Holocaust denial has expired – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

Holocaust denial has expired - Picture of the Day - Kommersant

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The City Court of St. Petersburg terminated the criminal case of ex-professor of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration Vladimir Matveev, who was accused of rehabilitating Nazism under Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. A teacher with 30 years of experience in 2021 at a webinar for school teachers called the Holocaust a positive phenomenon, and considered the facts about the crimes and the number of Jews killed to be fiction. This decision was made “in connection with the expiration of the statute of limitations for criminal liability.”

The St. Petersburg City Court dismissed the case on the rehabilitation of Nazism against Vladimir Matveev “due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for criminal liability,” the statement says. message joint press service of the courts. According to Art. 354.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (rehabilitation of Nazism), the teacher was threatened with a fine of up to 3 million rubles. or imprisonment for three years, followed by a three-year ban on holding certain positions. However, Part 1 of Art. 354.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, under which Mr. Matveev passes, refers to crimes of minor gravity and the term for bringing to criminal responsibility for it is two years.

As previously told “Kommersant”, the reason for the persecution of Mr. Matveev was his speech at a webinar organized by the Leningrad Regional Institute for the Development of Education for teachers entitled “Preparing lessons in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and the soldiers of the Red Army, the liberators of Auschwitz” in January 2021. Associate Professor of the North-Western Institute of Management RANEPA (SZIU RANEPA) and St. Petersburg State University of Economics Vladimir Matveev spoke to the deputy directors of schools for educational work with the report “Historical Truth and Myths in the System of Public Administration”.

The lecturer convinced his listeners that the Holocaust was a Zionist invention. So, on one of the slides of the presentation it was said, for example: “The Holocaust is a positive phenomenon.”

In particular, in Judaism, he pointed out, the Holocaust is a mechanism for punishing fellow tribesmen: “When it comes to memory, then this is nothing else, in the terminology of Judaism, like criminals. Therefore, when they say “the day of remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust”, then you need to translate it into their own language. This means that this is a day of remembrance for the actual criminals.”

According to the data presented by Vladimir Matveev, about 5 million Jews lived in Europe before the Second World War: “And we are talking about 6 million destroyed. There is no archival data that 6 million were destroyed in concentration camps.” He called the furnaces for burning corpses in concentration camps “another myth”: “Gas chambers for the destruction of people were not found. This gas was used for disinfection … It was impossible to pass 6 million victims through all the concentration camps. Therefore, this figure – 6 million – is nothing but a fiction.

After the rising scandal of the teacher fired from the university, and two months later a criminal case was opened against him for the rehabilitation of Nazism. Vladimir Matveev appealed to the St. Petersburg court with a demand to declare illegal and cancel the order on his dismissal, reinstate him in his position and compensate 766 thousand rubles. on account of his forced absenteeism from January 28 to September 7, 2021. At the RANEPA, he worked as a professor of business informatics, mathematical and statistical methods at the Faculty of Economics and Finance.

Vladimir Matveev did not agree with the dismissal, because, in his opinion, no immoral offense had been committed.

However, in November 2021, the court refused to restore.

“You need to understand that this is a non-rehabilitating ground,” Yana Kirillova, a lawyer and senior lawyer in the dispute resolution practice at SSP-Consult, commented on the court’s decision to stop the prosecution. as grounds for prosecution. In principle, there are few such cases, so it is difficult to conclude whether the statute of limitations for this offense often expires, but in general, this is a common story with respect to minor crimes.

Earlier, Matveev’s lawyer Maxim Bogdankov told Kommersant that his client does not admit guilt, and the position of the defense is based on the fact that there was no denial of the facts established by the Nuremberg Tribunal.

Ekaterina Ryazanova, St. Petersburg

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