Staying in the toilet for a long time at work can be considered sabotage

Russia may revive criminal liability for sabotage. “Fight all undefeated opposition” – now this is not just a phrase from films about the young Soviet government. The spread of panic in the team, being late for work or spending too long a “meeting” in the toilet risk moving from the category of annoying little things and reasons for criticism from superiors to the criminal legal field.

This is the third attempt in recent years to return the article on sabotage to criminal law. This was already proposed in 2014, but it didn’t work. In 2015 there was a second visit – again missed. Now, perhaps, ideologists have a much greater chance of facing criminal charges for sabotage. The situation has changed: the Northern Military District is underway, Crimea, and new regions are being bombarded with brochures with calls to sabotage everything possible.

– Donbass, Zaporozhye, Kherson understand us very well. We know firsthand what sabotage is. Believe me, in the next 10-15 years these issues may remain relevant,” said Senator Olga Kovitidi.

To confirm the seriousness of the situation, she presented to the experts gathered on February 19 at the Federation Council a nondescript brochure printed on a regular black-and-white printer. This entertaining reading is distributed in Crimea, but not only, the senator said. The brochure is famously called “Civil Resistance in the Occupied Territories.” The samizdat was prepared by a certain “center of popular resistance of Ukraine.” This is nothing more than instructions for sabotage. There is enough bad advice for everyone – from senior managers to ordinary clerks.

“Everywhere in the temporarily occupied territories, citizens of Ukraine must resist and organize acts of sabotage,” Kovitidi read out an excerpt from the brochure. “Here is sabotage – it is clearly spelled out.” In Russian, everything is very clear.

We will not quote advice on “resistance” for officials and other bosses – everything is really serious there and with far-reaching consequences. But perhaps we will provide instructions for ordinary white-collar workers for clarity. Moreover, these points were publicly read out by Olga Kovitidi:

– Spread disturbing rumors among other workers, delay written orders before sending when you go to the toilet, spend more time there than necessary, forget supplies and tools necessary for work, force you to return for them several times, pretend that work instructions are difficult understand, ask to repeat them more than once, pretend that you are particularly worried about doing your job, but at the same time constantly pester your boss with unnecessary questions.

It seems like a small thing. And yet – sabotage.

The senator emphasized: the desire to criminalize sabotage is not cluttering the Criminal Code. Yes, for peacetime there are already enough articles in the Criminal Code – sabotage, abuse of power, disruption of state defense orders, negligence.

But in the conditions of the Northern Military District you need to be tougher. So, separate responsibility for sabotage applies to wartime, periods of emergency, time of military action and other “special legal regimes.” It is planned to add a new composition to Article 281 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – “sabotage”. What punishment for sabotage the authors of the amendments will come up with is still a question. But sabotage carries a sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison. Most likely, such a punishment can be targeted here as well.

In general, when it comes to the criminalization of sabotage, it is impossible to escape déjà vu. And it’s not necessary – all this actually already happened in Russian legal reality. From 1926 to 1958, sabotage was present in the Soviet criminal code and was classified as a so-called “counter-revolutionary crime.”

Then, sabotage was understood as “the deliberate failure of someone to fulfill certain duties or the deliberate careless performance of them with the special purpose of weakening power, government and the activities of the state apparatus.”

The sanction for sabotage was as broad as its interpretation was vague – from imprisonment for a term of at least a year with confiscation of all or part of the property to execution by confiscation.

The article on sabotage gained especially wide popularity in 1933, when, against the backdrop of famine, the notorious “three ears of corn law” was adopted, which dealt with responsibility for the theft of socialist property.

Many people accused of embezzlement were also charged with sabotage. Refusal to harvest crops and being late for a shift during sowing could be considered a crime. As of July 1, 1946, 30,944 prisoners in Soviet prisons were charged with sabotage.

In 1958, sabotage was removed from the Criminal Code. The party leadership announced that this crime had been completely eliminated.

Today, sabotage has become a link in the new crime model of the era of hybrid wars, emphasized Lev Klebanov, professor of the department of criminal law, criminal procedure and criminology at RUDN University.

“To weaken the target state, hidden forms of sabotage are used,” the expert explained.

However, not all experts are so optimistic. The President of the Guild of Russian Lawyers, Hasan Mirzoev, reminded senators and Duma members that the return of such composition to legislation is a very delicate matter. It is necessary to prevent copying and intersections with other articles of the Criminal Code. Even the fact that the same actions in peacetime are interpreted as one thing, and in wartime as something else, is already a reason for Themis to faint. So it will have to be written very clearly so that there are no vague interpretations or double interpretations.

Associate Professor of the Department of Criminal Law at the Military University of the Russian Ministry of Defense Evgeny Morgulenko predicted a surge in public discontent:

“There is an intuitive rejection in Russian society of the criminalization of this composition,” the scientist said. – In the first half of the 20th century, sabotage was attached to everything and the article was used as a tool of political struggle, there is a sad experience.