Photo session in Makhachkala museum sparks wrath of morality zealots

A girl dressed in jeans and a tank top has starred in a photo made against the backdrop of the panorama "Storming the Village of Akhulgo" at the Makhachkala Museum. Social network commentators have treated her clothes as too open. They demanded to punish the girl, the photographer, as well as the museum staff for what they considered to be an immoral photo made against the backdrop of a painting dedicated to the history of Dagestan.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in Dagestan, morality zealots are regularly criticizing the people whose behaviour, in their opinion, is unacceptable. Thus, on June 24, college students in Makhachkala presented a fashion show, during which some models walked down the catwalk bearing religious symbols. After that, in social networks, morality zealots demanded to fire college bosses for having insulted believers' feelings.

A draft version of the Franz Roubaud's panorama painting "Storming the Village of Akhulgo" created in 1890 is in the collection of the Dagestani Museum of Fine Arts. In the "VKontakte" social network, a photo was posted made at the background of this painting. In the photo, a girl in jeans, a tank top and a jacket is standing by the panorama. "Amid the panorama ... they staged a photo session with a half-naked model," the post says.

"After many years of degradation, absence of a sane moral ideology and the cult of sports have played a cruel joke on Dagestanis. Today, a Dagestani is not a standard of morality, honour, wisdom and courage," the user Ruslan Dargaev has written in the social network.

"The act is absolutely stupid and ugly. Those times are of great importance both for the peoples of Dagestan and for the peoples of Northern Caucasus as a whole – those tragic and heroic events," the user Lieutenant Benzin has stated.