MOSCOW, August 2 (RIA Novosti) – A bohemian Muscovite who tried to revamp a backwater provincial school was jailed for bribery upon retrial in a controversial case that his supporters blame on a clash of cultures within Russia.
Ilya Farber, 36, was given seven years and one month in a maximum security prison and a fine of 3.1 million rubles ($94,000) by the Ostashkovsky city court in the Tver Region on Thursday.
The court ruled that Farber had taken a bribe in 2011 from a firm that he had contracted to renovate the village hall, but which did not do a proper job of it. Total damage to the village budget stood at 940,000 rubles ($28,500), the verdict said.
Farber denied the charges and maintained he had been framed by the dishonest contractor, who was not charged over the incident.
The teacher was given eight years in prison by the Ostashkovsky court last year, but the Supreme Court ordered a retrial last November amid reports of numerous procedural violations.
Both verdicts have been criticized by media as unexpectedly harsh. Most convicted bribe-takers in Russia were spared jailtime in 2012, and average sentences for those put behind bars were less than five years in regular prisons, according to the Supreme Court’s statistics.
Farber, a former painter, left Moscow for the village of Moshenki in central Russia to teach arts, music and literature at the local school.
Farber’s unconventional approach to teaching – he deviated from the school program, taught students how not to be afraid of the dark and celebrated Halloween, far from standard procedure in Russian provincial schools – was dubbed a “cultural revolution” by the villagers, some of whom backed him at the trial, while others criticized him in the media.
His actions were compared by media to those of the “narodniki”– intelligentsia activists who resettled to Russian villages in the late 19th century to aid and enlighten the peasants in a largely unsuccessful attempt to bridge the yawning gap between Russian urbanites and conservative-minded countryside residents that persists to this day.
