Russian youth protests startle Kremlin
Hundreds of arrests at rallies suggest Putin’s hierarchy taking no chances
MOSCOW— The weekend anti-corruption protests that roiled Moscow and nearly 100 Russian towns clearly rattled the Kremlin, unprepared for their size and seeming spontaneity. But perhaps the biggest surprise, even to protest leaders themselves, was the youthfulness of the crowds.
A previously apathetic generation of people in their teens and 20s, most of them knowing nothing but 17 years of rule by President Vladimir Putin, was the most striking face of the demonstrations, the biggest in years.
It is far from clear whether their enthusiasm for challenging the authorities, which has suddenly provided adrenalin to Russia’s beatendown opposition, will be short-lived or points to a new era. Nor is it clear whether the object of the anger — blatant and unabashed corruption — will infect the popularity of Putin.
But the harshness of the response to the protests on Sunday — hundreds of people were arrested, in many cases simply for showing up — suggested Putin’s hierarchy was taking no chances.
Artyom Troitsky, a Russian journalist and concert promoter who for years has tracked Russian youth culture, said the fact that so many young people took part in the protests in Moscow and elsewhere “is exceptionally important.”
The reason, he said, is that “young people have always been a catalyst for change,” and their presence suggests a break from the lack of political interest they had exhibited in recent years. This “does not necessarily mean that the tide has turned,” but “something is definitely changing.”
“But is it changing on a substantial scale, or is this again just a tiny minority, which will mean this all ends up in another flop, another failure like before,” Troitsky said.
Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner and opposition leader who orchestrated the nationwide protests — and who received a15-day prison sentence on Monday for resisting arrest — said in court that he was surprised at the turnout on Sunday and that he was determined to keep up the pressure by running in next year’s presidential election.
“I think yesterday’s events have shown that there are quite a large number of voters in Russia who support the program of a candidate who speaks for the fight against corruption,” he said.
That Navalny has little to no chance of winning, and that he is ineligible to compete because of a February conviction on what were widely viewed as politically motivated fraud charges, is taken for granted. But that may not be the point.
Samuel Greene, an expert on Rus- sian protest movements at King’s College London, said Navalny had a chance to thaw Russia’s frozen political horizons and show that a post-Putin era would, at least some day, be possible.
“People — both in the Kremlin and the 80 per cent or so who tell pollsters they support Putin — have all been acting for years on the assumption that the ice is very thick and will never break. What Navalny is trying to do is show that it is not and will one day crack,” Greene said. “Once people begin to believe the ice is in fact thin, it doesn’t matter how thick it really is, and everything can change very suddenly.”
More than 13 million people have watched a Russian-language video posted on YouTube early this month in which Navalny details alleged corruption by Putin’s prime minister and close ally, Dmitry Medvedev.
Making the prime minister, widely despised by liberals and conservatives alike, the focus of his exposé instead of Putin was a shrewd move by Navalny, who has proved far more nimble at gauging public sentiment and embarrassing authorities than the marginalized liberal opposition.
That the Kremlin has been vexed by Navalny is clear from the authorities’ response to what, in most countries, would be inconsequential protests that merely disrupted traffic. The police arrested protesters in some cases for nothing more than carrying a rubber duck, a symbol of extravagant money reportedly spent on a duck pond at a government residence.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, accused protest organizers on Monday of leading young Russians — “virtually children,” he said — astray with lies and provocations.