On Tuesday, the two groups handed in their applications for permits to hold rallies in defense of free assembly on Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square on January 31. The city government has begun to grant permission for some of these rallies in the past few months, but not without complications.

Former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva was one such applicant, asking for a permit to allow 1500 people to attend her rally. Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov and Left Front coordinator Konstantin Kosyakin, along with the recent addition of former dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, applied for a separate 2500-person permit as well as permission to hold a march after the rally. According to Other Russia member Sergei Aksenov, the larger figure was based on police estimates of attendance at previous rallies.

Until last October, Alexeyeva, Limonov and Kosyakin had worked together to organize all of Moscow’s Strategy 31 rallies. The group split apart after Alexeyeva obtained city permission to hold the October 31 rally with an 800-person cap. Feeling that this limit was illegal, Limonov and Kosyakin broke off and chose to hold their own, unsanctioned event concurrently with their former compatriot’s.

Alexeyeva spoke out against the idea of a march, stipulating that this was her “personal opinion.” Limonov and Kosyakin plan to have their ralliers march down Tverskaya Street towards the Kremlin following the rally on Triumfalnaya Square.

“It could have been done, but – first of all, this is harder to do in the winter, and secondly, after these events [the detention of participants of the rally on December 31 – ed.], I don’t know in general what’s going to happen,” said Alexeyeva.

“We need to clarify what happened at the rallies, and not announce a march,” she went on, noting that there had been no talk of a march at a meeting between all of the organizers on January 14.

“While the sanctioned rally in October went well, outrageous things have happened since then; people went to a sanctioned rally and they were detained. And I’m not just talking here about Nemtsov; about 50 people were detained in all,” she said. “It’s true that they were released afterwards, but who wants to be driven around Moscow and wind up in the slammer on New Year’s Eve night?”

Aksenov told Kasparov.ru that the idea behind the march was to “raise the level of challenges to the government,” since the 31st article of the constitution – which guarantees freedom of assembly, providing Strategy 31 with its name – also provides for the right to hold marches. In his words, “the authorities, in their turn, will have the opportunity to prove that freedom of assembly and marches exists in this country or to show the opposite.”

Still, he did not expect the application to be approved. “I’m optimistic. I hope that the government has the sense to grant us sanction, but I think that now, since it’s the first time, there won’t be any sanction,” Aksenov said.

Meanwhile, the pro-Kremlin youth group Young Russia has set about to derail both rallies by holding one of their own. Organizers of “Donor Day,” a diversionary tactic that the group has used multiple times to take up space on Triumfalnaya Square that would otherwise go to the oppositionists, are demanding priority consideration for their rally on the basis that they supposedly handed it their application first.

On a statement posted on their website, Young Russia stipulated that they would allow Alexeyeva to take up part of the square to hold her rally and falsely implied that her followers had been the cause of violence that broke out at previous events. “We are officially declaring that we are prepared to give up a part of our time for Lyudmila Alexeyeva to hold her own event under the conditions that it is peaceful and that it’s participants do not violate public order or provoke the police,” said the statement. “But we are not giving up a minute of the 31st or a meter of Triumfalnaya Square to Eduard Limonov, leader of the National Bolshevik Party, which is banned by the Russian court.”

It is worth noting that Young Russia members have previously demanded that Lyudmila Alexeyeva be removed from the Russian Presidential Council on Human Rights. In an October 26, 2010 letter to council representative Mikhail Fedotov, the group alleged that the Strategy 31 rallies she had organized constituted “extremism.”

“The government has decided to use administrative violence,” said Eduard Limonov. “It has descended upon the opposition and, clearly, repressions are going to continue.”

In Limonov’s opinion, the trial and conviction of the oppositionists indicates that the authorities are moving towards becoming a fascist regime. “For the first time in history, five opposition leaders wound up in the same detention center,” he noted. “The authorities wavered, but Putin and Medvedev chose the Belarusian variant.”

Boris Nemtsov agreed with Limonov’s judgment – which is significant, he noted, given that the two hold generally opposing views. “If people with such contradictory views about democracy turn up behind bars, it speaks to a terrible illness in our country,” he said.

Nemtsov also noted that the independent human rights organization Amnesty International had declared him, Ilya Yashin, Konstantin Kosyakin, as well as Limonov and his bodyguard, Kirill Manulin, prisoners of conscience.

