From the editorial team at Gazeta.ru:

Abolishing Activity
July 23, 2012
Gazeta.ru

The Russian authorities are trying to make all forms of organized civil activity illegal. And they’re creating a surprise for themselves: when the first serious crisis hits, they’re going to find themselves up against entirely different forces – ones that come as if out of nowhere, unwilling to limit themselves to the bounds of the law, and indisposed to dialogue with the higher authorities.

Under pressure from the state, the opposition has now gone heavily on the defensive. The loud and confident calls heard not so long ago to renew civil society, to restructure the political order, and to find mutually acceptable forms of transition from the old system to the new one have since fallen silent.

By spewing out ultra-reactionary measures, the government has cut off political initiatives and forced its critics to focus on their own protection.

Protection, that is, from the upcoming show trials on the alleged mass riots on Bolotnaya Square and the inquisitional case against Pussy Riot; from the hysterical smear campaigns stylizing them as “enemies of the people;” from attempts to subject the internet to censorship and to label criticism of the authorities as “libel” and punish it as a criminal offense.

This reactionary wave has gathered momentum and become swamped with volunteers and seditionists alike – the outcasts of today’s government who hope that this troubled torrent will carry them into central positions. One Duma deputy proposed requalifying not only NGOs as “foreign agents,” but the media as well. Another one wants to introduce a criminal statute against “compromising morality,” so that nobody wants to arrange politically-tinted performances. Even the Public Chamber prepared a piece of legislation aimed at preventing the work of independent volunteers, the increase of whom has brought about the jealousy of the authorities.

If you combine all that’s already been done with what’s only just been planned, it comprises one insane project – the abolition of civil society in Russia. In reality, it’s impossible to do something like this right now, but it’s exactly what they’re dreaming about as an ideal.

The new law on rallies transforms marches that criticize the leadership either into something illegal and severely punishable or into an event completely under the control of that same leadership. The frightened NGOs are fighting over the state subsidies they’ve been promised and will become typical bureaucratic agencies. The internet will be stripped of everything that isn’t approved from on high. Critics will bite their lounges out of fear of “libeling” anybody. The “municipal filter” will exclude anyone from running for office except for those approved by the authorities ahead of time. A new, fatal law will be conjured for any sector of civil activity that still remains alive.

That’s exactly the trajectory. And even though it’s going to be only partially successful in the worst case scenario and won’t to drive people back into their kitchens, it’s easy to imagine some temporary freezes.

But here, two questions arise: who is going to suffer and what kind of social consequences are these reactionary freezes going to have, at least in the intermediate term.

The situation with the victims is clear. They are almost literally the same “angry townsfolk” who spent several months taunting the Kremlin with their protests. By some coincidence, the overwhelming majority of Russian civil activists belong to this crowd, including non-political ones – from city and environmental advocates to volunteers.

This petty but extremely punctual revenge on the part of the Kremlin is addressed, of course, first of all to those who “offended” it. But of course it works out so that the strike hits all types of civil activity and the entire civil collective.

This collective is almost entirely concentrated in large cities and most of all in Moscow. Its relatively small number of adherents gives the authorities the illusion that it is indeed possible to push it aside and forget about it.

In thinking that it should eliminate the tiresome and irritating opposition, the Kremlin is actually breaking with the part of society that is the most moderate, rational, law-abiding, and amenable to dialogue.

If the dream of the authorities comes true and the current civil collective is seriously compromised within the public realm, that realm is not going to remain empty. The newly-available space will be quickly taken up by different forces altogether, ones that appear instantaneously and spontaneously, who ignore any bans or government regulations, and who are not at all inclined to make compromises.

The public passivity of today’s ordinary Russian citizens is a fleeting and deceptive phenomenon, entirely unlike the trusting optimism of better times. Official surveys indicate that people have a very restrained or directly skeptical attitude towards the higher leadership. Any reckless social innovation could make this silence erupt into flashes of discontent, which will easily find spokesmen, and the fewer responsible ones there are, the more strongly disorganized and compromised the growing social stratus of political oppositionist activists will become.

The Russian people are waiting for the new old president to fulfill his campaign promises – a quick rise in the quality of life, or at least not its decline, which is what we actually face. Behind the nervousness with which the government shuffles and reshuffles its plans is a vague understanding that not one of these plans is going to work when considering the expectations of the masses.

The number of options left for the government is shrinking literally every month, and its current aggression against the country’s civil collective is worse than just the aggregate of reactionary and unlawful actions. It is a grave political mistake.

Many citizen videos show that the heavy police lines were well inside the rally’s official perimeter long before it was scheduled to conclude at 7:30 p.m. This illegal presence served no purpose other than to provoke conflict. All of the clashes and all of the arrests took place inside the authorized protest zone. Tensions were already high with the city paralyzed under such heavy police presence that it approached martial law. Several of the protest’s leaders, Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov, and Sergei Udaltsov, were actually arrested at the stage of the rally. Another protest leader, Garry Kasparov, asked, “Why is there such police pressure against an officially sanctioned rally? Every single one of our marches have been peaceful, so why provoke clashes now? The only reason is that they are nervous and want to portray us as dangerous radicals.”

