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'Come with me': why webcam girls and freaks burn their passports
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.by Elena Kuleshova [REGNUM] This is the third case of public abuse of a Russian passport in St. Petersburg since the beginning of the year. This time, it was burned by trash blogger Alexandra. She waved the burning document and called on the police to come get her as soon as possible.  The police complied with the request and arrived the same day. This surprised Alexandra quite a bit, as did the news that she could face real criminal punishment. BURNED MY PASSPORT AND CLEARED OUT MY ACCOUNT Now Alexandra's Telegram account is empty - she deleted all posts pending trial. But before that moment, there was a raging discussion: what were the blogger's motives? Did she understand what this would lead to? And does she understand it now? Opinions are divided on social media: some believe that the girl was simply "catching the hype" and increasing her popularity, others think that she did it on purpose - for ideological reasons. - This is my passport, and I'm going to fucking burn it right now. Here it is. That's it, come on, ***, come get me! Come get me, ***! I hope you come get me before the *** moment when I have to go to work. Because I *** have to work, ***! Ha-ha! According to some reports, Alexandra works in a strip club, but her main income comes from donations during streams. In the video, you can hear a young man urging her to be careful, but then he brings a blue plastic bucket, into which the girl throws a burning passport. They pour beer from a bottle over it. Later, she would say that she wanted to "wipe her ass with her passport," but it had already burned. But everything is preserved on the Internet: users posted a screenshot of the original message, which will also be included in the case. Irina Volk, a representative of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, wrote on her Telegram channel: "My colleagues from St. Petersburg have opened a criminal case on the grounds of a crime under Part 2 of Article 213 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation against a girl who deliberately set fire to her passport, as well as her friend. Both defendants have been detained under Article 91 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation. A preliminary investigation is underway." Alexandra's most pragmatic followers are interested in how she plans to travel somewhere without a passport, fill out documents, and get a new job? However, the illusory idea that when a document is destroyed, all obligations associated with it are immediately terminated is not new at all. FIRST THEY DO, THEN THEY CRY In Soviet times, few people dared to publicly burn and tear up important documents – passports and party cards. Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva fled to the United States in 1967. She wrote to a friend that she "burned her Soviet passport so that no one would think that she could go back.” The first Soviet NHL player, Viktor Nechayev, burned his passport in 1980, which contained a fictitious marriage to an Israeli woman, so that he could be issued a new, “clean” one. He used it for another marriage, this time to an American, in order to emigrate to the United States. "Conceptual artists", having left the USSR, sometimes made art objects out of passports and party cards, emigrants could tear up passports in front of reporters, symbolically saying goodbye to the Soviet past. But all these were individual cases, as a rule, with a political subtext. At the turn of the eighties and nineties, a completely opportunistic gesture became the public destruction of - no, not a passport (without it things would have been hard), but a party card - the catalyst for many Soviet careers. In 1990, Lenkom director Mark Zakharov burned his party card live on the Vzglyad program (by that time he had already been a member of the CPSU for seventeen years). Much later, he would say: “After many years, I am ready to honestly admit that it was a stupid, spontaneous act that I bitterly regret. The act of burning the little red book was an unbridled and completely unnecessary theatricality. It was necessary to part with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in a completely different way – calmly and with dignity.” Now there is a category of citizens who are publicly "cutting ties" with Russia - members of the informal public movement "Citizens of the USSR" (in 2022 it was recognized as an extremist organization). They apply for symbolic passports on old-style forms and categorically do not recognize Russia as a state, considering it a "commercial organization." Before destroying their Russian passport, "citizens of the USSR" apply for loans and mortgages in it. Of course, this does not end well, but until the bailiffs come, there is a place to warm up. The destruction of passports became a political performance in 2022, when non-warriors and deviationists of all stripes, the liberal creative community and ideological “opponents of the regime” began to demonstratively leave Russia - absolutely convinced that a calm, well-fed and serene life was opening up ahead, in which there was no place for a Russian passport and Russia. But everything turned out differently. Singer Eduard Sharlot, who destroyed his Russian passport and nailed a photo of Patriarch Kirill to a tree, was found guilty of rehabilitating Nazism and insulting the feelings of believers. He was sentenced to 5.5 years in a penal colony, although the Patriarch himself (through Bishop Kinelsky) asked not to apply the punishment. And the singer feigned remorse and said that he loved his country and was ready to support it. Before repenting, he managed to escape from Russia, "swear allegiance" to Ukraine, realize that his small talent was not in such demand abroad, and return from Yerevan to Moscow. In St. Petersburg, on Border Guard Day, a girl named Alena (also a webcam girl, like Alexandra) urinated on a passport at the Ploshchad Aleksandra Nevskogo metro station, and her friend filmed everything on camera. Both are now in pretrial detention until July. A little earlier, in early May, in Primorsky District, two bloggers burned a passport and posted a video on the Internet. They have not yet been identified. In addition to vulgar hype, there is another motive: preparation for emigration. It is better to go to a new homeland with symbolic capital - the status of "martyred for one's beliefs." Two years ago, Tehran Dzhamalov, a resident of Tomsk, also burned his passport: putting a Koran next to it, he said that he had lived in Russia for 25 years and "became convinced that a passport and this book are incompatible, one must choose one of the two." After which he doused the document with flammable liquid and set it on fire. That same day, he became the hero of online videos once again — when he apologized, having difficulty pronouncing the words “committed a thoughtless act.” His mother also shed tears in the video, realizing the danger of desecrating state symbols. And in August 2024, the famous freak blogger Alexander Shpak published a video in which he demonstratively burns a Russian passport and, mixing up the words, tries to sing the Ukrainian anthem. What are the risks of such “performances”? Russia is not alone in its desire to defend the honor of state symbols. In Israel, for example, the fine for damaging the flag is 60 thousand shekels (1.3 million rubles), plus a prison term of up to three years. In Spain, it is four years in prison, in Kazakhstan, up to a year and a large fine. Ireland, Turkey, Germany, Estonia, Mexico, Moldova — each country defends its symbols as best it can. The legislation in Russia is quite soft and humane. Punishment for mockery of a passport varies - charges can be brought under different articles of the Criminal Code or the Code of Administrative Offences. Tehran Dzhamalov, for example, got off with an administrative fine of 10 thousand rubles - he was tried under Article 20.3.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation ("Incitement of hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity"). However, Aleksandr Shpak was sentenced in absentia to eight years under Part 2 of Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the RF Armed Forces for reasons of political hatred”). We will soon find out what punishment awaits Alexandra and Alena. Posted by: badanov 2025-06-20 |
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