'Miss Hitler Contest' On VKontakte, Russia’s Facebook, Suspended On Sunday

The rules for entering the neo-Nazi Miss Ostland 2014 contest on Russia’s Facebook clone, VKontakte, were simple, according to Vocativ. Be a woman who considers herself a Nazi who hates Jews and loves Hitler, and post a sexy picture on VKontakte’s Adolf Hitler group.

Only members of the group could enter the contest or vote, and the picture with the most votes would win. Prizes included an assortment of Nazi-themed accessories, including a pendant featuring the German Iron Cross and Third Reich heraldry and a swastika-adorned patch. But as of Sunday, VKontakte wrote that the page was “suspended due to calls to violent actions,” reports The Times of Israel. Ostland was the name the Nazi occupiers during World War II gave to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Belarus, where they murdered more than a million Jews.

The Adolf Hitler tribute page on VKontakte had more than 7,500 followers by the time VKontakte shut it down. The group already had 24 Miss Ostland contestants, including Katya Shkredova from Mogilev, Belarus, who wrote that she “adores Adolf” and his ideas of the “ideal society,” particularly his desire to “experiment on people;” and Irina Nagrebetskaya from Kiev, Ukraine, who wrote, “Don’t forget! Adolf is his name, he’s our eternal race, he has been given eternal life.” Thousands of Belarussians and Ukrainians also died at the Nazis' hands.

In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin enacted a law that allowed Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzo to shut down any website it considered “extremist." Within a month, 13 Ukrainian groups had been shut down on VKontakte, and pro-Ukrainians were often labeled by Putin – whether accurately or not – as neo-Nazis to justify blocking them, according to Vocativ. The World Jewish Congress has called for a ban of Svoboda (Freedom), an extreme right-wing political party with representation in the Ukrainian parliament that has been accused of neo-Nazi leanings.