The Kremlin’s repression tactics were the same they have used against the “Strategy 31” marchers, but the results are very different when there are tens of thousands of protestors instead of hundreds. The protestors were not the “extremists” advertised by the state-controlled media. They were citizens fed up with years of lies and corruption. Today’s events make it clearer than ever that Russian society will not be satisfied with anything less than Putin’s exit from power, and that the protests will continue until he is gone. It is equally clear that Putin has chosen the path of confrontation and that he will not shy away from violence against the Russian people.

Videos and further reading:

Beaten protestor carried away as crowd chants “Murderers!” at police
Frank Luntz was at the rally and reports for Fox News
Photo gallery of the day’s violence
Remarkable photo of a child facing rows of riot police

According to Ekho Moskvy radio, May Day events in Moscow that had been sanctioned by the city government included five demonstrations, three processions, and eleven rallies. One of the processions was organized by the opposition movement Solidarity, which counted members from a variety of other opposition groups and public organizations among its 500 participants. Prominent figures in the procession included United Civil front leader Garry Kasparov, former Deputy Prime Minister and Solidarity cofounder Boris Nemtsov, and former police Major Aleksei Dymovsky. Participants carried posters, political insignia, and a gigantic Russian flag spanning several meters in length while chanting “Russia without Putin,” “Moscow without Luzhkov,” “Putin is Brezhnev, Putin is Stalin,” “We need the Other Russia,” and “Putin must go,” among other slogans.

Although a smoke bomb was set off at one point during the procession, the police did not move to detain anyone. Protesters believe that a provocateur set off the bomb. Despite that, the procession successfully made its way to Moscow’s riverside Bolotnaya Square, where the event ended with a cultural festival. Police detained several people on the square without explanation, including Andrei Moiseyev, co-leader of Solidarity’s Moscow branch and one of the event’s organizers. Moiseyev was escorted away by police together with a reproduction of a painting by artist Dmitri Vrubel, entitled “The Kiss of Putin and Brezhnev” that he was holding. Also detained were artist activist Pyotr Verzilov, his wife, several musicians, and event co-organizer Sergei Davidis. Police gave no explanations for any of the detentions.

Elsewhere in Moscow, at least five thousand people turned out for a demonstration held by the Communist party. In addition to the Communists themselves, members of the Left Front, the National Bolsheviks, the anti-fascist group Antifa, and anarchist organizations also joined the protest.

The liberal opposition group Yabloko also held a demonstration in Moscow, with approximately 1200 participants. Chief among speakers at the event was Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin, who warned against allowing Prime Minister Putin to return to the presidency in 2012. “We need a new president who won’t rob the people of their rights and freedoms – who will fight not against the opposition, but against corruption,” he said to the crowd.

Another protest dubbed the Day of Anger was held in Moscow by the opposition group Left Front. A wide variety of oppositions, human rights advocates, environmental activists and social justice advocates came together to express their collective grief with Moscow’s ruling elite – in particular, Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Governor Boris Gromov.

Controversy had surrounded plans for the Day of Anger all last week. Left Front leader and event organizer Sergei Udaltsov had said on Wednesday that the city had sanctioned the event, but the mayor’s office denied this the next day. It remained unclear up to the end whether the rally had really been officially sanctioned or not – a vital factor, since participating in an unsanctioned rally in Russia is punishable by law, and many unsanctioned rallies end with participants being beaten and/or arrested by the police. In any case, the rally went on, but Udaltsov was detained at the end. The official reason cited by police was that more people had taken part than Udaltsov had indicated on the application for sanction. According to Left Front press secretary Anastasia Udaltsova, the unofficial version for Udaltsov’s detention, as told by several police officers, was that “representatives of the Moscow government would like to have a chat with him.”

In the city of Kaliningrad, approximately three thousand demonstrators took part in a rally of various opposition groups. According to Kasparov.ru, what began as a traditional May Day demonstration evolved into an anti-government rally. Participants brought signs to the event reading “Peace, work, May – no work, no housing,” and held up tangerines, which have become a symbol of public protest in the city in recent months. Following that, however, protesters began chants demanding for the federal government to resign.

In St. Petersburg, a procession planned by democratic opposition groups was banned by city authorities. Olga Kurnosova, executive director of the pro-democracy group United Civil Front, said that the reason involved the slogan that the protesters had planning to use, which called for St. Petersburg Governor and Putin favorite Valentina Matviyenko to resign. Supposedly, the slogan did not correspond with the slogan written on the application to hold the rally that was filed with the city. Therefore, the procession was banned altogether. Despite that, about seven hundred oppositionists held a stationary demonstration where the procession was supposed to take off from.

A photo gallery of the various events in Moscow is available here at Grani.ru.