If you're trying to solidify a regime of judicial terror, I would expect these kinds of cases would be pure gold. The fact that something as benign as a child's

If you're trying to solidify a regime of judicial terror, I would expect these kinds of cases would be pure gold. The fact that something as benign as a child's drawing couldn't be explained away would amplify the fear and force people to be more aggressive about policing their own thoughts: if the police can find out about a random kid's drawing, they'll definitely discover anything you do that's more than that. Among other things, it gives the state's security forces (and at this point, you can stick the Russian judiciary in that category) the impression of greater power and reach, which also makes people more likely to denounce others. During World War 2, public perception of the Gestapo always exceeded its actual effective capabilities (at least in terms of agents watching random people and informers at every table) which was a huge part of why people were so willing to inform. Nearly all of the postcards written by Otto and Elise Hampel[0] were turned into the Gestapo by the people who found them, for example. One would expect at least some of the people to toss them in the trash to avoid any risk of entanglement, unless they were more worried about getting caught not turning them in. Richard J. Evans briefly touches on the subject in his Third Reich in Power book: > [...] What counted was not whether or not there really were informers everywhere, but the fact that people thought there were. The disillusioned writer and journalist Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen recorded his friends’ and his own hatred of Hitler in the privacy of his diary and wondered on 9 September 1937 if anyone outside Germany had ‘any idea of how completely without legal status we are, of what it is to be threatened with denunciation at any What's really surreal is that even the Gestapo itself realized very early in the regime just how screwed-up the system, not that they ever tried to fix things: > [...] So many denunciations were sent in to the Gestapo that even fanatical leading Nazis such as Reinhard Heydrich complained about them and the district Gestapo office in Saarbrücken itself registered its alarm at the ‘constant expansion of an appalling system of denunciation’. What dismayed them was in particular the fact that many denunciations appeared to be made from personal rather than ideological motives. [...] Basically, build up enough fear and you'll influence the population to do police and surveil itself; possibly to a level that even the state itself thinks is excessive and problematic. Returning to the original subject, it's not unsurprising to see Russia to extend its crackdowns to even more absurd cases. The Nazis did the same thing as it became clear they were losing the war, with executions for treason skyrocketing for even the most mundane activities and jokes. When things are going wrong, authoritarian regimes take it out on their citizens in the hopes that if they just use a strict enough hand against them, they'll somehow cause something to change. Russia isn't in anywhere near as dire straits as Nazi Germany was, obviously, but the same basic impulse is always there. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_and_Elise_Hampel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_and_Elise_Hampel