It's still Russia

The New York Times has an editorial about continuing Soviet-style thinking in post-Soviet Russia:

The decision by a Moscow court to fine the organizers of an art exhibition, Forbidden Art — 2006, is a reminder about the continued limits on freedom of expression in Russia.
True, the court could have gone further and actually jailed the two defendants. And the Russian Orthodox Church and the government at least argued against prison sentences. But the fact that this trial went on for two years and the two defendants were convicted of “inciting religious hatred” and fined— about $6,500 for one and $4,800 for the other— is chilling.
The exhibition, mounted in 2007 at the Sakharov Museum, was a deliberate challenge to controls on art, as its name suggested. It consisted of works that had been barred by Russian museums for fear of just the sort of reaction they provoked. They included an image of Jesus in a McDonald’s ad and a Russian general raping a soldier over the caption Glory to Russia. The works could be seen only through a peephole in a fake wall.
The organizers had been on the barricades before. Yuri Samodurov, a former director of the Sakharov Museum, was fined for a 2003 exhibition called Caution, Religion! The other organizer, Andrei Yerofeyev, was fired two years ago as curator of contemporary art at the prestigious Tretyakov Gallery after he had organized a show of Soviet kitsch.
In those instances, the authorities actively joined in assailing the art while, this time, the culture minister seemed to prefer a compromise. We hope that reflects a new respect for liberty and creativity by the Kremlin under President Dmitri Medvedev, who talks a better game than he delivers. We suspect it may have more to do with the Kremlin wanting to avoid international embarrassment. Either way, the conflict is not over.
The defendants are appealing to the European Court of Human Rights, and Russian artists are certain to continue pushing the boundaries of the permissible. Perhaps the state will finally learn that the content of art is none of its business. It might help if the prosecutors who purported to be so scandalized by the Forbidden Art had looked around the Sakharov Museum. The main exhibit consists of endless mug shots of people who perished under Stalinism.

Rico says that, if that's not irony, he doesn't know what is...