A Marxist circle emerged in Ufa in the spring of 2016. It was founded by local otolaryngologist Alexei Dmitriev. Dmitriev was 35 years old at the time and known in leftist circles as a passionate student of Marxism. For six years, the circle met once a week, on Wednesdays, at the Stalin Museum . Dmitriev posted recordings of the sessions on his YouTube channel and in the “Marxist Circle in Ufa” group on VKontakte. At one of the very first meetings , the circle members discussed Karl Marx’s “Capital.”

“It was interesting. People from the left, the right, and Navalny’s supporters came. There were debates and varied opinions,” says Marat Ageyev , who attended the club in 2018-2019. “There were standard classes on Marx, Engels, and political science, as well as debates on current political issues. During these debates, opinions varied: the communists discussed the role of the state, the right-wingers discussed private property, and the Navalny supporters discussed liberal values.”

“We read classics there and also studied the history of the Revolution, the Civil War, and the USSR,” recalls Kirill Andreev , who attended the club until 2020. "People from various groups regularly showed up. From the Union of Slavic Forces of Russia and the For a New Socialism movement . "

“The classes were structured around the principle of history, political economy, and philosophy, and they alternated. Everyone was generally well-versed in Marxist ideology, but we were always ready to start from scratch if newcomers came,” adds Bulat Mannanov, another member of the group .

According to Mannanov, he learned of the circle’s existence when he began searching for leftist organizations in Ufa: “When the pension reform happened, I was shocked, as it’s a sensitive issue for me and my family. I wondered what was going on. The government wasn’t thinking about the people at all. I remembered how I’d studied Lenin’s works and a short history course of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in school during the Soviet era, and I became curious if there were other people in Ufa who were interested in this kind of thing. I learned about the Marxist circle online.”

The club was regularly attended by 10-20 people; local activists estimate that around 300 people attended at least once over the years. Local libertarians who occasionally dropped in on the classes say they were unimpressed by the atmosphere.

“It was full of portraits of Stalin and Soviet generals, busts of Lenin and Marx, red banners, and newspapers,” recalls one activist who attended the club in 2018 and 2021. “I came out of curiosity; it was an amusing spectacle for me. It was mostly elderly people, idly discussing Marxist terminology. The presentations were also boring and of a schoolboy quality. I went because I was interested in studying the ideological rivals. I don’t remember interfering in the discussions, although there were some arguments. If there had been more interesting places in Ufa where political ideology was discussed, I would have gone there, but there weren’t.”

The study of Marxist classics came to an abrupt end in March 2022, when FSB officers simultaneously raided the homes of a dozen of its regular members. The FSB and the Investigative Committee declared the group a “terrorist group.”

Source -> https://zona.media/article/2022/04/15/ufa

The circle had existed in Ufa since 2016. Its founder and only permanent member was Alexey Dmitriev, a passionate Marxist. The circle’s members met weekly at the Ufa Stalin Museum, opened by the local branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, to discuss the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and debate philosophy and politics.

They were later joined by Pavel “Matros” Matisov, who fought on the side of the self-proclaimed DPR, and Ukrainian Sergei “Rodnik” Sapozhnikov, who subsequently received a Russian passport.

According to the prosecution, in April 2020—at the peak of coronavirus restrictions—Matisov, at a “secret meeting,” proposed to Burkeev, Efimov, Chuvilin, and Dmitriev to “organize a headquarters” to unite like-minded individuals in preparation for the “moment X.” The defendants themselves claimed it was simply another meeting of the group, which, during self-isolation, they decided to hold not at the museum, but at Dmitriev’s apartment.

By “hour X,” according to the prosecution, Matisov meant an armed rebellion . Thus, from the security forces’ perspective, the five members of the circle formed a terrorist cell for the “forcible establishment of Soviet power” and a “communist regime” in the territory of the Russian Federation and Bashkortostan.

Investigators believe the Marxists were preparing for a violent overthrow of the government. To arm themselves, they planned to first attack police officers with sharpened entrenching shovels, then seize the “weapons room” at the Investigative Committee headquarters in Bashkortostan, and then a military unit. For communication, the prosecution alleges, they used Baofeng walking radios and conducted training exercises with an airsoft rifle, grenades, and an air rifle. The training took place outdoors, under the guise of country gatherings. Under Matisov’s leadership, the participants practiced shooting, providing first aid, and evacuating from the battlefield.

