuksa, T., Nikolenko, A. et al. (2010). Registr polnomochij federal'nyh organov ispolnitel'noj vlasti: ekspertnaya sistematizaciya i analiz deyatel'nosti (Register of powers of federal executive bodies: expert systematization and analysis of the performance, in Russian). Moscow: Institute for Public Administration and Municipal Management, HSE. http://gos.hse.ru/downloads/2010/Registr_polnomochij_2010.pdf

Downloads

Published

2024-12-25

How to Cite

KUKSA, T., & FEDOSOVA, K. (2024). Legal Problems and Agamben‘s State of Emergency‖ in Post-February Russia: Methodological Analysis. WISDOM, 30(2). https://doi.org/10.24234/wisdom.v30i2.1104

Issue

Section

Articles