Vladimir Panteleev, professional dissident, on his 65th birthday. Ceremonial bast shoes with "Veteran of Labour" medals.

Vladimir (Borisovich) Panteleev — a Nizhny Novgorod political prisoner of 1970–76, journalist, civic activist, and bookplate collector.

Chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Society of Victims of Communist Terror (founded 1992) and the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Bookplate Collectors' Club (founded 1981), member of the Board of the International Association of Political Prisoners of the former USSR.

The nature of the phenomenon

Professional fighter against all anti-people, bloodstained regimes in the USSR and Russia.

Life stories

The value of a personal seal impression

« I, for one, and some of my friends have long had personal heraldic seals — not with the standard eagle, but with a special, improved version you rarely see among ordinary Russian citizens: in place of St. George the Victorious there is a prison grating, on the heads sit militia caps, one talon holds handcuffs, the other a rubber truncheon. One foreign correspondent paid my Moscow acquaintance 200 dollars just for an impression of that seal, with the right to publish it in the media.
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Current civic journalism

"The trill of the doorbell stopped me halfway to the bathroom.

— Criminal Investigation Department, — announced a fellow of medium height, holding his ID badge for some reason at groin level.

— What newspapers do you read?

— ??!!

— I mean, do you have any newspapers delivered to the flat?

— Of course. Pioneerskaya Pravda and its little sister Komsomolskaya Pravda…

I hadn't even got round to my morning shave before the doorbell rang again.

All available residents were being gathered on the staircase landings. And the reeking entrance hall of our five-storey Khrushchev-era block — never once repaired or cleaned, with its stale aroma of human and feline excrement, populated by destitute pensioners and antisocial elements — was literally swarming with people in uniform and in plain clothes. FSB operatives were there, and militia investigators. There was a great mass of ordinary militiamen pulled off other, evidently less important, beats. Everyone was waiting in expectation of something exclusively important, of "state importance." I peered through the grimy entrance window — no tanks or other armoured vehicles were visible in the courtyard.

Finally I and one other witness were appointed — a little old lady trembling with fear and a sense of responsibility. After we signed non-disclosure statements, the operational objective was announced. We were required to seize a piece of evidence of exceptional importance that had been found between the window frames on the fourth-floor landing. It was a copy of the newspaper Radikalnaya Politika — a popular anti-Putin publication produced at their own personal expense by members of the active civic organisation RKO (Revolutionary Contact Union). The newspaper was solemnly seized and sealed in a special bag. We witnesses signed a great heap of important procedural documents — seizure reports, various blank forms, detailed diagrams showing the location of the important piece of evidence of state significance, as I mentioned above. We also, of course, scrawled our signatures on the sealed bag itself.

I could not shake the feeling that I was taking part in some cheap farce, clearly straight out of the 1930s. The newspaper Radikalnaya Politika was freely available in Nizhny Novgorod — it was handed out in the streets, it lay on display tables alongside promotional publications in major office centres, banks, and post offices… Perhaps this was a personal directive from the president?

The story had an evening sequel. Militia officers, in pairs, went round every flat in the entrance hall, instructing residents that if they should ever, anywhere, come across so dangerous a newspaper, they must on no account read it. They should, with eyes tightly shut, wrap the find in another newspaper — one that was permitted — tie it with string, and telephone the militia immediately.

Should a fight or stabbing break out, or an apartment get robbed, you'd wait for the militia forever, if half the district department's entire complement is dispatched to seize each individual copy of a newspaper. As happened on 15 September 2005 in entrance No. 4 of building No. 17 on Nartov Street in Sovetsky District of Nizhny Novgorod…

Vladimir PANTELEEV, political prisoner 1970–76, who reads a wide variety of newspapers, including those that FSB officers are not permitted to read

Interesting facts

  • A well-known collector of graphic art. One of the founders of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Bookplate Collectors' Club. Member of the board of the All-Russian Society of Collectors.
  • For active civic work he has been repeatedly awarded medals, certificates of commendation, and diplomas. His name appears in several encyclopaedias, including the encyclopaedia "Nizhny Novgorod Press" (2010).
  • In 2009, unknown activists of the ruling party painted an absurd slogan on the entrance of his building on Nartova Street: "Panteleev — Georgian-Chechen whore"
  • At the end of 2010, he spent 11 days treating his cat, spending 4,000 roubles.
  • The news portal LifeNews hastily used a friendly photograph of Panteleev taken from his profile (archive) on NN.RU to illustrate a breaking article about the numerous unidentified remains found by FSB officers in the apartment of necropolist Anatoly Moskvin. "Death had occurred so long ago that the remains had already had time to skeletonise, and the police were essentially left holding 26 desiccated skeletons. All of them were dressed in fine gowns. The apartment, which its deranged owner had turned into a genuine crypt, is located in the very centre of Nizhny Novgorod — on Lenin Avenue…"

Contacts

Usernames on NN.RU

Blog

Phone

  • 465-75-80

See also