The “headquarters” members met regularly in Dmitriev’s apartment. Matisov, as the leader, came up with code names for everyone to conceal their identities and assigned roles: Efimov was responsible for political work, Dmitriev for political work and providing medical care to the wounded, Burkeev served as a backup assistant, and Chuvilin was tasked with paperwork.

Additionally, by May 1st, the circle members had prepared a text they called a “draft appeal.” It was needed so that “when events occur, we all know what actions we must take and what to say to the workers.” Yuri Efimov read the prepared text on camera while the Marxists were celebrating May Day outdoors; judging by the video, other participants in the meeting did not support the draft. Dmitriev posted the video on his YouTube channel .

The prosecution found signs of calls for terrorism in the “draft appeal,” which, by the group’s own admission, was a near-verbatim repetition of Lenin’s 1918 " Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People." In the video, Yefimov spoke of declaring Russia a “republic of Soviets” that would wield “all local power,” of “proletarian nationalization,” and of subordinating “militarized structures to labor collectives, not private owners.” In court, Yefimov insisted that he had merely quoted a historical document, slightly “modernizing” it to make it “clearer.”

Source -> https://zona.media/article/2025/12/16/communists

The main witness for the prosecution against the Marxists was 46-year-old Sergei Sapozhnikov, whom Dmitry Chuvilin accused in court of lying and calling a fascist.

Sapozhnikov also attended the circle’s meetings. It was he who filed a complaint with the FSB and provided them with audio recordings of the meetings, including one in which Marxists, in the first days of the invasion of Ukraine, discussed the start of an “imperialist war” and “impending turmoil.”

During the court hearing, Dmitry Chuvilin, citing case materials, said that Sapozhnikov contacted the FSB on February 14, 2022, and named 12 people who allegedly constituted the “headquarters’ assets.”

In court, Sapozhnikov testified via video link from Ufa’s Pretrial Detention Center No. 1, where he is being held on robbery charges. The witness claimed he was framed by a member of the group who had fled Russia. During questioning, he said the group members “drove around Ufa, choosing which apartment to live in and which house to take,” and in his presence, discussed how to obtain weapons “using violence.” According to Sapozhnikov, Matisov asked him if he could kill someone.

The indictment also included confessions from Matisov and Burkeev, given in the spring of 2022. As early as October 2025, Matisov claimed that before interrogations, security officers placed a black bag over his head, beat him, and told him they would “kill him” if he didn’t “answer correctly.” A court-ordered investigation into this report yielded no results—investigators refused to open a criminal case.

Rinat Burkeev testified in court that the investigator deceived him: before questioning him, he told him that everyone, including his employer, Sapozhnikov, and Pavel Matisov, who was an authority figure for Burkeev, had already confessed. Furthermore, Burkeev admitted in court that he had never participated in the fighting in Donbas, but lied about it because he was “prone to fantasizing,” had a diagnosis, and was under psychiatric care.

None of the defendants currently admit guilt, calling the criminal case “a figment of the investigator’s imagination” and “a lie by the fascist Sapozhnikov,” who incriminated them. In court, they detailed personal conflicts with a key prosecution witness: for example, Sapozhnikov stole Chuvilin’s watch and “didn’t return the money,” and fraudulently took Dmitriev’s car, transferring it to “his stepdaughter.” Matisov said Sapozhnikov wanted to take over—and subsequently took—his position as deputy chairman of the local branch of the Union of Donbas Volunteers.

Pavel Matisov, whom the prosecution calls the leader of a “terrorist organization,” dismissed talk of “hour X” as mere “drunken chatter”—the Ufa Marxists believed that “incomprehensible” COVID-19 restrictions could lead to unrest that Western countries would exploit for their own ends. In his final statement, Matisov described these conversations as attempts to “analyze what future awaits us and what will happen in the near future.” He claimed that audio recordings of the meetings were “riddled with military jokes,” which the investigation took seriously.

