Drinking in a public park in Moscow? Your name could end up on a ‘board of shame’

MOSCOW — If officials from President Vladimir Putin’s party get their way, a Soviet-style practice of naming and shaming citizens for bad behavior may soon be instituted in the Russian capital.

Oleg Smolkin, the United Russia party’s executive head in Moscow, told state-owned news network Moscow 24 this week that there are plans to set up “boards of shame” online and along the entrances of apartment buildings to out residents who commit such petty atrocities as smoking in the wrong place, drinking alcohol on kids’ playgrounds, parking their cars on lawns or letting their dogs poop in the wrong section of courtyards.

It’s all part of a project called Safe Capital that is scheduled for a full rollout in June. Other features of the program include United Russia-organized citizen patrol teams, which will monitor Moscow’s neighborhoods to crack down on petty crime, according to a report this month in the newspaper Kommersant.

Those who are caught — and, as Smolkin told Moscow 24, they are already starting to collect information about suspected offenders in preparation for what the publication referred to as “raids” — will see their pictures go up on a board of shame, both online and in the entryways of buildings in their neighborhoods. “The photo shows a concrete fact. It will be photographic reportage, not a portrait of a person,” Smolkin told Moscow 24, explaining that the pictures would show the person caught red-handed in the act of smoking/drinking/letting their dog poop. The organizers would not post the accused perpetrator’s personal information alongside the photo, but “townspeople will know who of their neighbors are upsetting” the public order.

The venture isn’t the first step that Russia has taken under Putin to clean up its streets. Since Putin returned to the presidency, Russia has adopted a series of laws aimed at improving the health of citizens and better maintaining public order. It is no longer legal to buy alcohol at public kiosks, for example, and drinking on the streets is a no-no now. Smoking in restaurants and cafes also has been banned.

But the idea of public naming and shaming has a darker history, going back to the Soviet era. In the heyday of the Soviet Union, when bosses used red “boards of honor” and black “boards of shame” — also known as “black boards” — to highlight those workers who had been performing well and point out those who drank, dawdled or otherwise shirked their duty.

Patrol squads have already started to collect information; the raids start in June.