The Central Military Court of the Yekaterinburg District in Russia has concluded the trial of five members of a Marxist study group from the city of Ufa. The defendants had been officially designated as “terrorists” and “extremists” even before the trial began and were placed on the registry of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring).
The five men, who have been in custody since February 2022, consistently denied all charges throughout the proceedings and reported being subjected to torture during their detention.
According to the court, the group had been meeting since 2016 at the Stalin Museum in Ufa, where they studied the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin.
Testimony from security officials monitoring the group claimed that, through their study of Marxist theory, the members concluded that a revolution was necessary in Russia. During their arrest at the home of one group member—who had previously fought as a volunteer in the Donbas—the security services alleged that they discovered two offensive hand grenades and a hunting firearm. The defendant has stated that the weapons were planted by the authorities.
In an effort to link all members of the group to terrorism-related charges, judicial authorities commissioned an “expert panel” to substantiate claims of “terrorist activity,” relying on video recordings of lectures organized by the group and the literature they used.
The panel concluded that State and Revolution, Lenin’s foundational and widely known political work, constitutes a “terrorist manual,” a finding used to justify the convictions.
The court ultimately sentenced the five defendants to prison terms ranging from 16 to 22 years for “terrorist activity.”
Anti-communist repression in contemporary Russia
“They call communists terrorists. I no longer have the strength—I am old and ill. Do not torture me, just shoot me. I do not understand what I am being accused of,” said pensioner Yuri Efimov during his final statement in court. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
“I am listed on the Myrotvorets website,” said Pavel Matisov, who received a 22-year sentence. “It says there that I am a terrorist. It’s absurd—to be labeled a terrorist both there and here.” (Myrotvorets is a database compiled by Ukrainian nationalist groups, with government backing, that lists individuals deemed ‘undesirable,’ including members of the Communist Party of Greece.)
Rinat Burkeev, sentenced to 16 years in prison, described the verdict as “an act of political retaliation against Lenin’s legacy. This is decommunization, taking place in a country that once defeated fascism. Only someone driven by political hatred toward Lenin, Stalin, and Karl Marx could carry out such a prosecution.”
The verdict is widely seen as another indication of the anti-communist and anti-democratic trajectory of contemporary bourgeois Russia.