Tamara Eidelman. Photo: Telegram /eidelman
A criminal case was opened against Russian historian and blogger Tamara Eidelman on Friday for the crime of “rehabilitating Nazism”, the Moscow City Prosecutor’s Office reported.
The prosecutor’s office stated that Eidelman posted a video on her YouTube channel with statements “expressing clear disrespect” for a “day of military honour” and for “insulting the memory” of Russian servicemen.
There are several “days of military honour” in Russia, the most well-known of which is Victory Day, which marks the USSR’s victory over Nazism on 9 May. However, it is unclear which date the prosecutor’s office was referring to, as the video in question was not specified.
Eidelman, who was declared a “foreign agent” in September 2022 for her anti-war stance, runs a popular history channel on YouTube with over 1.6 million subscribers. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Eidelman has been living with her daughter in Portugal and has not returned to Russia.
Eidelman told independent news outlet Takie Dela on Friday that she was not aware of the charges against her, but maintained that the criminal case against her meant that she was “doing the right thing” when she talked about the Russian government “distorting the history of World War II” and using it in its military propaganda.
The prosecutor’s office has also called for a criminal case to be brought against actress Yana Troyanova for “incitement to hatred and hostility”. On 11 June, the chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee ordered a legal evaluation of comments made by Troyanova in an interview with Novaya Gazeta Europe, during which she said that Russians “deserved” the death threats they might receive from Ukrainian citizens.
Later, the actress, who condemned the war and fled to Paris in October 2022, said that the Russian authorities were taking her words out of context. According to Troyanova, who was also deemed to be a “foreign agent” by the Russian government in November, she had simply argued that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine had turned the Ukrainian people into adversaries.
The Prosecutor General’s Office also requested that a case be opened against singer Yelizaveta Gyrdymova, better known as Russian pop superstar Monetochka, for “failing to comply with the requirements for a foreign agent” after she was accused of distributing materials without proper labels specifying her foreign agent status.
