Memo to Putin
Sunday’s Russian protests were a strong rebuke of corruption in high places
At first sight, the Russian anti-corruption protests on Sunday didn’t draw enough people to rock the Kremlin. And yet they must be extremely worrying for Russian President Vladimir Putin: The movement against him, which he had every reason to write off as dead, is attracting a new generation of Russians throughout the country.
Alexei Navalny, who plans to run for president next year, called on Russians to take to the streets on March 26 to protest the corruption of Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, as described in a recent investigation by Mr. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. It accused Mr. Medvedev of amassing vast wealth, including palatial homes and a yacht, through a network of non-profit organizations run by his friends. The foundation produced a film detailing the story, which has been watched almost 13 million times on YouTube. The government dismissed the investigation as electioneering and didn’t even attempt a substantive answer.
A project such as this didn’t seem to Mr. Navalny’s detractors to be enough of a reason for nationwide street action. They ridiculed his call on the social networks — and were caught unawares as demonstrations took place in about 100 Russian cities. According to the Navalny team, some 150,000 people turned out across the country, up to 30,000 of them in Moscow. The police, of course, reported lower numbers — just 8,000 demonstrators in Moscow. As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, putting the total number of protesters in the high tens of thousands.
That's not an impressive number. In late 2011 and early 2012, after a blatantly rigged parliamentary election, about as many, if not more, people repeatedly took to the streets in Moscow alone. But back then, there was a stronger reason for the action than one man’s corruption investigation, and the rallies were officially permitted. Sunday's demonstrations in most cities, including Moscow, did not have official approval, making it highly likely that participants would be detained or even roughed up by police. Russians know from experience what could happen; after a particularly intense day of protest in May 2012, seven people were convicted and sent to prison for up to four years. The anti-Putin movement died down after that, and the 2014 Crimea invasion, accompanied by an eruption of imperialist glee, appeared to finish it off.
The demographics of Sunday’s protests were the biggest surprise. Young Russians have always been politically passive. It could be expected, however, that at some point Mr. Putin’s efforts to turn the country backward toward a version of the state-dominated Soviet system would irritate them because it would become hard for them to imagine a future in Mr. Putin’s hybrid of crony and state capitalism.
In the 2000s, the Kremlin generously financed proPutin youth organizations that were supposed to create “social elevators” for young people loyal to Mr. Putin, giving them visibility, access to training and financial resources. Nashi, or Our People, was the best known of the groups. In 2012, however, Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin official responsible for setting up these organizations, fell out of favor with Putin because he'd failed to prevent the mass protests. He was moved to a job in the cabinet and stripped of responsibility for shaping the political landscape. Nashi ceased to exist almost immediately, and no project of that magnitude emerged out of its ruins.
At least 1,030 people were detained in Moscow alone on Sunday. Among them was Moscow Conservatory student Daniil Pilchen, who had just become a social media celebrity for mocking a list of regime enemies a professor had ordered him to read aloud. The few veterans of the 2011 protests who were also picked up reported there was no one over the age of 20 on the police buses with them.
Most of the detainees, including Pilchen, had been released by Monday morning without any legal consequences. Navalny himself, also detained at the demonstration, was sentenced to a $300 fine and 15 days' detention for disobeying police. He's been there before; he’ll get out a more dangerous man for the Kremlin than he’d been before last weekend. And Mr. Putin’s men haven't figured yet what they were going to do about the changed situation. That’s clear from their confused, off-key reactions.
The Kremlin will be tempted to respond to the new challenge with repression. It will have to tread carefully, though. The revolution of 2013 and 2014 in Kiev began after President Viktor Yanukovych’s regime unleashed brute force on a peaceful student demonstration. Hundreds of thousands of Kievans responded by taking to the street and holding the city center for months before Yanukovych was forced to flee. In Russia on Sunday, the detentions involved little rough action, so such a response is not yet warranted. That, however, can change any day.
Even if Mr. Navalny’s presidential bid is doomed, there are reasons for Mr. Putin and his people to fear, if not for their own future, then for that of their heirs.