Over the past year, society has changed course and begun moving along a course towards increased political mobilization, Kudrin believes – one that is impossible to reverse.

“The decrease in protesters might give the impression that society is returning to political stagnation,” he said. “But that would be a mistake.” On the contrary, Kudrin predicts that civil activity is only going to increase in the coming year.

The year 2012 saw an upswing in calls for political action within society. Among the most prominent examples, Kudrin cited the volunteer camps in Krymsk after that city suffered a devastating flood this past summer and electoral observation organizations.

At times, these projects were developed in spite of government actions that stifle civil activity. “There is a series of laws, such as the changes in the definition of ‘state treason’ and the stricter law on mass protests, that has led to a rise in distrust in populist actions,” Kudrin said. “The chance to reduce the tension within society that followed the parliamentary elections [in December 2011] has been missed.”

Kudrin noted that the government did take some positive measures, such as easing political party registration and a introducing a mixed electoral system, but said this was not sufficient.

The ex-finance minister had a reserved opinion about the Russian opposition’s new Coordination Council, which held elections last October. “We were interested to watch the council’s elections. It was a good experience. However, in my opinion, they should have chosen a platform and then, after that, formed a structure. The Coordination Council did it the other way around,” he said.

Kudrin had even harsher words about the negative effect on the Russian economy of the Kremlin’s anti-Western rhetoric. He argued that it is impossible to talk about Moscow as an international financial center if the government remains so suspicious of foreigners.

“The largest companies already doubt whether it’s worth expanding their staffs of international employees or whether it’s better to cut them back. These businesses haven’t been given clear rules of the game,” he said.

He also strongly criticized the work of Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev’s cabinet. “Instead of privatization, we’re seeing creeping deprivatization,” Kudrin said. “Although, the Rosneft deal to buy TNK-BP has led to the deregulation of 40 billion dollars in shares. That’s several times bigger than all of the government’s privatization plans.”

Kudrin said that Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization was a positive step, but noted that the decision had already been made under Medvedev’s presidency, not Putin’s. He declined to comment directly on Medvedev’s decision not to run for a second presidential term.

While the economic plan that Putin put forth during his December 12 address to parliament was good, Kudrin said, “there aren’t realistic ways to implement it.” He also believes that the president still has not firmly established policy for his third term and could still change course.

One important factor to support the country’s economic growth is migrants, the former finance minister added. “The state should strictly regulate migration. Today we issue about 2 million work migration permits, but in reality we have more than 10 million migrants,” he said. “This speaks to the fact that we have insufficient regulation. We need to help migrants become legalized and attract workers while taking local communities into account. The size of our working population is shrinking.”

Kudrin, who is considered one of Putin’s closest confidants, resigned as finance minister last year just days after Putin announced that he planned to return to the presidency. At the time, Kudrin complained that he could not serve as finance minister under a cabinet led by Dmitri Medvedev, who then suggested that he resign.

In the time since then, Kudrin has founded the Civic Initiatives Committee. “It’s not a political party and it has no goals of taking over the government,” Kudrin explained. “We opened the New Government School to teach those who are interested in working for local governmental agencies. People of entirely different convictions come here, from Parnas to members of United Russia.”

Kudrin also announced that the committee was going to work to support honest journalism, the defense of businesses, and social/cultural projects.

“Why am I, an economist, doing these things? Because economic reforms are hindered by an imperfect political system,” Kudrin explained.

Olga Kurnosova, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the United Civil Front, said that protesters gathered on Pionerskaya Square and shouted slogans including “Power to the millions, not to millionaires!” “Putin, step down!” and “We are for fair elections!”

Along with Kurnosova, Oksana Dmitrieva from A Just Russia and leading opposition politician Boris Nemtsov made speeches at the rally.

While the protest had been sanctioned by city authorities, witnesses reported that around ten armored military trucks were seen making their way towards the center of the city on Sunday morning.

