Criminalising Lenin - Putin’s attempts to stifle dissent

Written by: Nick G. on 1 December 2025

(Above- members of the Ufa Marxist study group)

On 25 November2025, Russian state prosecutors surprised no-one by demanding 20 to 24 years in a high-security penal colony for the members of a Marxist study circle in the city of Ufa, accusing them of “terrorism” and “conspiracy to overthrow the government.”

Ufa is the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan, part of the Russian Federation, located between the Volga river and the Ural Mountains in Eastern Europe. 
Bashkortostan has a large minority nationality which formerly enjoyed autonomous rights in Lenin and Stalin’s Soviet Union when it was known as the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

It is now a scene of ethnic and political unrest.

In 2024, local Bashkir activist Fail Alsynov was sentenced to four years in a penal colony following a speech he delivered in 2023 as locals opposed plans for the development of a gold mine. Supporters said the verdict was delayed revenge for his role in protests in previous years when activists successfully blocked plans to mine for soda on a hill considered sacred by locals.

His jailing led to fresh protests by thousands of people, at which a further four people were arrested on charges carry a potential sentence of 15 years.
Alsynov had previously been fined for criticising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine online, saying the war was not in Bashkortostan’s interests.

He heads Bashkort, a grassroots movement working to preserve the culture, language and ethnic identity of the region’s people that was banned as an “extremist organisation” in 2020.

In February 2022, five persons were detained in Ufa on charges of terrorism, but really for participating in a Marxist study group. They were part of a larger group of fifteen whose houses were searched. Security forces claimed to have found two grenades at one of the houses – those arrested said they had been planted by the security police – and this was used as the basis of terrorism charges. However, the indictment also accused the defendants of reading the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin.

The arrests came a month after the “special military operation” directed at Ukraine. 

One of its members, Sergei Shapozhnikov — a former fighter in the armed formations of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” — informed the security forces that the circle was supposedly “waiting for an unstable situation to seize power and kill police officers and politicians.” No material evidence was ever provided to support these claims.

The court instructed a panel of “experts” to evaluate whether the group’s lectures and reading material could be considered “terrorist activity.” Their conclusion was that Lenin’s foundational work “State and Revolution” was a “terrorist manual.”

Putin’s regime, which claims to have inherited the anti-fascist mantle of the War Against Fascism, is itself a fascist state.  

It is criminalising the works of human emancipation and freedom and equating the study of Marxism with terrorism. Such draconian moves surely indicate that Putin’s government is beset with more troubles than he knows how to deal with – without resorting to open repression.

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