Opposition leader Garry Kasparov comments on mass anti-government protests in Russia this past weekend. While police estimate attendance to be 40,000 people, most independent analysts put the figure between 80,000 – 100,000.

Freedom Never Freezes Over
By Garry Kasparov
February 6, 2012
Kasparov.ru

The success of the February 4 protest exceeded even our greatest expectations – the number of participants surpassed our most optimistic predictions several times over. So it’s strange to hear such intense discussions about how the birth of civil society in Russia is only just beginning now.

Tens of thousands of people who came out into negative twenty degree Celsius weather to an organized opposition march put forth concise political demands to the current government and demonstrated unwavering decisiveness in insisting on their constitutional rights. Between the two rallies on Bolotnaya Square, more has passed than simply eight weeks – an entire historical epoch has passed. The protest against mass falsifications during the State Duma elections on December 4 has precipitously turned into a categorical rejection of Putin and a demand for his unconditional withdrawal from Russia’s political scene. All the talk about the danger of overpoliticizing the protest movement has been refuted by the dynamic growth of the number of participants and the heightened energetic fever pitch of the demonstrations.

February 4 also gave us an answer in the argument of whether or not there can realistically be constructive cooperation between disparate political forces in organizing mass anti-Putin demonstrations. The organizational committee’s fears that there could be possible conflicts between activists from leftist, liberal, and nationalist-patriotic wings were dispelled during the rally on Bolotnaya, where a singular stream of people merged under different-colored flags without breaking down into any chaotic clashes. We can say for certain that civil society has passed the test of political maturity. Ideological differences were relegated to the back in the face of a shared enemy, fatal for our country and for all of us.

The Putin regime, steeped in lies and corruption and having legalized complete lawlessness, has now brought together millions of Russian citizens who, under the slogan of “Russia without Putin,” see the possibility of having their social and political demands fulfilled. For leftists, this means the battle against oligarchic capitalism and for social justice. For the nationalists who have joined the protest movement, it’s the prospect of creating a united political nation that will put the interests of Russia above partisan ones. For liberals, the main issue is creating fully-working democratic institutions and establishing effective protection for civil rights, which in principle is a general demand of today’s entire protest movement on the whole.

This national agenda is not strictly bound to March 4, since it’s already obvious that none of the “opposition” candidates allowed by the Kremlin to run for president are in any state to take upon themselves even the most minimal commitment to dismantle the Putin regime. Those who refused to participate in the February 4 march and rally, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and A Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov, thereby signed statements attesting to their political impotency, and Prokhorov’s activeness boiled down to intentionally placing a column of his own supporters at the front of the march, giving off a promotional effect to show he participates in anti-Putin demonstrations. However, unsurprisingly, Prokhorov’s own quasi-political activities are no departure from the typical ethics of Russian oligarchs, who are accustomed to leeching off the fruits of other people’s labor.

The effect of the unbelievable burst of civil activeness in the center of Moscow was only highlighted by the crippled pro-Putin rally on Poklonnaya Hill, which combined the worst qualities of Soviet formalism and Putinist corruption. In comparison with the harsh but essentially nonviolent rhetoric used on Bolotnaya, Putin’s fans devolved into hysterics, spewing verbal abuse and curses against dissidents and openly calling for violence and bloodshed. A photo of Sergei Kurginyan with saliva running down his chin couldn’t be a better illustration of what the watchdog of the regime really looks like.

But there’s no need to pay attention to the Kremlin’s ideological epileptics. We already know that there are many of us, and with considered, concerted actions we can make the agony of the Putin regime as painless for our country as possible. To save our country, a large, diverse crowd of people came out to demonstrate on February 4. And regardless of the biting cold, they stood on Bolotnaya Square under Russian flags, imperial tricolors, red flags, and orange banners, and, putting all that aside, listed to the voice of Yury Shevchuk, who sang a song about a homeland…

Speaking at a press conference in Moscow on Wednesday, Poser said that he would not tolerate further censorship of his program. The most recent instance occurred when management at Channel One decided to nix a part of a February 6 interview that discussed Alexei Navalny – a leading opposition figure and one of the organizers of a massive opposition protest over the weekend.

“It might be that at the end of the day it’s not as a result of [the incident concerning] Navalny, but if anything else like this happens, I might just tell them – that’s enough!” Posner said.

