By Galina Korol | 2025-06-16

KYIV -- In Russia, fear is turning neighbor against neighbor, again.

Denunciations, a dark ritual of Joseph Stalin's terror, are no longer relics of history. Schoolchildren turn in teachers. Anonymous tips lead to firings at work. A stray comment or a critical posting exposes ordinary Russians to being called enemies of the state.

With the Kremlin glorifying Stalin and tightening its grip, the machinery of repression is returning and evolving.

Rise in denunciations and 'serial informers'

Russia recruited almost 300,000 informers in the first year of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the BBC's Russian service reported.

From February 2022 to August 2024, Russian authorities filed more than 10,000 cases against various defendants for antiwar pronouncements, Mediazona reported.

"It is important that people know they will be punished," Russian anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova said in a June 7 BBC video about informers.

Punishment can be ferocious if the authorities decide to create an example.

"We all understand that you can write an antiwar post and nothing will happen in Russia," she said. "And you can like an antiwar post and they'll put you in jail for seven years."

Arkhipova was targeted in fall 2022 while teaching at the Russian Presidential Academy, when the rector's office received a denunciation from someone using the name Anna Korobkova, later revealed to be a serial informer.

"Your employee has violated the law on discrediting the Russian army," Arkhipova recalls the text of the denunciation.

She realized it was a pattern when a colleague showed her an identical denunciation -- worded the same, signed by the same woman.

Investigating the identity of 'Korobkova'

Fearing reprisals and recognizing the scale of the problem, Arkhipova left Russia. From France, she launched her own investigation to uncover the identity of the informer.

In her view, the denunciations did not originate with the Federal Security Service (FSB) but from "a kind of zealot," she told the BBC.

Arkhipova began corresponding with the individual behind the denunciations and, with help from a linguist, analyzed similar complaints signed by the same name, noting repeated language.

A breakthrough came when she found a Russian-language Wikipedia page about the alleged informer. Although Wikipedia has since blocked that page, Arkhipova said it once featured photos of intelligence agency responses to Korobkova's complaints, rare public evidence of official engagement.

"These responses from intelligence agencies to denunciations are not public record," said Arkhipova, concluding the article's author likely knew Korobkova personally.

The investigation turned when Arkhipova traced a rare camera used to upload the photos to Ivan Abaturov, a Wikipedia contributor. She identified him in videos discussing informers, carrying the same camera.

"I got hold of a denunciation signed by Ivan Abaturov. I compared it with the denunciation against me that has 'Anna Vasilyevna Korobkova' written on me... These denunciations are exactly the same," said Arkhipova.

The BBC later confirmed Abaturov and Korobkova used the same IP address. Abaturov's denials only reinforced her suspicions, said Arkhipova.

'The face of the enemy within'

Dozens of similarly aliased informers now operate in Russia, according to Igor Eidman, a sociologist and commentator labeled a foreign agent by the Kremlin.

About 15% of Russians, driven by patriotic fervor, actively support the war and are likely to become informers, Eidman told Kontur.

Many of them frequent pro-war Telegram channels and report others, either out of conviction or out of fear for the country's security. Reviving denunciations became a state goal after the invasion of Ukraine, according to Eidman.

The public "needed to be shown not only an external enemy, in the form of the West and Ukraine, but also an enemy within that would need to be opposed by some kind of public mobilization," he said.

The idea is simple: when anything -- from a conversation to clothing in the colors of the Ukrainian flag -- can trigger a denunciation, open dialogue vanishes.

Russians grow afraid to speak, even around family and friends, fearing not just the state, but "their own people," Eidman explained.

The result is an atmosphere of fear that stifles dissent, crushes initiative and keeps society in a state of constant anxiety.

'Selfish goals'

Today's informers have a range of motivations, say researchers.

Eidman pointed to "various forms of self-serving snitching," noting that, as in Stalin's time, many informers act out of personal gain rather than ideology.

As before, informers may target coworkers or neighbors to gain an advantage or settle scores.

Some are driven by "the desire to show their special loyalty, their special willingness to carry out any orders from the leadership," Oleg Kozlovsky, a Russia researcher at Amnesty International, told Kontur.

Others, he added, fear the consequences of staying silent.

'With Putin's portrait on her fingernails'

Even children are not immune to denunciation under President Vladimir Putin's regime, according to analysts.

Teachers, historically part of the state's ideological apparatus, are now used to spread what he calls the "quasi-fascist ideology of Putinism" and inform on schoolchildren, said Eidman.

Kozlovsky pointed to the case of Varvara Galkina, a 10-year-old from Moscow detained by police in 2022 after her school principal turned her in.

"There were two reasons. First, with her mother's permission, she didn't attend [patriotic] Important Conversations [classes], and second, she had St. Javelin [a pro-Ukrainian internet meme] set as her WhatsApp avatar," he said.

After lengthy interrogations and a search of their home, authorities charged Varvara's mother with failing to fulfill parental duties. The family fled Russia and sought asylum in the United Kingdom.

In 2022, a Buryatia resident reported her daughter's pregnant teacher for saying "war is bad, and you shouldn't wish death on Ukrainians," Alexandra Garmazhapova, president of the Free Buryatia Foundation, told Kontur.

The teacher was fined 40,000 RUB ($501 at today's rates).

The informer "went around with Putin's portrait on her fingernails" and pushed to remove the Buryat language from the school curriculum, said Garmazhapova.

These cases raise a broader question: can Russia overcome its entrenched culture of denunciation, or is it becoming an inalienable feature of its social fabric? Such systems are resilient but not unbreakable, history suggests.

"When the regime suffers some kind of failure, defeat, it weakens... this entire political system, including the repressions and denunciations, will go to hell, as has happened more than once in Russia," said Eidman.