According to the defendants, such conversations ceased in the fall of 2020, when Matisov decided to run for the State Duma as a candidate for the Communists of Russia party. Yuri Efimov headed his campaign headquarters, and Rinat Burkeev became a member of the territorial election commission. A third defendant in the case, Dmitry Chuvilin, also assisted in the campaign. However, the founder of the circle, Alexei Dmitriev, was not involved, as he was in a personal conflict with Matisov.

All the defendants in the case claim they had no plans to seize power, and their only “headquarters” was a Telegram chat where Matisov’s election campaign was discussed.

Source -> https://zona.media/article/2025/12/16/communists

On December 25, 2025, the Second Western District Military Court delivered its verdict in the case of Left Front coordinator S.S. Udaltsov*. As a reminder, his defense attorney was D.V. Agranovsky. State Duma deputy and Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation D.A. Parfenov and Chair of the State Duma Committee on Family Protection, Fatherhood, Motherhood, and Childhood, and head of the All-Russian Women’s Union “Hope of Russia” N.A. Ostanina testified for the defense during the trial. All of them were present today in the courthouse where the trial of Sergei Udaltsov* took place.

S.S. Udaltsov* was sentenced to six years in a maximum-security penal colony. Sergei Stanislavovich was also banned from administering information resources for three years. The Left Front coordinator was charged with “justifying terrorism.” Under this charge, the court sentenced Sergei Udaltsov* to six years in prison.

As a reminder, the charges were brought against him for publishing online posts defending the defendants in the Ufa Marxist Circle case , who were recently sentenced to 16 to 22 years in prison. Sergei Stanislavovich previously stated that there was no justification for terrorism—he was merely speaking out in support of the defendants, considering the charges against them absurd.

According to media reports, S.S. Udaltsov* announced a hunger strike after the court’s decision was announced. He intends to appeal the verdict.

*included in the list of extremists and terrorists by Rosinformmonitoring

Source -> https://msk.kprf.ru/2025/12/25/281484/

State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation for ideology D.A. Parfenov attended the trial as a witness for the defense and shared his impressions of the incident.

“I can responsibly state that, in my opinion, it is impossible to consider such a sentence fair,” the deputy says.

In my view, the defense’s arguments were extremely compelling; they completely demolished the prosecution’s case. I’m convinced that if the court’s decision had any bearing on justice, Sergei should naturally have been released immediately.

However, the court was apparently guided by a political order; it is difficult to imagine any other reason for such a decision.

Although, frankly speaking, the court’s decision was expected: thank God, we weren’t born yesterday, and we are perfectly aware that we live under an oligarchic regime. Our legal system very often sacrifices the law to both “telephone justice” and direct orders emanating from the political servants of the ruling class.

But every time I see this firsthand, it’s not very pleasant, to say the least. And Sergei held up well. He was always a fighter, although, in the end, of course, the harsh guilty verdict hurt him, and he announced he would go on a hunger strike. Throughout the trial, we supported him as best we could. The courtroom was full at every hearing.

Of course, the Communist Party will respond. In fact, many of our comrades are already speaking out and publishing their opinions. But it usually takes some time for the party’s top leadership to formulate its position in the form of a Presidium decision, and I believe an assessment will be made.

While I am not aware of any internal party activities to develop a position, I am confident that, one way or another, recent events require generalization.

The sentencing of Sergei Udaltsov is, of course, the most striking event, but, unfortunately, it is far from the only one in terms of repressive actions against left-wing patriots.

Just recently, Boris Alexandrovich Litvinov, the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) branch in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), was fined 150,000 rubles for laying flowers at a monument to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The only relief for a long time is that our comrades in the Altai Krai (in the case of Lyudmila Klyushnikova and Svetlana Kerber) have finally been released, at least under house arrest. I can’t recall anything like that happening in a long time. But even this joyous event doesn’t change the fact that communists are being picked on in many ways, pressured from various sides.

Frankly speaking, the question arises: how does our situation differ from what is happening in some neighboring countries, where “decommunization” has long been in full swing?

PS: For the first time in my twenty years of party work, I’ve encountered a judge asking political questions about the defendant’s attitude toward the SVO and the so-called liberal opposition. I wonder what motivated this and what effect it ultimately had.

*Added to the register of terrorists and extremists by Rosfinmonitoring.

Source -> https://msk.kprf.ru/2025/12/27/281563/