At the same time, the host expressed hope that it wouldn’t come to such an extreme measure.

He also promised that if the show is cancelled, a press conference would be held to explain the specific reasons why.

“I’m very glad that, thanks to the Internet, anyone who’s interested can see: here is the program and here is what they cut out of it. It’s becoming meaningless to cut things out,” Posner said.

The host admitted that February 6 was not the first time he’d agreed to air a censored episode. While it happens “relatively rarely, this is one of the compromises that I sometimes make,” he acknowledged.

The interview in question was with fellow television host Tina Kandelaki, during which Posner asked whether or not she thought that he would be allowed to interview Aleksei Navalny on his own show: “I could call up Aleksei Navalny, but what do you think, would they let me?” According to Gazeta.ru, this fragment was cut out of the episode that aired in most of Russia, with the full version only broadcasted in the Far East, where it is regularly airs live.

On Wednesday, Novaya Gazeta published a statement by a postal worker that included a letter sent to local Pochta Rossii managers. The letter, signed by a representative of the company’s personel service, demanded a list from each branch of employees who would be taking part in the February 4 protest at Moscow’s Victory Park.

The letter then states: “We would like to bring to your attention the fact that worker participation is mandatory!”

In addition, another Pochta Rossii worker said on a live broadcast of Russian News Service radio that management had promised to pay each worker 6 thousand rubles (~200 USD) for going to the rally.

“A mechanic was running around with an anxious look on his face: ‘Guys, who wants to go to the rally on February 4? You only have to be there for two hours. They’ll take us in a bus, you’ll get double pay, as if for an entire day,’” the worker said.

Organizers of the rally, consisting of supporters of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, intentionally set the date to conflict with an opposition rally taking place elsewhere in the city that day – what will be Russia’s third mass anti-government rally since highly-criticized elections last December.

According to LiveJournal blogger stilett-1, employees of the Moscow Bureau of Technical Cataloging are also being coerced into attending the pro-Putin rally. Employees will have to “sign in on a special list” at the rally; those not present are threatened with “unpleasantries” at work.

Public workers in Russia have long complained of pressure to vote for ruling party candidates or turn out for pro-government protests.

In particular, the Russian Public Chamber has opened a hotline for teachers being forced to attend the February 4 rally.

“It’s important for us to know what’s actually going on. I am a practicing teacher and can say that in my school none of the teachers received any order. But what’s being written in the media and discussed on social networking sites needs to be checked out,” said project coordinator Sergei Volkov.

Moscow Deputy Mayor Aleksandr Gorbenko, who has been heavily involved in negotiations with opposition leaders over an upcoming rally on February 4, said the square would only be opening because the contract to build a parking garage there will be expiring within the next week.

“Neither the Moscow mayor’s office nor the Moscow city government held any deliberate intent to freeze construction work on Triumfalnaya Square,” he said.

The announcement came a day after approximately 30 people were arrested during a Strategy 31 protest in defense of free assembly on the boundaries of the square.

Oppositionist activists in the Strategy 31 campaign have long contended that the decision to fence off their traditional meeting space was a politically motivated attempt to drive protesters out to more secluded parts of the city. There were no signs of construction being carried out since the barrier was erected.

According to Agora, Russia was home to 730 rallies, demonstrations, and pickets attended by a total of more than 400 thousand people during 2011. Of those participants, more than four thousand were detained before, during, or immediately after the event.

The group found that 117 civil activists, made up mostly of bloggers, anarchist or antifascists, and members of the banned National Bolshevik Party, were subjected to criminal prosecution in the past year. They were mostly incriminated under Russia’s controversial “extremism” laws, which critics denounce for their broad, vague wording, and also under laws against slandering or insulting government figures. Among the persecuted activists was music critic Artemy Troitsky, Novosibirsk artist Artem Loskutov, Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolaev of the art group Voina, and Tyumen State University professor Andrei Kutuzov.

Three activists were killed in 2011: in May, editor Yakhya Magomedov of the Avar-language Islamic newspaper As-Salam; in June, Rector Maksud Sadikov of the Institute of Theology and International Relations was shot along with his nephew in Makhachkala; in December, Gadzhimurad Kamalov, a journalist and founder of the independent newspaper Chernovik, was murdered in Dagestan.

Agora also recorded 45 incidents of beatings and other attacks.

