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The response is no less amusing. "Secret. To your ref No ... dated ... The request was received on [date]. We have seconded an officer. But you did not state when he should join you."
I think these papers should be put on display at the Historical Museum sometime, in a section called "Reforms in Russia in the early 21st century. Judicial reform."
In the numerous volumes of the case, there are just 67 such documents. None of them were produced at the trial, because they lacked any kind of content. The authorities might as well classify the receipts from the works canteen!
Our bureaucracy inherited its system of classification from the USSR. It's quite straightforward: the official drawing up a document himself decides the level of secrecy. The most commonly used categories are "For official use only", "Secret", "Top Secret" and "Of national importance".
From "Top secret" upwards there is a different set of rules for clearance, in which prospective employees are carefully vetted and banned from travelling abroad for a certain period of time after leaving their post or moving to unclassified duties. This system used to affect millions of people working in the defence sector.
To make things simpler, every institution had its own procedures for determining classifications. These generally depended on to whom a document was addressed. A paper to the head of a directorate would be "secret", to a member of a ministry collegium "top secret", and so on. Most papers for the Communist Party's Central Committee would be "of national importance". There were other clearance levels, but they are not relevant to us here.
The main thing is that under the system still in existence, any junior official can classify even a piece of toilet roll. And an entire volume of evidence in a case can be classified in one go. Even if an unclassified document is included in a classified volume, security clearance is needed to read it. You could put in one of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, and you would have a secret story. Apart from anything else, these secrecy games just go to show the lack of professionalism at the Procuracy General and FSB.
Such inventiveness in classifying court cases reflects a modern-day trend. By this I mean the way that investigations and courts are developing in the current climate. Naturally, I see the court as part of the law-enforcement system and the prosecution's closest ally. Not for a long time has it regarded establishing the truth as its primary purpose. And not only in Moscow are courts rigged. Out in the provinces, courts and juries are manipulated to serve the interests of the local police and senior prosecutors.
There will be more about such methods later, and they warrant a separate discussion. But to ensure that all these ways of fixing a trial bring the desired result, you need a special kind of judge to direct the proceedings. Selecting and appointing the right judge is something that the trial's "political handlers" in the Procuracy General and presidential administration take very seriously. For Pichugin's trial, they found a very special judge.
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