In addition, police briefly detained Nemtsov at the Moskovsky train station and demanded an explanation for his trip to the city.

According to Grani.ru, the police presented Nemtsov with a document labeling him as a “leader of extremists.” The opposition leader was released after explaining that he had come to participate in a sanctioned rally.

The incident compacted Nemtsov’s fears that he is being watched. “The police continue to follow me earnestly, and I suspect that my freedom could soon come to an end,” he said.

Accusations of “extremist” activity are commonly used by Russian government authorities to persecute or marginalize opposition politicians.

Also on Sunday, the Russian Central Electoral Commission rejected an application by fellow opposition leader Eduard Limonov to run for president.

The commission stated that the rejection was based on a lack of minutes from a meeting that is required by law to be held in support of the candidate.

Limonov denounced the decision as politically motivated and promised to challenge it in court. On December 15, the oppositionist found himself without a physical place to hold the meeting, since the hall he had rented was abruptly closed for “urgent repairs” the day of the meeting.

On May 12, Kasparov.ru correspondent Viktor Shamaev was covering a protest in Penza held under the Day of Wrath campaign. Organizers say these protests are meant to provide a day for Russians to voice their collective grievances against federal and local officials, and participants routinely include human rights activists, political oppositionists, environmental activists, and others. Local authorities often refuse to grant permission for Day of Wrath rallies, which are subsequently cracked down on by police. Yesterday’s Day of Wrath participants in Penza held solitary pickets, the only legal form of non-government-approved protest in Russia.

Immediately after Shamaev photographed local Left Front coordinator Yevgeny Makeyenko picketing outside the mayor’s office, a deputy chief from Penza Police Station #1 sent a lieutenant to ask the journalist to follow him to his car. When the officer smelled an empty can of beer, he took Shamaev to a detox center, and then to a police station where the journalist was held for three hours.

It is not clear what exactly Shamaev was charged with, but according to Kasparov.ru, he had to sign all papers presented to him by police, ostensibly admitting his guilt, since he needed to take his infant child home.

Additionally, the website reports that the lieutenant who detained Shamaev told him in a private discussion that he was “ordered to take Shamaev.”

Shamaev worked for the police before becoming a correspondent for Kasparov.ru in 2006. Law enforcement agents have repeatedly interrogated him in connection with various incidents and have attempted to arrest him several times. For example, Shamaev was questioned in November 2009 about the arson of the Penza United Russia office on the basis that he was among the first journalists to arrive at the scene. Human rights activists expressed concern at the treatment of oppositionists during the investigation.

Speaking Wednesday on Finam-FM radio, the elderly activist said that police routinely create such uncomfortable conditions at the rallies that she has become concerned about her physical safety.

“I’ve become convinced that, given my 83 years, it is physically impossible for me to withstand this jam, the pushing of police officers and so on,” said Alexeyeva. “I’m not going to go out.”

At the same time, the activist added that her decision does not mean that she won’t continue to support the Strategy 31 initiative, of which she is a co-organizer.

“But I’m going to wear a badge. And tell people that it’s important to preserve tradition, using all my influence and all my opportunities, that’s what I’m going to do,” she said.

Tuesday’s rally marked the eleventh iteration of the opposition’s Strategy 31 campaign. About 2000 people came out to Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square to take part in the event, making it the largest rally in the campaign’s history.

As with the previous ten rallies, Moscow city authorities turned down an application by Strategy 31 organizers to obtain legal sanction to hold the event. Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov defended this permission-based system in a session of the city government earlier in the day, saying that the city’s decision to allow or disallow any given rally is not due to any “particular love” for certain rally organizers, but to considerations for public safety.

“Before every event in the capital, we take all necessary organizational measures to assure total safety for the people,” said the mayor, noting that anyone who wishes to hold a demonstration can file an application with the city and receive a decision within ten days.

The system will remain as it is, he went on, “and in the future we will continue to carry out this work in accordance with the law.”

