An Arresting Topic

Out of all the students I have, I would say that, currently, two are tied in the race to be my favorite. The first is Volodya, the mild-mannered tax attorney I have now mentioned and twice (and will henceforth refer to without introduction or explanation). The other is a woman whom I shall call Luda, a woman in a class I teach at a Moscow publishing house. But as Luda is currently visiting her mother in the Crimea, my attention this past week has been focused on Volodya.

When I began working with Volodya, I understood his needs as follows: he was seeking to improve his English for corporate correspondence and occasional travel (he told me he was going on holiday to South Africa in August and had used English during various European vacations). He told me he wanted a program of general English for about two months, followed by ten months of business English, and that he hoped to move up a full level in the course of our studies. I told him I thought this was a reasonable goal and that I would be more than happy to help him reach it.

Since I began working with Volodya, I have had the opportunity to learn only a little about his work. He is in-house counsel at a Russian steel company. The work he does concerns compliance with Russian tax law. Although he takes business trips on occasion, they are almost exclusively within Russia.

Naturally, finding English teaching material directly related to Russian tax situations is not a realistic possibility. Instead, I have taken the tack of having him do a lot of Wikipedia research about various topics. The other day, after a long discussion of how the Russian court system works, I had him research Miranda v. Arizona and tell me how it compared to the Russian situation. I had expected things would work differently on this side of the Baltic; many things come to mind when contemplating the Russian police, but the words "you have the right to an attorney" are not among them.

I was surprised to learn just how misinformed I was about the Russian criminal justice system. Although there seems to be no exact formula Russian police are required to use when arresting someone, all of the rights enshrined in the Miranda warning now exist in Russia (they existed on paper in Soviet times, too, but needless to say were never enforced). Russian defendants have the right to remain silent, the right to know that what they say can and will be used against them, and the right to an attorney even if indigent.

Volodya said that these rights are now mostly followed by Russian police. When they are not followed, blame can be attributed to the poor education of many Russian police officers. But when these rights are violated, attorneys are able to get arrests thrown out.

The most interesting fact Volodya brought up is that, in Russia, an arrestee has to sign a paper indicating that these rights have been read to him. It sometimes happens that an arrestee refused to sign, in which case the arresting officer may make an affidavit or get another officer to back him up as a witness.

All of this was quite interesting to discover. Like many Americans, I had assumed Russians lacked many of the rights and freedoms Americans take for granted. I had read international reports of the human rights situation in Russia with disdain (one report ranked Russia something like 102nd out of 198 countries on its index of freedom). But the simple fact that Russian criminal suspects have the right to know the charges against them, to consult with an attorney, and not to forced into self-incrimination is a hopeful sign. Russia may have a ways to go before its level of liberty matches that of the west. But progress is clearly being made.