The diary of the Anonymous from Russia takes the testimony of both well-known dissidents who have remained in their homeland, those who have emigrated, ordinary citizens who still have the courage to express themselves on Russian social networks, and friends of the Anonymous who reveal their own daily lives and their reflections and analyses. The gaze of these Russians, be they intellectuals, artists, politicians, economists or ordinary thinking and educated citizens, opens up unexpected glimpses of truth not only about Russia, but also about the present and past of Europe seen ‘from outside’. In Russia, beyond politics, there is not only another politics and another society, but also a cultural life that will never die.

The Diary of the Anonymous: Russia, 26 September 2025

Children forced to cook for the front, ‘denazifying’ gatherings of fascists from all over the world in St Petersburg, one leader scolds the other for putting old books in school windows in case of bombing, but the reason is that Soviet books were the best in the world.

Vladislav Romancov has already been categorised as an ‘extremist’

It is long past summer, when in the cities of the north the long sunsets well into the night delude you and console you by blowing a little beauty, as an oasis of aesthetic resistance to the squalor of all manipulation. Walking through the streets, however, the rhythm of the day is still cadenced by the voices on the buses and in the subways and the signs on billboards offering young people to sign rich contracts with the armed forces, to become ‘heroes’. And it is an increasingly suffocating soundtrack to the everyday.

In the meantime, if you open your phone you learn that the new Director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Navalnyj‘s, Vladislav Romancov, has already been placed on the register of ‘terrorists and extremists’. His name appeared on the corresponding list maintained by the ‘Rosfinmonitoring’ (Federal Service for Financial Monitoring). “Less than a month after my appointment as director, I have already become an extremist: I consider this a good assessment of my work. Have I achieved anything, then? My colleagues will finally stop looking at me with suspicion: I can breathe a sigh of relief,’ Romancov commented on his inclusion in the register. Vladislav Romancov has been head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation since 1 September 2025. He replaces Ivan Ždanov, who led the Foundation since 2018.

Family values? Of course: let the children cook at school for the front!

Yes, we have a big ‘fiscal monitoring’ to card those who are not prepared to serve this government in one way or another. By now, so-called ‘foreign agents’ have even been deprived of the right to teach in any educational centre, from school to university (and Professor Vera Afanaseva, a great dissident, has been silent since this summer, I am very worried about her).

But what education for the youngest children are the authorised centres offering instead? Second grade pupils from the village of Kožva in the Komi Region, for example, were forced to prepare food for fighters in the war in Ukraine, reports the ‘Verstka‘ channel. They did this as part of their ‘Family Studies’ course. “As part of the extracurricular course ‘Family Studies’, the students of the second grade ‘A’ visited the technology classroom and participated in the preparation of humanitarian aid to be sent to the Special Military Operation,” a post on the school’s VKontakte page openly reads.

The educational institution believes that this type of activity develops ‘skills of cooperation, responsibility and kindness’ in students. The ‘Family Studies’ course was introduced in Russian schools back in 2024 following Putin’s decree ‘On the preservation and strengthening of traditional Russian spiritual and moral values‘. Yes, these are the things that really count in life.

World pan-fascist meeting in St. Petersburg

However, I try to detoxify myself from the poison of both the squalor and the sarcasm that wants to react to it, and I find on Vkontakte a testimony of critical conscience from a thinking friend in St. Petersburg, but the news he reports is again sad, and the strength is again in the sarcasm: ‘This month, my homeland proved to be the main meeting place of global fascism. An international congress of far-right movements – well, in fact fascist movements – was held at the Mariinsky Palace. Among the participants were the heirs of the Islamic Phalangists, the same ones who took part in the siege of Leningrad.”

Significantly, it‘rhymes‘ with the fact that they met in St Petersburg. The day before yesterday, the Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev published an account of this event, announcing that the founding conference of the International League was held in the imperial capital – well, St Petersburg, yes, the imperial capital of the Russian state. And that’s what he calls it, the International League of Antiglobalists.

50 delegates from three continents, from fifteen right-wing patriotic organisations. The main idea was to defend Christian values in the struggle for national identity and resistance to the main enemy, globalism and the LGBT community. Well, basically, the usual group. The Russian side included Aleksandr Dugin, of course – how could it be otherwise? The priest Vladimir Malyšev? Of course. And Konstantin Čebykin, a United Russia deputy in the St Petersburg Duma. I don’t know who he is, but as for the others, the matter is beyond clear. The conference began with a Christian commemoration. A minute’s silence was observed in honour of the American conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who, since his murder, has become a hero of Russian propaganda and the Russian right. Well, actually, there are no others in Russian propaganda.

The founders of the newly formed International League of Antiglobalists

Malofeev continues: ‘So, naturally, we discussed how to fight the global Sodom and Gomorrah. We adopted a plan of action and so on. Who was there? Very interesting. Well, first of all, I have already said elsewhere about the Spanish political party and the phalanx of trade unions in the national-syndicalist offensive. They are, in fact, pure fascists. Its supporters openly give the Nazi salute and honour the memory of the Blue Division fighters. These are like the same soldiers who fought in the Wehrmacht and participated in the siege of Leningrad.

And then members of a Mexican organisation, the main Mexican National Socialist organisation. Alain de Bonnois, French philosopher and ideologue of the French fascist movement, as well as right-wing conspiracy theorist and supporter of the fascist movement, also spoke. Alexander von Bismarck, descendant of German Chancellor Bismarck, who has always supported the German right, including Alternative for Germany(AfD), also spoke. This was a rally of global fascism in St. Petersburg, and not for the first time. So Russia is becoming the centre of global fascism, and our compatriots deserve congratulations for this’.

This is what happens in the country that wants to denazify its neighbours.

Old books in the windows against bombs? No, they are Soviets, they must be read!

And at the same time we also record tragicomic notes in the dance of horrors of those who govern the regions closest to the people we want to ‘denazify‘. The governor of Belgorod proposes to cover school windows with old textbooks during the bombing. The governor, Vjačeslav Gladkov, said in a meeting with the regional government that this form of ‘additional protection’ for schools and kindergartens is ‘quite effective’.

The official added that this measure “does not require additional funding” and asked that it be given attention. “In one school, or rather in a third one, I have seen that old textbooks, no longer used in the educational process, are piled up and used to cover the windows, reinforcing them. Creating additional safety zones. This does not require additional funding, not at all, but it certainly brings with it considerable effectiveness,” said Gladkov.

The State Duma Education Committee did not support Gladkov’s idea. In a comment to Pod’yom, the first deputy chairman of the committee, Michail Berulav, stressed that covering windows with old textbooks ‘under no circumstances’ should be done. He explained his position not with the safety of students, but with the fact that old books ‘should be preserved for history‘, since ‘Soviet schools were among the best in the world‘.

Yes, I have the feeling that those who govern me have decided for some time now not only to make me suffer, but also to make all the laughter of future readers of the great book of tragicomic science fiction that we are all writing in Russia, victims and executioners, burst out deep in my stomach.