“We will now allow chaos in Moscow,” Luzhkov stressed.

Luzhkov’s statements appear to contradict the Russian federal law that governs rallies, marches and demonstrations, which requires only a notification – not an application for permission – to be filed with the city in order to hold such an event.

Tuesday’s rally was scheduled to begin at 6:00 pm, and by that time Triumfalnaya Square had already been completely cordoned off by OMON riot police and internal military forces. According to a Kasparov.ru correspondent, the police left no free space for ralliers to gather. About 50 police buses bordered the perimeter of the square, and police blocked all pedestrians from entering. Part of the sidewalk between the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall and Triumfalnaya Square, where Strategy 31 ralliers have previously gathered when the square itself was blocked off, was also cordoned off.

Strategy 31 organizers issued a statement of concern on Tuesday morning regarding an interview with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that had been published the day before. In the interview, the prime minister charged that the real goal of Strategy 31 participants “is to get bludgeoned upside the head,” and that ralliers routinely provoke police into acting violently. In their response, rally organizers rejected the accusation and stated that any “possible incidents” of violence at the rally would be Putin’s personal responsibility.

At the same time, Moscow City Police Chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev did promise to train his officers to detain activists using less painful methods. There was no apparent option to simply not detain any ralliers at all – Deputy Police Chief Vyacheslav Kozlov said that the unsanctioned rally would be duly broken up.

A three-person delegation from the European Parliament, headed by Human Rights Committee Chairwoman Heidi Hautala, was present at the rally at the invitation of Strategy 31 organizers. Deputy Chief Kozlov said ahead of time that the delegates would not be excluded from possible detention.

According to a count by Kasparov.ru correspondents, approximately 2000 ralliers gathered on Triumfalnaya Square despite the heavy police presence and the fact that the square itself is almost entirely barricaded off for construction. Nevertheless, participants managed to rally for nearly two and a half hours, chanting opposition slogans that called for Putin to step down and for the 31st article of the Russian constitution, which guarantees free assembly, to be observed.

Moscow city police and Federal Security Service (FSB) agents reportedly created a jam in the crowd while attempting to push the ralliers away from the square, but did not manage to break up the protest.

Kasparov.ru estimates that approximately 100 people were detained during the course of the rally, including leading opposition activists Boris Nemtsov, Ilya Yashin, Sergei Udaltsov, and Roman Dobrokhotov. Two of the three Strategy 31 organizers, Eduard Limonov and Konstantin Kosyakin, were also detained. The third organizer, Moscow Helsinki Group head and former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva, was present at the rally but was not detained.

Official figures from the Moscow City Police cite 70 detainees, and put the number of people present at the rally at 400 people, including 300 journalists.

Eyewitnesses noted that police did not refrain from acting violently while detaining rally participants. Several activists were seen with bloody faces after having been beaten by law enforcement agents. The first participant to be detained was an activist holding a poster picturing Russia’s symbolic two-headed eagle – one head being that of Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and the other of Vladimir Putin.

As of 10:00 pm, several of the most high-profile detainees had been released, including Nemtsov and Limonov. Nemtsov was told that he had supposedly blocked pedestrian movement during the rally and had been detained on that basis. They and several other activists were charged with “violating the established procedure for arranging or conducting a meeting, rally, demonstration, procession, or picket,” an administrative violation punishable by a small fine. As of Tuesday night, approximately 80 detainees remained in various Moscow police stations.

Strategy 31 rallies were also held on Tuesday in various cities throughout Russia, with several solidarity events also taking place in Europe. Approximately 80 out of 700 ralliers were detained in an event in St. Petersburg, and rallies were held with varying levels of success or suppression in Omsk, Yaroslav, Sochi, Voronezh, Makhachkala, and numerous other Russian cities. One event in London included the participation of refugee Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky and the widow of murdered ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, Marina Litvinenko.

