Into the Streets!

Public space as a location for mass rallies is not new in Russia. It was used for this purpose throughout the decades of the Soviet Union. But those occasions were holidays organized from above with mandatory participation: May 1st, October Revolution Day, Victory Day, Cosmonautics Day, and many more. If someone dared to stage them, spontaneous demonstrations – such as the ones in 1968 after the suppression of the Prague Spring – were ended immediately by police force.



But since the manipulation of Russia's Parliamentary Elections on December 4, 2011, the street is the forum of the indignant as they invoke Article 31 of the constitution established in 1993: freedom of assembly. Slogans such as “United Russia – The party of crooks and thieves!” were shouted and appeared on  banners. The public space is being used by the population under their own direction and in the battle against the rulers.

Discontent is articulated regarding how citizens are denied their rights of political participation, election results are brazenly falsified, laws are changed on a case-by-case basis from above, most media outlets are controlled by those in power, and the omnipresent corruption that makes life complicated and expensive. Police repression and the detention of politically inconvenient citizens are further reasons for their indignation.

Heterogeneous Opposition

The movement has grown rapidly since the first uprising due to Twitter and blogs. It is supported by the few independent media companies such as Novaya Gazeta and Echo of Moscow, as well as various  public figures. These include Boris Nemzov, who was the governor of the rapidly developing commercial center of Nizhny Novgorod during the Yeltsin administration, and World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov. Alexei Kudrin – who had fallen out with the tandem of Medvedev/Putin in September 2011 after occupying the position of finance minister for many years – is also involved due to disgust at the announcement of the agreed-upon role change between those two figures for 2012, which made it obvious that the “election” on March 4 would be a farce. A rupture extends through the world of intellectuals and artists. Although some have joined the opposition such as the writer Ludmila Ulitskaya, who publicized her correspondence  with the currently most prominent political prisoner – Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Conductor Valery Gergiev and filmmaker Nikita Michalkov stand on the side of the system.

On the other hand, more and more young people with good jobs and income are tired of being treated like children. They were satisfied by dismissing politics with cynical remarks and boycotting elections up to now. Furthermore, many who only had the aspiration to emigrate as quickly as possible – such as 39 percent of those under 25 years – now increasingly feel themselves to be citizens of their homeland and are concerned about its future. Some observers see the heterogeneous nature of the movement that includes exponents from liberals to communists as a weakness because it lacks a clear counterpart to Putin's controlled democracy. However, this diversity of dissatisfied voices is the expression of a pluralism that can only be lived in the opposition for now. As a result, the people on the street are ahead of the Kremlin in some ways.

Resistance Against Defamation

This unsettles the people in power and triggers a reaction of concentrated resistance, such as threatening with the “chaotic conditions of the 1990s.” This refers to the Yeltsin era in which economic reconstruction was in full force – including the hasty implementation of privatization under the pressure of the International Monetary Fund. This led to a precarious shortage of supplies in which people sold their belongings in order to survive. During these years, the city centers were full of shacks, train stations served as emergency camps for refugees, and begging was as much the order of the day as theft and child prostitution. The strategy works in this case because this horror vision makes the majority of citizens vote for the “stability” brought about by Putin. At the same time, this stability is equal to stagnation since the announced modernization has never materialized in the past twelve years. The high price of oil allows the economy prosper despite this, at least for now.

Nevertheless, some supposed winners of the Putin era are distancing themselves from the system. This young generation believes that it has material security due to its own performance and confidently operates from a position of strength. Fed by endless blog discussions and Internet news sites, these manifestations continue.

The traditional media eagerly publishes analyses, claiming that the movement is uninspired and without a program, and that their appearances revealed the alarmingly low level of the Russian intelligentsia: These people would rather protest than to apply themselves to actual work.

The opposition's claim that the Kremlin controls the mass media is an argument from the 20th century. Censorship is not even possible in the 21st century because people are accessing the media through the Internet. This is the attempt to disqualify the proponents of modernization from below as “old-fashioned” and simultaneously deny that the government could very well interfere with the Internet at will.

Activists were outraged when the “Anatomy of a Protest” video was aired by the television station NTV – which was once liberal, but now owned by a Putin minion. The anonymous filmic concoction was intended to prove that the demonstrators were bought. It shows how money is handed out to people at a crowded subway station, insinuating that the Russian citizens’ movement is “sponsored by America.” According to the courageous Novaya Gazeta, that would fall under treason. The publication asks whether the people shown receiving money were arrested in a country led by a man from the secret service. A demonstration “Against NTV's Brazen Lies” was held on March 18 in front of the television station. The day before, protesters demanded “Freedom for All Political Prisoners!” at a meeting. These manifestations are becoming more targeted, even if they are smaller. The streets will not remain silent any longer. The next major protest is scheduled for the occasion of the “enthronement” of the new/old autocrat “for life” on May 7.

Feud on the Airwaves and Half-Hearted Concessions

Studio guests who are loyal to the government speak on the radio about the protest fatigue of the population. There are already the first meetings against meetings. The criticism often ends in chastising the media not to pay so much attention to these rioters and abstain from reporting about their activities. The radio journalists counter that they are only doing their job. Even sympathetic observers think that the street cannot solve any of the problems. Instead of a revolution, the country needs an evolution. In the meantime, the Kremlin has promised concessions – once again from top down with Putin avoiding the dialog since he claims not to know with whom he should speak: The governors should once again be elected in their regions and no longer delegated from the center of power. Nikolai Petrov of the Carnegie Moscow Center remarks sarcastically that there are governors – controllable minions – who would not even be able to find the region that they supposedly preside over on a map. Whether the central vertically-structured power will manipulate the selection of the candidates to lead the 73 regions of the Russian Federation in the future remains to be seen. The government also intends to combat corrupt officials who shamelessly lead a lifestyle that they could never afford on their regular incomes. However, Russia only signed the 2006 United Nations Convention Against Corruption with a restriction: It excluded Article 20, whereby illicit enrichment was declared a crime.
The virus of the streets is even contagious to apolitical individuals when people from their social circles are mistreated by security forces at demonstrations. The “regime of the baton” is actually still the rule, even after renaming the militia as police. In Putin's empire, the police not only brutally beat people but also watch in silence when others commit violent acts and, if necessary, even shield murderers. The fact that the number of murders surpasses those of suicides is viewed as an indicator that Russia is not a democracy. This ratio is the exact opposite in civilized countries.

A group of young women who call themselves the Pussy Riot voice their witty and courageous criticism of the system by using the Internet as the multiplicator. Wearing crocheted masks and bright clothing, they visited the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the monumental house of worship in the center of Moscow, and prayed to the Mother of God at the altar to spare them from Putin because the “patriarch believes in Putin but he would be better off believing in God.” Since some of those who were locked up because of this are potentially facing years in prison, an independent woman journalist has reminded everyone of the penal code: Article 282 concerns the “Incitement of National, Racial, or Religious Enmity”; Article 213 refers to “Rowdyism.” In the public controversy about the lady rebels, some people criticize the authorities’ lack of humor and the inappropriateness of the punishment; others condone the crackdown. Russian society is split because it is in motion. Increasing more people are on the path to becoming responsible citizens who want to break the power monopoly and prevent a new authoritarian figure from further cementing the current system.

Regula Heusser-Markun is a Slavicist and journalist in Zurich.