Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Maria Baronova
Maria Nikolayevna Baronova (Russian: Мария Николаевна Баронова; born April 13, 1984) is a Russian chemist who has worked as a sales manager of lab equipment, journalist, and political spokesperson. She is known as an activist opposing President Vladimir Putin and, in particular, for having organized the Bolotnaya Square protests on May 6, 2012. In February 2019, she joined Russian government television network RT to work on a charity project.
Baronova (née Tchebotareva) describes herself as having been born in “Orwell's year,” 1984. The Hez family consisted mostly of politically inactive members who never partook in activism. She was raised by her mother, who was “a theoretical physicist turned actuary.”
During the economic downturn of the 1990s, Baronova's mother was destitute. She told Rolling Stone that her family began growing its own vegetables at their grandparents' home and stored them for winter. Her mother died of breast cancer when Baronova was 18, and six months later Baronova, who at the time was studying chemistry at Moscow University, took a job selling laboratory equipment. Later she worked as a sales manager for a chemical distributor.
For two months during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, she worked as business manager, assistant, press secretary, and spokeswoman for Ilya Ponomarev, a member of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament. Ponomarev was a leading figure in the Just Russia party as well as in the opposition movement. When police later searched her apartment, Baronova said that she believed the searches were motivated by her association with Ponomarev, while he suggested that the purpose of the searches was to locate evidence against him.
It was while she was working for Ponomarev that Baronova grew to oppose Medvedev and became an activist. “I think most of us who came out [and became opposition activists] were tired,” she said. She accused the leading party of operating a corrupt system using kickbacks and bribes that enriched a few at the expense of the country as a whole. The incident that triggered her turn to activism occurred during the parliamentary elections of December 2011. She witnessed and tried to report an electoral violation but, as she put it, was “thwarted.” The next day, she took part in a protest rally, which marked the start of her life as an activist.
She began passing out leaflets, holding interviews with the press, and staging one-person protests that resulted in several detentions, according to Masha Gessen. “Thanks to her charisma, Baronova quickly became a celebrity of the anti-Putin movement,” observed The Daily Beast. Beginning in December 2011, she served as the opposition movement's volunteer spokeswoman. For a time she was one of the most well-known protesters in Moscow. She appeared on a calendar of “12 Dissident Women.”
On the morning of May 6, 2012, Baronova was detained by police at the Zakonospassky monastery, where “she had asked a priest to say a prayer in support of her friends, the three jailed members of the Pussy Riot band.” Released within hours, she organized an instantaneous protest in Bolotnaya Square that devolved into “a police riot, mass detentions, and beatings.” Enraged at the brutality of police officers during the demonstration, she yelled at them: “You violated your oath just as badly as your tsar did!” Facing a line of soldiers, she recited to them Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees freedom of assembly.
After the protests, authorities threatened to charge Baronova with “organizing disorders,” but she was ultimately charged with the lesser offense of “inciting disorders.” Instead of imprisoning her like other defendants in the Bolotnaya Square case, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation released her on the understanding that she would not leave Moscow. State guardianship agents threatened to take away her son. In June 2012, after being formally charged with inciting a riot, she told Masha Gessen that she had been busy “reassuring people,” explaining that it was “like when a loved one dies: you have to let everyone know that things on the inside are not quite as horrible as they seem from the outside.”
Hub AI
Maria Baronova AI simulator
(@Maria Baronova_simulator)
Maria Baronova
Maria Nikolayevna Baronova (Russian: Мария Николаевна Баронова; born April 13, 1984) is a Russian chemist who has worked as a sales manager of lab equipment, journalist, and political spokesperson. She is known as an activist opposing President Vladimir Putin and, in particular, for having organized the Bolotnaya Square protests on May 6, 2012. In February 2019, she joined Russian government television network RT to work on a charity project.
Baronova (née Tchebotareva) describes herself as having been born in “Orwell's year,” 1984. The Hez family consisted mostly of politically inactive members who never partook in activism. She was raised by her mother, who was “a theoretical physicist turned actuary.”
During the economic downturn of the 1990s, Baronova's mother was destitute. She told Rolling Stone that her family began growing its own vegetables at their grandparents' home and stored them for winter. Her mother died of breast cancer when Baronova was 18, and six months later Baronova, who at the time was studying chemistry at Moscow University, took a job selling laboratory equipment. Later she worked as a sales manager for a chemical distributor.
For two months during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, she worked as business manager, assistant, press secretary, and spokeswoman for Ilya Ponomarev, a member of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament. Ponomarev was a leading figure in the Just Russia party as well as in the opposition movement. When police later searched her apartment, Baronova said that she believed the searches were motivated by her association with Ponomarev, while he suggested that the purpose of the searches was to locate evidence against him.
It was while she was working for Ponomarev that Baronova grew to oppose Medvedev and became an activist. “I think most of us who came out [and became opposition activists] were tired,” she said. She accused the leading party of operating a corrupt system using kickbacks and bribes that enriched a few at the expense of the country as a whole. The incident that triggered her turn to activism occurred during the parliamentary elections of December 2011. She witnessed and tried to report an electoral violation but, as she put it, was “thwarted.” The next day, she took part in a protest rally, which marked the start of her life as an activist.
She began passing out leaflets, holding interviews with the press, and staging one-person protests that resulted in several detentions, according to Masha Gessen. “Thanks to her charisma, Baronova quickly became a celebrity of the anti-Putin movement,” observed The Daily Beast. Beginning in December 2011, she served as the opposition movement's volunteer spokeswoman. For a time she was one of the most well-known protesters in Moscow. She appeared on a calendar of “12 Dissident Women.”
On the morning of May 6, 2012, Baronova was detained by police at the Zakonospassky monastery, where “she had asked a priest to say a prayer in support of her friends, the three jailed members of the Pussy Riot band.” Released within hours, she organized an instantaneous protest in Bolotnaya Square that devolved into “a police riot, mass detentions, and beatings.” Enraged at the brutality of police officers during the demonstration, she yelled at them: “You violated your oath just as badly as your tsar did!” Facing a line of soldiers, she recited to them Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees freedom of assembly.
After the protests, authorities threatened to charge Baronova with “organizing disorders,” but she was ultimately charged with the lesser offense of “inciting disorders.” Instead of imprisoning her like other defendants in the Bolotnaya Square case, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation released her on the understanding that she would not leave Moscow. State guardianship agents threatened to take away her son. In June 2012, after being formally charged with inciting a riot, she told Masha Gessen that she had been busy “reassuring people,” explaining that it was “like when a loved one dies: you have to let everyone know that things on the inside are not quite as horrible as they seem from the outside.”