23 + 31 + 02. The protests in Russia

This post will be about the protests, which took place on 23rd and 31st of January, and then erupted on 2nd of February, when Navalny was sentenced for 3 years in prison. 

Where to begin? The protests can be viewed on two levels: tactical and general. 

It's pretty obvious, that Navalny wanted to remind the country about his existence after his return to Russia. To warm up the protests, Anti-Corruption Foundation, led by Navalny, made a movie about "Putin's palace". In short, they claimed that Putin's cronies built a palace for him, which costed $1,5bln. In fact it was a bribe, and Putin accepted it. The main proof of this is the establishing of no-fly zone above the building. 

In general, Russia is very unequal country. And the economy here is either stagnates or gets worse for a decade. The small group of rich people are relatively immune to these changes, while ordinary people suffer a lot. 2020 was pretty tough: many people lost their job and unemployment rate is high as never before. The income of people decreased, while real inflation turned out to be very high. Quarantine measures seriously limited economic activity. I can't say that the govt abandoned people, moreover, its performance was even better than usual, but still not good enough. The people have a lot of reasons to take to streets, and limit the protests only to Navalny is incorrect. Still, he plays a role of the catalyst in Russian politics.

When Navalny published a movie about Putin's palace and called for rallies on 23rd of January, I didn't expect much. My first impressions proved me right. In Moscow everything was more or less the same. About 7000 people gathered in the city centre, eventually the riot police started an assault on the protesters and detained a lot of people. One of my friends was among them, later he was sentenced for 10 days in prison. The only new thing was rather aggressive protesters (although small in numbers) in the crowd, who fought against the police. I don't know where did they come from, but there are two possible answers: either the authorities hired provocateurs to look protesters bad, or some new social groups joined the protests, for example those who lost job in 2020.

When the day in Moscow came to an end, I started scrolling news from other cities. Quickly I realized that protests were everywhere: in almost every provincial capital and big city thousands and hundreds of people came to the main city squares. In many small towns activists stood in single pickets. Usually the number of protesters wasn't very big, but I really was impressed by the vast geography of actions. In many places the last time people took to streets was in 1991 or 1993. That's something new. Maybe it will end as unexpectedly as it started, maybe not. But it's definitely a warning sign for the authorities. 

Next phenomenon which drew my attention was the spread of rallies near Russian embassies/consulates abroad. Once again, the scale of these actions was unprecedented. Thousands of people, mostly (but not only) in the western countries (in the EU, the UK, the US, Israel, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) came to express their opinion. It is hard to judge social tendencies by one event, but maybe what we observe now is the creation of Russian liberal diaspora, which can be compared with present-day liberal Iranians, anti-leftists Chinese/Vietnamese, Ukrainian nationalist diaspora in Canada and so on. The reasons of such diaspora's emergence are obvious: after the collapse of the USSR Russians migrated to the West running from social instability to economic prosperity. These people, who are still a majority in diaspora, don't care about politics or they support Putin, who stabilized the economic situation in Russia during his first two terms. After the liberal protests in 2011 many Russians started to value political freedoms and democratic procedures in addition to income, and eventually this new wave of Russian migrants can replace older apolitical generations.

The protests on 31st of January had small scale, because on 23rd thousands of people had been detained already. Still, the police arrested thousands of citizens again. Finally, on 2nd of February Navalny was sentenced to almost 3 years. On that day the number of the police in the Moscow centre was bigger than the number of protesters. Once again, many were arrested, including journalist who observed the rally without joining it.

In general during all days of protests the police (especially in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg) used excessive force, arrested neutral journalists, in many places they violated the rules of detention (didn't provide a phone call, prevented the lawyers from getting to their clients etc). That behaviour can be easily explained: despite breaking its own laws, the regime doesn't punish its protectors. The peaceful protests themselves are legal in Russia, so 99% participants are detained for nothing and then accused of the crimes they didn't commit: blocking of city traffic, swearing in public places, in worst cases the resistance to the arrest or violence towards police officers. This hypocritical approach shows us how the rule of law is implemented in Russia. So why anybody surprised that people demand justice and take to streets?