On 10 SEPTEMBER 2019, 79-year-old activist Albert Razin set fire to himself in Izhevsk, capital of the Udmurt Republic (Volga Federal District) in protest against the policy of the national government [1] concerning languages and linguistic minorities within Russia.
No fire extinguisher was near to hand and he died later in hospital.
Albert Razin
This horrendous act recalls not only Jan Palach and the protests of other young Czechs after the Warsaw Pact invasion of August 1968.
It also links back to desperate acts of the kind in Ukraine and Lithuania between 1968 and 1972 and six years later in Crimea (CCE 51.13, Musa Mamut).
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1968
On 5 December 1968 Vasily Makukh set fire to himself on Kreshchatik, the main street in Kiev, crying “Long live a free Ukraine!” He died hours later from the extensive burns (CCE 6.9 [2]).
This self-immolation took place over two months earlier than that of Jan Palach in Prague.
In February 1969 another Ukrainian attempted to follow the example of Makukh’s suicide; teacher Nikolai Berislavsky from the Rostov Region also set fire to himself in the Ukrainian capital (CCE 8.6).
6.11 Appeal by Grigorenko and Yakhimovich
If it was the intention of Pyotr Grigorenko and Ivan Yakhimovich to prevent such acts of desperation, their appeal on 23 February 1969 did not halt further attempts at self-immolation within the USSR.
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1972
On 14 May 1972 Romas Kalanta died after dousing himself in petrol and setting light to his clothes in one of the squares in Kaunas (CCE 26.11). He was holding a placard that read, “Freedom for Lithuania”.
His example was followed on 28 May that year in Varena (Lithuania) by Stonis, and on 3 June by a 60-year-old worker named Andriusevicus, again in Kaunas (see CCE 26.11).
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1978
In Crimea, in June 1978, Musa Mamut set fire to himself and died. Later that year, another Crimean Tatar hanged himself in November (CCE 51.13).
Musa Mamut
(1931-1978)
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Razin’s 2019 suicide was not the only such dramatic event in Russia.
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2018
On 31 October 2018, a young man later identified as 17-year-old student Mikhail Zhlobitsky blew himself up outside the entrance to FSB Regional HQ in Arkhangelsk (see Radio Svoboda report [R]). The incident was later classified as a terrorist attack.
Journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva discussed the incident on 7 November 2018 in her regular programme on the “Echo Moskvky in Pskov” radio station. Subsequently, she was arrested and threatened with two years’ imprisonment for ‘promoting terrorism’.
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NOTES
- See Damelya Aitkhozina, “Self-immolation highlights controversy over cultural rights in Russia“, Open Democracy, 12 September 2019.
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