Freedom and shackles Historian discovers records from 1976 documenting a 23-year-old Vladimir Putin’s role in suppressing Soviet protest art — Meduza

New information has emerged about Vladimir Putin’s early professional life as a KGB officer. A St. Petersburg-based historian discovered a document which shows that Putin participated in investigating one of the first instances of protest art in the USSR. In 1976, at age 23, Putin helped to search the home of an artist who painted the slogan “You may crucify freedom, but the human soul knows no shackles!” on the wall of St. Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress. Two artists served time in prison for the action, but the slogan – and Putin – live on.