The event is planned to be held on August 22 on Pushkin Square, and the mayor’s office had initially agreed to the event. However, a press release from the mayor’s office on Thursday stated that the organizers had only submitted the paperwork to hold a rally, not a concert.

Organizer Mikhail Shneyder was told by the city’s bureau for event management and safety that there’s no way to hold a rally and a concert at the same time. “You’re announcing all over the place that you’re holding a rally-concert, but that kind of format for an event does not exist. You will not be allowed to hold a concert and set up a covered stage,” Shneyder quoted the bureau as saying.

“I know that that kind of format doesn’t exist,” the organizer explained in response. “The law stipulates just a rally, but it’s for us to decide who is going to appear at our rally and how; if we want, we’ll call on a Buddhist and he’ll arrange 20 simultaneous chess matches.”

Regardless of any legal ambiguities, the organizers plan to go on with the show. Scheduled to be present are the groups DDT, OtZvuki My, Televizor, Padla Bear Outfit, and Barto. Journalist Artemy Troitsky agreed to host the event.

Yury Shevchuk, leader of DDT and an outspoken Kremlin critic, said the band had already purchased tickets to Moscow and was coming to the event for certain.

“Leap frog between the Moscow authorities – that’s a normal affair,” Shevchuk told Kasparov.ru. “We’re going to Moscow with an acoustic lineup and we’ll see there whether or not they’re going to let us play. That’s the kind of weather we have nowadays – either hot or cold.”

Yevgenia Chirikova, leader of the movement to defend the Khimki Forest, insisted that the Moscow authorities had no legal right to ban their event. “I don’t know a single law that would ban setting up a stage for a rally. The authorities’ quibbles are entirely baseless,” she said.

“Let them not allow the people to hear Shevchuk and demonstrate to everyone that they are inflexible and unpopular politicians,” the activist went on. “We have been supported by musicians of the very highest caliber, and a smart civil servant wouldn’t think to bother us.”

The felling of the Khimki Forest began this past July. An expressway from Moscow to St. Petersburg is planned to take its place. Ecologists and activists have spoken out strongly against the project, insisting that it violates the law.

As each of the other Strategy 31 rallies that have been held since the series’ inception one year ago, Saturday’s event was unsanctioned by the Moscow city authorities – thus technically punishable by Russian federal law. As with past events, the mayor’s office denied sanction to rally organizers on the basis that another event was already planned for Triumfalnaya Square, where Strategy 31 is traditionally held. In the past, these events have included sports festivals, “Winter Festivities,” and rallies promoting blood drives by the pro-Kremlin youth movement Young Russia. This time, it was a three-day car show.

As oppositionists gathered on Triumfalnaya Square, the sound of skidding tires and roaring motors drowned out all other noise – at the very time of the rally, an improvised race track had been set up to hold a drifting competition. According to Gazeta.ru, no more than 50 people were watching the competition.

Given that Triumfalnaya Square is not large enough to hold a drifting competition, the neighboring roadway leading from Moscow’s Garden Ring to Tverskaya Ulitsa was blocked off to give the cars more room. Previously, oppositionists have been criticized by the authorities and their opponents specifically for blocking traffic.

In any case, as a result of the barriers, space to walk between Triumfalnaya Square and the bordering Tchaikovsky Concert Hall was so tight that police officers themselves had no space to move around. Therefore, notes Gazeta.ru, it was harder for them to detain rally participants.

Strategy-31 co-organizer Eduard Limonov, who has been arrested numerous times and spent 10 days in confinement for organizing an unsanctioned Strategy 31 rally, managed to avoid detention specifically because of the lack of space for the police to move. Surrounded by a ring of six personal guards, the National Bolshevik leader was able to stay at the rally for a full hour before quietly taking leave.