At the same time, fellow arrestee Vladimir Tor was not awarded this status. Tor heads the ultranationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration, known for its propensity to violence. Still, Nemtsov defended him on the basis that he had not received due process: “I don’t think this is right…he was detained for speaking with journalists.”

Members of the pro-Kremlin youth group Young Russia attempted to cause a scene before the press conference began. Fifteen young people approached the building and began passing out discs labeled “The Truth about Strategy 31.” A fight broke out when they were not allowed inside the building, and police soon arrived to arrest those involved.

Young Russia later released a statement on its website accusing Nemtsov’s supporters of staging the attack and breaking one of its member’s fingers.

Pro-Kremlin youth groups have been known to physically attack opposition leaders, particularly Nemtsov. Just days earlier, members of the notorious group Stal attempted to stage a provocation but were scared off by Nemtsov’s numerous supporters.

Nemtsov described the event on his blog:

When I came out, I was glad to be greeted at the detention center entrance by my compatriots – Sasha Ryklin, Ilya Yashin, Sasha Podrabinek, Mikhail Sheyder, Vladimir Milov, Sergei Aleksashenko, Seryosha Davidis, my daughter Zhanna and son Anton. Surkov’s provocators tried to do something, but were frightened by the supportive crowd and quickly scattered off.

Anton, Zhanna and I then set off for a cafe. When we left, I was again despicably attacked from behind with a butterfly net by Surkov’s cockerels. They didn’t catch anything, the poor wretches, but my children were in shock from the sight. After that, Zhanna said that she would definitely be coming with me on January 31 to Triumfalnaya Square, since it is deeply repugnant to live in a country governed by scoundrels.

Aleksandr Averin of the Other Russia opposition party told Kasparov.ru that rally organizers received a proposal from the mayor’s office on Wednesday to hold the rally on either Pushkin Square, Bolotnaya Square or a small strip of Triumfalnaya Square between the Peking Hotel and Brestskaya Street.

“The problem is that the authorities are prepared to sanction a rally numbering 200 people in this section, and not 1500,” he noted.

Averin said that the three Strategy 31 organizers – former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov, and Left Front representative Konstantin Kosyakin – would announce their official response to the city’s proposal on Thursday.

Days earlier, online newspaper Gazeta.ru reported that the pro-Kremlin youth organization Young Russia has received permission to hold a rally to promote giving blood – but not an actual blood drive – also on Triumfalnaya Square on October 31.

Young Russia’s application had originally proposed holding the event on either Triumfalnaya or Pushkin Squares, “but the mayor’s office agreed to have our action be held precisely on Triumfalnaya,” said the organization’s press secretary, Natalia Maslova.

Opposition activists have maintained for months that rallies organized by pro-Kremlin youth movements for the same date, time, and place as Strategy 31 events are simply attempts to take up the space so that oppositionists are unable to use it.

The fact that the Moscow mayor’s office only agreed to let 200 people rally on Triumfalnaya may be connected with recent comments by prominent Kremlin ideologist Vladislav Surkov – comments that do not bode well for the future of the opposition’s movement.

Following the dismissal of longtime Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, Surkov spoke in an interview with the business magazine Vzglyad about the controversy surrounding Triumfalnaya Square. Surkov called the Strategy 31 protesters “virtual heroes and martyrs” who “really couldn’t organize anything,” and said that “any new [Moscow] government, per Russian tradition, will show generosity.”

“We are completely unconcerned with such events,” Surkov went on. “For a democratic state, they are completely normal. The main thing is that everything be done according to the law. If two hundred people in Moscow, a city of many millions of people, want to gather without fail on the 31st date and without fail on Triumfalnaya – let them gather.”

Since Strategy 31 events are regularly attended by upwards of one thousand protesters, Surkov’s statement that only 200 would want to gather on Triumfalnaya may be based on police statistics of the number of rally attendees, which are often much lower than the attendance as reported by independent media sources and opposition organizers.

Surkov went on to say that “the opposition should not get the feeling that everything is permitted to them. They aren’t permitted everything.”

