Youth pushes back against Putin
Many youths at anti-corruption weekend rallies
Sunday’s spate of protests in Russia were the largest outpouring of anti-Kremlin sentiment since the spate of demonstrations that gripped Moscow in the winter of 2011 to 2012.
It’s too early to tell if we will see a rerun of that ultimately unsuccessful uprising. But in several ways, Sunday’s demonstrations could prove even more threatening to Vladimir Putin’s grip on power.
First is the geography. Five years ago, the authorities were able — with some justification — to characterize the demonstrators who filled the capital’s boulevards and squares as members of a coddled metropolitan elite, divorced from the lives and opinions of the vast majority of Russians living beyond the Moscow ring road.
After Sunday, however, that idea is dead.
Demonstrations in 82 cities (by the opposition’s count), including, in no particular order, the regional capitals of Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, and Vladivostok, drew crowds in the thousands and were organized by locals — not hipsters from Moscow.
Then there are the demographics. Journalists — and Putin’s spokesman — noticed a preponderance of 20-somethings and teenagers on Moscow’s Pushkin Square and in other cities on Sunday afternoon.
It is just possible that many of these youngsters were there as an act of teenage rebellion. But the political debut of “Putin’s generation” — those with no or little memory of Russia before 2000 — signifies a profound political challenge for the Kremlin.
Unlike their parents, they do not share the visceral memories of unpaid wages, currency collapse, and rampant organized crime during the “wild 1990s,” that Kremlin spin doctors have exploited brilliantly to underpin Putin’s long-term legitimacy.
What they do remember is the last three years of recession. And while they are unlikely to upend the political balance overnight (the median age in Russia is around 40), they form a conundrum that will have the Kremlin’s secret army of pollsters and social scientists working overtime.
Then there is opposition leader Alexei Navalny, 40 who has spent the past five years polishing a knack for soapbox politics unmatched by almost anyone in government or opposition.
Navalny was jailed for 15 days Monday for disobeying a police officer at a protest in central Moscow.
He was also ordered to pay a fine of 20,000 rubles ($470) for organizing an unsanctioned demonstration.
“You can’t detain tens of thousands of people,” Navalny told reporters in the courtroom. “Yesterday we saw the authorities can only go so far.”
More than 1,000 people were arrested following the demonstrations that demanded that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev resign over corruption allegations released in a dossier compiled by Navalny.
The Kremlin accused Navalny and other protest leaders of inciting a “provocation” and “offering certain rewards” to encourage schoolchildren to take part.
“The Kremlin respects people’s civic stance and their right to voice their position,” Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said. “We can’t express the same respect to those who consciously misled people and who consciously did it yesterday and provoked illegal actions.”
But after arriving in court on Monday morning, Navalny tweeted a selfie with the caption: “A time will come when we’ll put them on trial too — and that time it will be fair.”
Navalny struck a defiant note at the hearing, demanding that Medvedev be called as a witness to explain the alleged corruption people were protesting about and saying he and his allies would not be deterred.
He also warned of further demonstrations of public discontent.
Despite being deprived of television airtime, repeatedly being hauled before a court, and generally harassed, Navalny still manages to reach just enough of the public to make a nuisance of himself.
For the past few weeks he has been campaigning in Siberia, travelling from city to city to open local headquarters for his presidential bid at next year’s elections.
Sunday’s demonstrations suggest he was not wasting his time.
For a Kremlin that has worked tirelessly to root out any credible alternative from the political landscape, that must be deeply irritating — and potentially dangerous.
A TIME WILL COME WHEN WE’LL PUT THEM ON TRIAL TOO — AND THAT TIME IT WILL BE FAIR.