Other areas of the square were not as peaceful. Boris Nemtsov was among the approximately 100 detained (by official Moscow city police numbers, 35), and has reportedly been charged with insubordination towards a police officer. Opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov was detained after handcuffing himself to a metal gate. According to Kasparov.ru, police initially tried to detain Udaltsov by physically tearing him away from the gate: “They nearly broke my arm,” he said. After several minutes, police brought metal cutters to sever the handcuffs. Other activists, including some with the opposition art movement Voina, also handcuffed themselves to the gate and were similarly violently torn away by the police.

Overall, rally participants and media correspondents noted that the police acted typically violently. Detained activists, blogging over their cell phones in police buses, reported that even young girls were being violently beaten by the police. One Kasparov.ru correspondent witnessed a police colonel punching a female photographer in the back three times over. Upon detention, police reportedly tore off activists’ clothing if the number “31” was written on it.

As Gazeta.ru reports, the police charged with dealing with the squished mass of activists between Triumfalnaya Square and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall at one point formed a human chain (made up largely of more full-bodied officers) and began squeezing the rally participants towards a nearby metro entrance. The force of this chain was so great that some police reportedly let out some of the female activists who were screaming in pain.

However, instead of pushing the crowd into the metro, the police ended up pushing the crowd toward the neighboring Theater of Satire. In result, the glass facade of the theater shattered, injuring a soldier and several other people. According to Moscow City Police spokesman Viktor Biryukov, the soldier was injured only after a female opposition activists pushed him. “In result, the soldier fell to the ground and was wounded in the face by the glass,” he said.

The last of the Strategy 31 participants dispersed around 8:30 pm. Many of them went to rally outside of the various police stations where detained activists were being held. At about this time, State Duma Deputy and Young Russia leader Maksim Mishchenko showed up in a black dress jacket and began to give a fiery speech about the “evil empire” that he believes the United States to be.

The forum, which is being held in Helsinki from July 21-22, brings together approximately 100 representatives of Russian and Finnish civil society “to promote cooperation between the peoples of Finland and Russia by supporting civic initiatives for democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech,” reads the forum’s website.

On Wednesday, representatives agreed on a statement asking that Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Tarja Halonen turn their attention to the fact that Russian society continues to be deprived of the freedom of assembly.

“We are united all across Europe in our support of Russian activists who hold peaceful demonstrations under the Strategy 31 campaign. In another week, we will again express our solidarity with the Russians in Helsinki, Prague, Brussels, Berlin, and other cities all over the continent,” reads the statement. “We call upon you, President Medvedev, to ensure freedom of assembly both on July 31 and in the future.”

Forum participants also expressed concern over new federal legislation that would greatly expand the authority of the Russian Federal Security Services (FSB). Such legislation, said the participants, contradicts both the Russian constitution and international norms, and therefore should not be signed into law by the Russian president.

The statement also remarks upon the continued persecution of human rights advocates, participants of political movements, union leaders, and journalists in Russia.

“Instead of fighting terrorism and organized crime, thousands of law enforcement agents persecute civil and political activists, quite often under the pretense of the fight against extremism,” said the forum participants.

Civil activists from both countries expressed hope that Presidents Halonen and Medvedev would discuss these issues during their meeting on Wednesday. Whether or not they actually did remained unclear after a press conference later in the day.

The Tagansky District Court in Moscow handed down its verdict in the high-profile case Monday morning, ordering exhibit curator Andrei Yerofeyev and former Andrei Sakharov Museum director Yury Samodurov to pay out the equivalents of $6500 and $4900 respectively. The two were sued by the ultra-right Russian Orthodox organization People’s Assembly for organizing the exhibit “Forbidden Art – 2006,” which included works that the group claimed were criminally offensive. State prosecutors requested a three-year jail sentence for each of the organizers.

According to the verdict, Yerofeyev and Samodurov are guilty of acting in a way that was “directed at the fomentation of hatred and enmity through the use of religious imagery.” The court called the plans for the exhibit “a deliberate crime” that the two men were able to consciously plan out due to their professional knowledge of art. The judgment cited testimony from People’s Assembly activists and other Russian Orthodox followers who spoke on behalf of the prosecution, claiming that the exhibit “foments hatred towards the Orthodox Church on the whole and Christianity in particular.” They also asserted that the works had no artistic value.

