Something interesting — and unsettling — is happening inside Russia right now. People are once again snitching on their neighbors.

A comment overheard at work, a joke online, a teacher’s remark, a social-media “like.” Small things that suddenly become grounds for investigation.

From the outside, it’s tempting to explain this with stereotypes about “national character.” But that misses the point. Snitching in Russia has always had a specific purpose: it fills the space where normal institutions fail. When the state rules through fear and uncertainty, people start using denunciations as tools — to protect themselves, to settle scores, or to get attention from those in power.

Today I want to explain why denunciations have returned, what forms they take, and why this phenomenon matters beyond the clichés.

Because snitching isn’t just a moral problem. It’s a window into how the modern Russian state actually functions.

So, where does this behavior come from?

There’s a belief that during Stalin’s rule, more than four million denunciations were written, and that this proves Russians were morally rotten. In reality, only a small percentage of the population wrote them, but those who did often produced hundreds, even thousands. Why? Because they saw personal benefit.

In the early 2000s, Stalinism — and its culture of informing — was widely condemned. Today, it has returned.

Russian denunciations usually fall into six types.

First: Revenge.

Someone wants to punish a person they hate.
My own grandfather was sent to the Gulag because a coworker informed on him. He worked in economic policing and was accused of lacking “proper enthusiasm” in hunting enemies of socialism.

Second: Fear

You write a denunciation to prove loyalty. You’re essentially telling the authorities, “I’m with you. I’ll sacrifice anything for you, even my reputation and my conscience, as long as you believe that I’m loyal.” In essence, they offer someone else as a sacrifice in the hope that the dark, unpredictable forces of the state will spare them.

My husband’s great-grandfather told someone a harmless joke about Stalin, and that man reported him — terrified that he might be arrested simply for hearing the joke and failing to turn in the “enemy.”

Third: Denunciation as a way to feel powerful and to reclaim a sense of significance

This kind of snitching is typical of people who think very highly of themselves yet feel unappreciated by society. They’re ambitious, they’re domineering, and a denunciation becomes their way of asserting themselves and tasting authority over others.

They target those who have achieved something: scholars, journalists, activists, or popular artists. On one hand, they hope the state will finally notice them and reward their “vigilance.” On the other, they genuinely enjoy the feeling of deciding someone’s fate.

And why not? From their point of view, it’s delicious: someone has spent a lifetime building a career, imagining themselves important, and you catch them on a stray comment or a social-media post. One complaint, and their career is gone.

One of the best-known modern informants is Ivan Abaturov, a journalist from Yekaterinburg. He once hoped to become a university lecturer, but when that didn’t work out, he began denouncing more successful colleagues. Every day, he combed through opposition media, identifying experts who dared to speak publicly while still living in Russia, and filing denunciations against them.

Here is how he described his “work”: “The impact of denunciations like mine is comparable to submarine warfare. The number of enemy ships actually sunk is small, but the fear of attack keeps the whole fleet in harbor.”

Mass denunciations are driven by such “professionals.” By Abaturov’s own account, he wrote more than 1,300 denunciations in just two years.

Fourth: Career advancement

You don’t want to hurt someone; you want to impress the authorities and to win favor from those above you.
This is precisely the model embraced by Yekaterina Mizulina, the charming lady who appointed herself director of the Safe Internet League.

Mizulina enthusiastically supports Putin’s campaign to suppress freedom of speech and conscience. She fights LGBT communities, Google, Wikipedia, popular musicians — anyone who doesn’t fit the Kremlin’s ideological purity codes.

According to investigative journalists from Verstka, by the end of 2023, Mizulina had filed complaints against at least 166 individuals and four music groups. At least 46 people censored their own work to avoid trouble, seven issued public apologies, 14 were charged with administrative offenses, and four faced criminal prosecution.

She clearly enjoys the backing of the security services and openly threatens anyone who asks her uncomfortable questions.

This remarkable woman has more than a million followers on Telegram, where she posts things like:

“Deputies have asked Roskomnadzor to review the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series for Russophobia and to ban it in Russia. They are outraged that Russian soldiers appear as the main antagonists. Such a portrayal humiliates Russians and contradicts the international situation, since our country is shown as the aggressor. Therefore, they call for banning all Modern Warfare games, including the remasters.”

Fifth: Self-denunciation as an act of repentance.
This was widespread during Stalin’s era. When you know you’re innocent but can still be arrested at any moment, you find yourself living in a world ruled by dark forces that are both unknowable and beyond your control. And you try to negotiate with them. A denunciation against yourself becomes a ritual of humiliation: an admission of your own worthlessness and corrupt nature and of the state’s absolute power over you. 

These public confessions often looked like hysteria. Communists stood up at party meetings and repented for “thought crimes,” for secret desires, or for misunderstanding Marxism.

Sixth: Self-denunciation as a desperate attempt to save yourself or protect your family

In the USSR’s punitive system, a “sincere confession” was considered the queen of evidence. Investigators forced people to sign pre-written confessions under torture or by threatening those closest to them.
A father might be told: “We can send your little daughter to a good orphanage… or to one filled with tuberculosis patients. Your choice.”

In my novel The Prince of the Soviets, I describe exactly how this machinery could break almost anyone. If you’re interested in the nature of totalitarianism, read it — the book explains a great deal about modern Russia.

This sixth type of denunciation is reappearing today. For now, it’s disguised as “cooperation with the investigation”: you inform on yourself and others to reduce your sentence. If you confess and implicate everyone, you get five years and they get twenty. If you don’t, the investigators pressure your accomplice, and they get five years while you get twenty. The choice is yours.

These examples show that the danger to society’s moral fabric comes not from some “national character,” but from two groups: outright scoundrels and people with unstable yet aggressive psyches. Ivan Abaturov’s colleagues openly call him a weirdo. Every society has such people, and the real question is how the authorities treat this behavior.

Do they encourage it? What happens to someone who writes a denunciation against a neighbor or colleague? Is this behavior rewarded or treated as the mark of a fool?

The problem arises when the authorities choose to use informants to intimidate and demoralize the population. And here is the real danger: denunciators never stop at opposition activists. Soon they begin writing complaints against bureaucrats. And then their enemies within the system can use those same denunciations to settle old scores.

Elites in authoritarian regimes always believe they are creating unjust and cruel laws for others, and that they themselves will remain above the law. Right?

No. If law doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist for anyone. Not even for them.

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