Vladimir Putin took Russia back to 1937: he went out hunting “traitors” like Stalin

A new measure imposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin imitates Soviet-era dictators and sends the country back to 1937, when Russian citizens were encouraged to denounce their close relatives and associates to “report” on the state's “traitors”.

International media began to compare this new measure to Joseph Stalin's secret police force, the NKVD (Russian acronym for the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), used to eradicate anyone who spoke out against the Communist Party during the Soviet era.

These tactics, carried out by the then head of government, resulted in more than one million people being branded as “saboteurs” or “enemies of the people” and sent to the Gulag (General Directorate of Labour Camps).

The British newspaper Express highlighted that almost 100 years after what happened, the Kremlin implemented a new hotline and website that are expected to help the agency eradicate Putin's dissidents and critics.

It is believed, according to various sources, that the authorities are sending instruction manuals to citizens through text messages on how to rat on others. Users of the social network Telegram can also use it through an exclusive dedicated channel on the platform.

This new method imposed by the Kremlin has so far led a 22-year-old saleswoman to spend 24 hours in a cell after telling a stranger in a Moscow bar that she disagreed with the war.

The affected young woman told the Sunday Telegraph that “It was just a talk... she got really upset because we didn't share her opinion and started arguing, saying that Putin and the war were absolutely right.” As a result, the man in question was expelled from the bar, but less than an hour later, Russian police showed up and asked the woman and her friends to leave.

She was then put in a cell and fined for “discrediting the Russian armed forces”.

According to Express, the Russian human rights group OVD-Info recorded similar events in recent days. One of them occurred in a school in central Russia, where the students ratted on their own teacher after secretly recording her commenting on the war.

Another case, reported via the hotline, includes a woman in Siberia who decorated a tree in her house in the colors of the Ukrainian flag and a man in Moscow who placed a Ukrainian flag on her window and, as reported, a police officer heard him criticize the invasion.

Alexandra Baeva, head of the legal department of OVD-Info, said that “In Russia now, it's like in 1937: people are afraid and inform each other.”

Recently, 176 protesters were arrested in 14 different protests in different parts of the country for being against the invasion of Ukraine.

On March 16, during one of several speeches, the president warned the traitors “scum” that loyal Russians would “spit them out like a mosquito that flew into their mouths.”

During his speech, he said that he does not judge “those who have villas in Miami or the French Riviera. Or those who can't get by without oysters or foie gras or so-called 'gender freedoms'. The problem is that they exist mentally there, and not here, with our people, with Russia.”

“The West will try to bet on the so-called fifth column, on traitors... to divide our society... to provoke a civil confrontation... to strive to achieve its goal. And there is a goal: the destruction of Russia,” he said emphatically.

Joseph Stalin used the term “fifth column” during his tenure to describe anyone who believed he was against the Communist Party.

In the Orwellian-style speech, Putin added, “I am convinced that this natural and necessary self-cleaning of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and willingness to meet any challenge.”

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