The most at-risk groups were ecologists (primarily members of the Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest and opponents of environmental damage due to Olympic construction in Sochi), LGBT activists, and activists and participants of protests in the North Caucasus.

There were also 42 arrests, most commonly of members of the National Bolsheviks, Khimki Forest activists, and members of the electoral watchdog Golos. Irina Teplinskaya, a vocal critic of Russia’s treatment of drug addicts, was arrested in a Kaliningrad airport in August, and Golos head Liliya Shibanova was arrested in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport in December. Noting the arrests of blogger Aleksei Navalny, oppositionist Ilya Yashin, and pianist Fedor Amirov, analysts at Agora said that from December 5-7, Russia for the first time began detaining people en masse and sentencing them to the maximum term of administrative arrest, with more than 100 people turning up in Moscow holding facilities during that time.

Additionally, 2011 saw 25 police searches of NGO offices and activists’ apartments.

The searches included a firm owned by Khimki Forest activist Yevgenia Chirikova and her husband, the office of the opposition movement Solidarity, and the Ulyanovsk branch of the Memorial human rights center.

The 850 cases of persecution recorded by Agora in 2011 followed 603 such cases in 2010, 308 in 2009, and 144 in 2008.

“We’re currently formulating a suit in this regard,” Grigory Yavlinsky told journalists on Friday.

Earlier in the day, Yavlinsky received an official notice from the commission (TsIK) that he would not be allowed to run as a presidential candidate in the upcoming March election.

According to the TsIK, about 25 percent of the signatures on Yavlinsky’s petition had been falsified, well above the 5 percent permitted by Russian law. However, the party insists that the rejection was politically motivated.

On January 24, the newspaper Vedomosti reported that a source in the presidential administration said that Yavlinsky’s rejection was a “surprise” to the Kremlin. In addition, an anonymous source in the TsIK said that the number of bad signatures collected by other presidential candidates was about the same as Yavlinsky’s – this likely due to the difficulty of collecting 2 million signatures in the one-month time limit and the inability of candidates to oversee the work of all of their signature collectors.

According to political analyst Mikhail Tulsky, only 100,000 signatures were needed to run for president in 1991. In 1996 the number rose to 1 million, but candidates were given 3 months to collect them. It rose again to 2 million in 2004, with 7 percent falsified signatures allowed. Since 2007, that number dropped to 5 percent, and the length of time to collect them dropped to a month. Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, who has recently successfully completed the registration process, denounced it as “dishonest” and “degrading.”

According to Sergei Davidis, one of the organizers of the “For Fair Elections” march, a sticking point was that Deputy Mayor Aleksandr Gorbenko proposed a route that would keep the protesters outside of the Garden Ring, which encircles central Moscow. When Gorbenko rejected oppositionists’ requests to allow the march to be held closer to the center of the city, the organizers apparently felt they had no other choice but to agree.

But even the status of that proposal – the city’s own – was unclear.

“We were told that we’ll get an official written response tomorrow per our request to hold the march from Luzhniki to Krimsky Bridge,” said Davidis. “We’ll have to wait and see what we’re going to do after that.”

Left Front coordinator Sergei Udaltsov also confirmed that organizers had no luck in reaching an agreement over the route with city authorities.

He stressed that the city had insisted that the oppositionists gather at Luzhniki since the very beginning of negotiations, and had refused to make any concessions.

“Organizers of the march and rally still intend to insist on holding the events in the center of the city,” said Udaltsov.

The mayor’s office first turned down the march’s proposed route during a meeting on January 20, when Gorbenko claimed that it would be impossible “from the point of view of safety.” However, the move followed a long tradition on the part of Moscow authorities of driving oppositionists to the less-visible outskirts of the city under the pretext of preventing traffic problems.

The February 4 march will be the third mass protest against falsified election results in the past two months. The demonstrations have been the largest Russia has seen since the fall of the Soviet Union, and so far more than 19 thousand people have pledged on Facebook to turn out for the next one.

The group, which is called Pussy Riot, played a song titled “Putin Pissed Himself” while perched on Red Square’s Place of Skulls, a platform historically used for announcing imperial decrees. After the 1:38 minute song was over, FSB officers ran up to the group and brought three of the eight girls away to a Kremlin police checkpoint. Five of the girls were arrested in all.

After the incident, police immediately cordoned off the Place of Skulls “to carry out investigative work.”

