Putin's Critics
The BBC's Lucy Ash reports on what happened to a small Moscow-based theatre company, Teatr Doc, recently for having the temerity to report on events in Ukraine without towing the official Russian Government line.
So while Russia regards itself as a democratic country, ostensibly at least, the reality on the ground is that critics of President Putin often find themselves punished for speaking out or, worse still, dead.
Russia's most daring theatre company
By Lucy Ash - BBC
BerlusPutin imagines Silvio Berlusconi's brain in Vladimir Putin's body
A fearless Russian drama company has risen from the dead after being evicted from its premises in Moscow this winter. The eviction seemed at first to be a political death sentence, but does a theatre with barely 100 seats really present a threat to the Kremlin?
Just down the street from Moscow's pale blue Yelokhovskaya Cathedral, there is a small, one-storey building behind a gate. Attached the the railings, I read a hastily written cardboard sign with an arrow pointing to the courtyard.
This is the new home of the embattled Moscow drama company Teatr Doc. Inside is a hive of activity in preparation for the re-opening - one man on a stepladder is attaching some lights to a beam as people below him stack chairs and mop the floor.
It still looks a bit like a building site, and plaster dust hangs in the air as I walk into a little side room where a young bearded man is awkwardly holding a hammer.
Aleksey Krizhevsky, whose day job is writing for a news website, is doing his best to put up coat pegs. He is one of an army of volunteers who have come to clear rubble, lay bricks, sand and paint over the past six weeks.
A fearless Russian drama company has risen from the dead after being evicted from its premises in Moscow this winter. The eviction seemed at first to be a political death sentence, but does a theatre with barely 100 seats really present a threat to the Kremlin?
Just down the street from Moscow's pale blue Yelokhovskaya Cathedral, there is a small, one-storey building behind a gate. Attached the the railings, I read a hastily written cardboard sign with an arrow pointing to the courtyard.
This is the new home of the embattled Moscow drama company Teatr Doc. Inside is a hive of activity in preparation for the re-opening - one man on a stepladder is attaching some lights to a beam as people below him stack chairs and mop the floor.
It still looks a bit like a building site, and plaster dust hangs in the air as I walk into a little side room where a young bearded man is awkwardly holding a hammer.
Aleksey Krizhevsky, whose day job is writing for a news website, is doing his best to put up coat pegs. He is one of an army of volunteers who have come to clear rubble, lay bricks, sand and paint over the past six weeks.
Actors, directors, students and members of the audience have all lent a hand, he says.
"We never went hungry because people kept bringing in sandwiches and home cooked food. It was a great atmosphere."
When the Moscow government threw Teatr Doc out of a basement in the city centre where it had worked for 12 years, the homeless company appealed to its audience for help.
Oleg Karlsson, an architect, was one of hundreds who responded to SOS messages on Facebook. He donated his time and expertise to turn a semi-derelict structure - once part of an 18th Century nobleman's estate, and later a fish shop - into Doc's new base.
"I've done what I can to turn these ruins into a useable space," he says, "but we need three or four times the funds to do it properly."
The new premises - a former fish shop
The basement near Pushkin Square - now welded shut
The old premises of Teatr Doc were located close to the fashionable Pushkin Square, but the doors and windows are now welded shut with sheets of metal.
The company rented the venue from the Moscow city government but had its lease revoked last autumn, supposedly for violating planning regulations by installing an extra emergency exit - work it undertook on the orders of the fire brigade.
Tax inspectors, firemen and police are often used to close down businesses and get rid of undesirable tenants. Teatr Doc was was able to remain in situ, however, while it appealed against the eviction.
Then, one evening in December, as it started screening clips from a documentary on the political turmoil and bloodshed in Ukraine, police from a special anti-extremism division burst in and marched everyone out into the courtyard.
At first they said they had received a bomb threat.
"They spent ages checking our IDs outside and we were asking if there really is a bomb why do you keep us here? All of us could die if it explodes! " says Aleksey Krizhevsky, who had been one of two dozen people in the audience.
"It was strange because an official from the Ministry of Culture and a policeman just sat in the theatre for hours watching the whole film as we stood shivering outside in -15C!"
Yelena Gremina, a renowned playwright and the director of Teatr Doc, was out of town at the time but got a call to say that three people from the theatre had been arrested and that laptops and other material were being taken out of the office.
The old premises of Teatr Doc were located close to the fashionable Pushkin Square, but the doors and windows are now welded shut with sheets of metal.
The company rented the venue from the Moscow city government but had its lease revoked last autumn, supposedly for violating planning regulations by installing an extra emergency exit - work it undertook on the orders of the fire brigade.
Tax inspectors, firemen and police are often used to close down businesses and get rid of undesirable tenants. Teatr Doc was was able to remain in situ, however, while it appealed against the eviction.
Then, one evening in December, as it started screening clips from a documentary on the political turmoil and bloodshed in Ukraine, police from a special anti-extremism division burst in and marched everyone out into the courtyard.
At first they said they had received a bomb threat.
"They spent ages checking our IDs outside and we were asking if there really is a bomb why do you keep us here? All of us could die if it explodes! " says Aleksey Krizhevsky, who had been one of two dozen people in the audience.
"It was strange because an official from the Ministry of Culture and a policeman just sat in the theatre for hours watching the whole film as we stood shivering outside in -15C!"
Yelena Gremina, a renowned playwright and the director of Teatr Doc, was out of town at the time but got a call to say that three people from the theatre had been arrested and that laptops and other material were being taken out of the office.
