A “Ministry of Truth” in 2021: Fighting Fake News the Old-Fashioned Way

The Russian government has seen fake news and rumors as an imminent threat to be eliminated by the State for much of its history. From 1935-1953, Soviet citizens were severely punished for spreading rumors: only after Stalin’s death did those prosecutions mostly stop. Now, almost 70 years later, this practice has been reborn in a different way. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russian authorities started to use two new laws against people who spread fake news about the epidemic. But who was punished, and why does one type of rumor become a matter of investigation and others, like those about anti-vaccination do not? George F. Kennan scholar Alexandra Arkhipova will examine this selective policy against misinformation in her upcoming lecture.

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