One of the items of the Federal List of Extremist Materials has been removed for the first time

In the end of November 2009, the Russian Ministry of Justice has revised the Federal List of Extremist Materials. As a result, one of the items was removed from the list for the first time in more than two years of the list’s history. Item 413, a leaflet against Krishnaists that was spread in Khabarovsk by the members of the pro-Kremlin Young Guard of United Russia (YGUR) party, is no longer extremist.

The leaflet “Beware: Sect! The International Society for Krishna Consciousness” was included into the Federal List on January 29, 2009, following the Khabarovsk Central Regional Court’s decision. However, on September 24, 2009, the panel of civil court judges of the Khabarovsk Territory Court cancelled this decision.

It is noteworthy that court decisions cancelling the acknowledgements of materials as extremist have been taken earlier as well. In January 2009, a decision acknowledging a very popular book among a part of Russian nationalists entitled “The Russian Gods’ Strike” (item 289) as extremist was cancelled. In April, a similar decision was cancelled concerning four materials linked to the Chinese religious teaching Falun Dafa (items 296—299) whose disciples undergo reprisals systematically in China.

However, all these materials remain in the extremist list except for the leaflet produced by the activists of the Young Guard of United Russia’s Khabarovsk branch. Remarkably, those are activists not only of the YGUR, but also of one of the region’s ethnic nationalist organizations.

The reason of the Justice Ministry's efficiency in this case may be that the Ministry does not expect the prosecutor’s office to attempt to question the decision that the leaflet was not extremist.

The accelerated fulfillment of its obligations by the Ministry may also be caused by the fact that the author of the appendix to the leaflet, Alexander Kuzmin, is a member of the Ministry’s Expert Council led by Alexander Dvorkin, known for his fight against “sects”.