According to one member of the band, the song calls on Russian citizens “to occupy key places in the country and achieve political changes.”

The singer explained: “The song has the line ‘Punishment with the whip for your freedom and ours.’ We were recalling the dissident protest on Red Square in 1968 [against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia], after which the dissidents were tortured and sent to psychiatric hospitals, prison, and exile. The line ‘Patients are invited to conform’ is a reference to the types of punishment that were used in the USSR, and also to the fact that the government in Russia today thinks of its citizens as psychiatric patients incapable of making their own decisions.’”

Interfax later reported that the activists were charged with violating the law on holding public demonstrations. They were released from holding, but must appear in court on January 24.

Pussy Riot is well-known for holding impromptu protest concerts. They also participated in a concert on December 17 in support of oppositionists arrested during protests against falsified elections for the State Duma.

Photographs from the concert can be seen on the group’s LiveJournal page.

While the history of corruption in Russia is a long one, what’s begun to change is the status of those speaking out against it. Starting with police officer Aleksei Dymovsky in November 2009, who was promptly fired and discredited by the establishment he tried to criticize, more and more whistleblowers with prominent posts have begun to step into public view.

One such figure, whose story has been lost in the flurry of events since Vladimir Putin announced his presidential run in late September, is Sochi Federal Judge Dmitri Novikov. After attempting to bring several of his colleagues to justice for appropriating public land and selling it back to the government for more than $100 million, Novikov found himself the victim of a system that he already knew was overrun by corrupt officials – but never had to face as a defendant.

As Novikov explained during a press conference last November, he was retroactively stripped of his right to immunity as a judge, “which was absurd,” and held in prison for eight months. He was then freed, all charges against him were dropped, and he was reinstated as a judge – not, however, unscathed.

“I am probably the only judge who went from being a judge to being in jail and then becoming a judge again. And what I saw there and understand – if I, a person with a decent amount of experience and a degree, don’t have the strength to fight this machine, then any of you would simply rather die than have this situation happen to you,” Novikov said.

The judge then described the months of dehumanizing torture he sustained while in jail. Among other measures taken, Novikov was made to strip naked during each interrogation, forced into a concrete box to sit under a stream of ice water for up to two hours, confined to small spaces once the doctors learned that he had claustrophobia, and deprived of air conditioning in 130 F temperatures, to the point that blood began to run from his ears. The torture went on despite the hours of testimony that Novikov voluntarily gave, but which investigators ignored and insisted never happened. “Sometimes the interrogations were held altogether without me,” he said in an interview with Express Gazeta.

Novikov’s account of the torture he endured under politically-motivated charges that were eventually thrown out would be frightening enough on its own. What he had to say about the systemic corruption that that all federal judges participate in to obtain their posts was just icing on the cake.

“The position of a judge in Sochi costs up to half a million dollars,” Novikov explained. “And who has the capacity to sell it? What makes up this sum? This sum is the sum that you give to representatives of the qualification college of judges, which ensures that you get elected; it’s the money that you give to the representatives of the president’s regional plenipotentiary, to federal inspectors, all so that your candidacy is passed by the plenipotentiary. You give a little money to the FSB, you give a little money to the procurator, you even give a little money to the presidential administration.”

He went on to explain how most judges in Sochi abuse their positions to make money off of construction ventures.

“Who in the justice system carries this out?” Novikov asked. “It’s clans. It’s clans where the dad is a judge, the mom is a judge, the son is a judge. Our procurator is another son of an investigator. Not long ago, the president passed an incredible measure to make it so that one family can’t have the mom be a judge, the dad be a lawyer, and the son be an investigator. What began to happen? All the families began to get legal divorces. All of them.”

According to Express Gazeta, numerous television executives have been filming Novikov’s story, questioning his friends and acquaintances in the process. Whether or not they help him escape another eight months of torture following a new set of charges brought against him remains to be seen.

Because he was feeling ill, Udaltsov announced before the decision was read that he wouldn’t be able to appear at Saturday’s court session.

The court building itself was surrounded by approximately 20 journalists before the reading, and entrance was only granted to those with special permission.

Activists had gathered nearby and unfurled banners reading “Justice is higher to or equal to the law,” which were removed by police.

Udaltsov was arrested and sentenced to time in jail repeatedly during the month of December. His health suffered significantly because of a hunger strike held during that time. He and his supporters maintain that the charges filed against him were politically motivated.