Notably, of the 134 witnesses for the prosecution, only three had actually visited the exhibit.

At the same time, the court declared that evidence given by specialists speaking for the defense was unscientific and refused to take it under consideration. Testimony from artists, art historians, critics, and journalists speaking for the defense was cited in the court decision only in small fragments. On the whole, the court claimed that testimonies for the defense didn’t hold water.

Both the exhibit organizers and People’s Assembly activists say they play to appeal the decision. The ruling elicited scathing disapproval from Orthodox activists, who stood outside Tagansky Court late into the evening on Monday shouting “disgrace!” A state prosecutor declined to comment on whether or not they were indeed planning to appeal.

Before the beginning of Monday’s session, members of the activist art group Voina released 3500 cockroaches into the halls of the courtroom in a sign of support for the defendants. Two activists were detained as a result.

This is not Yury Samodurov’s first conviction of inciting religious hatred for showing works of art. In March 2005, the then-director of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center was convicted on these grounds as a result of organizing an exhibit entitled “Careful, Religion!” Then, as now, prosecutors asked for a three year prison term, but Samodurov was only faced to pay a fine of approximately $3225.

A photo essay of “Forbidden Art – 2006” is available in Russian by clicking here. The first set of five pictures explains how the exhibit was set up: Viewers enter a room with blank white walls, and as the art is hidden behind the walls, viewers must peek through small holes to view the works in fragmented form. As the Sakharov Museum’s website explains, the paintings are among those that were banned by various Moscow museums and galleries throughout the year 2006. “The goal is to monitor and discuss the character and tendency for institutional censorship in the cultural domain,” says the site. The exhibition was held from March 7 – 31, 2007.

The Telegraph also provides a contextually worthwhile perspective of the ruling: “Museum curators convicted over Mickey Mouse painting”

Georgy Sarkisyan, a leader in the regional branches of both the United Civil Front and Solidarity opposition movements, was first arrested on June 30. At the time, police blamed the activist with attempting to steal a cell phone – a charge that Sarkisyan and his representative, civil rights advocate Dmitry Krayukhin, dismissed as a “provocation.” On July 1, Judge Svetlana Sandulyak sent word to local police that the files submitted on Sarkisyan’s arrest were not in order. Beginning on the evening of July 5, police repeatedly attempted to enter the oppositionist’s apartment, and detained him on Tuesday morning as he tried to enter a taxi. While the police told Sarkisyan that they had a subpoena to bring him to court, they failed to present a copy of any such document.

Later that day, Judge Sandulyak convicted the opposition leader of “hooliganism,” although what exactly this accusation entails was never clarified to either Sarkisyan or Krayukhin.

According to the rights activist, Judge Sandulyak is guilty of grossly violating the oppositionist leader’s rights. Sarkisyan was not informed until very late of the precise time and place of the judicial proceedings, and thus was unable to present witnesses in his defense. Moreover, the prosecution’s case includes obvious contradictions and inconsistencies that the judge seemed uninterested in clarifying, he said.

“The case materials speak of one place where an offense to the law occurred, and witnesses from the prosecution speak of a different place, but this does not in any way worry the judge,” said Krayukhin.

The rights advocate also said that Judge Sandulyak “made strange inferences.” For example, she took Sarkisyan’s testimony that he was walking along one street as evidence that he committed a crime on an entirely separate one.

Georgy Sarkisyan has recently proven to be a thorn in the side of Orel’s local government, due to his offer of consultational and organizational support to a group of merchants who began to be evicted from the city’s central market in May. The evictions came despite a promise from the mayor during his electoral campaign two months earlier not to do so. On July 1, when 700 market pavilions were officially closed, six merchants began staging a hunger strike that is still going on today.