“Over the course of these past few years, all of the actions of the city authorities and the Moscow police in regards to all street actions, all rallies and marches, sanctioned and unsanctioned, have been lawful and correct,” Surkov argued. “I would say – irreproachable. I’m sure that this is how it will be in the future.”

The actions that Surkov has judged as “irreproachable” include scheming to deny oppositionists space to hold their events and calling out riot police and internal military forces to brutally beat and detain hundreds of peaceful protesters.

As RIA Novosti reports, the city plans to build a multi-level parking garage underneath Triumfalnaya Square as part of two city construction projects, at least one of which had already been agreed upon in 2002.

The Grani.ru news portal cites experts as saying that such a garage would be inexpedient, as it could bring about an increase in the number of cars on Moscow’s already jam-packed central roadways. Scientific Director Mikhail Blinkin of the Scientific Research Institute (NII) for Transportation and Road Maintenance argues that supporting the lack of parking infrastructure in the city’s center would promote the switch from cars to public transportation.

The construction announcement comes one day after Strategy 31 co-organizer Eduard Limonov applied with the Moscow mayor’s office on Monday to receive sanction for the campaign’s upcoming rally on August 31. The application was co-signed by fellow organizers Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Konstantin Kosyakin.

In response to Tuesday’s announcement, opposition leaders said they still intend to hold their rally on August 31. “We’ll come to Triumfalnaya Square, what is this construction to us?” said Limonov. “Stunning. I haven’t seen something like this in a long time.”

Representatives of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Young Russia had also applied on Monday for sanction for their own rally on August 31, also on Triumfalnaya Square. The movement routinely organizers rallies that directly conflict with Strategy 31 events, providing an official basis for the Moscow government to deny sanction to the opposition.

Young Russia Press Secretary Natalia Maslova told the Kasparov.ru news portal that the youth movement managed to hand in their application just fifteen minutes before Limonov handed in the application for Strategy 31. “Our activists got in line outside the mayor’s office at twelve o’clock at night,” she said.

Strategy 31 rallies are held by the Russian opposition in defense of the constitutional right to free assembly on the 31st of each month with that date. In the thirteen months that the campaign has run, the Moscow city authorities have never once agreed to sanction the events. Recently revealed government documents verify that that the mayor’s office has lied about their reasons for refusing to grant official sanction, indicating that the decisions were politically motivated. The opposition routinely holds the rallies regardless, unsanctioned, and they are routinely brutally broken up by OMON riot police and other law enforcement agents. During the most recent rally on July 31, 100 of the 1000 participants were detained, many badly beaten. As a result, government representatives in the United States and Europe have criticized the Kremlin for failing to observe the fundamental civil right to free assembly.

Government authorities in Russia have repeatedly offered Strategy 31 organizers an unofficial compromise: the rallies could be sanctioned if the oppositionists agree either to a different location or to exclude Eduard Limonov from among the campaign’s official organizers. Despite initial disagreements, the organizers eventually agreed to reject all of the government’s proposals, insisting that the 31st article of the Russian constitution provides citizens with the right to peacefully assemble without any conditions from the government.

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.

Speaking to Gazeta.ru, former Deputy Prime Minister and co-leader of the Solidarity opposition movement Boris Nemtsov said that the offer came several days ago from Vladislav Surkov, a primary Kremlin ideologist and highly influential aid to both the president and prime minister. Nemtsov refrained from specifying precisely to whom the proposition was made, but reports cite that it was to the “moderate” wing of the Russian opposition. Nemtsov denied that Surkov made the proposal directly to him, as some sources were reporting.

Left Front opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov expressed certainty that the Kremlin met with representatives from Solidarity, “since the Kremlin considers them to be moderate figures.”

According to Limonov himself, the offer was made both to Nemtsov and noted human rights advocate Lev Ponomarev, who heads the organization For Human Rights and is also part of Solidarity’s leadership. “At first they confirmed it. Then, clearly, they began to shy away – because now they have connections in the Kremlin,” he said.

Limonov, whose National Bolshevik Party is officially banned by the Russian government, characterized the proposal by the presidential administration as “the arrogance of a government that doesn’t want to give into Limonov.” He added that he has no intention of giving up his post as Strategy 31 organizer: “You cannot make concessions to the government: today they’re asking to sacrifice Limonov, but tomorrow it’ll be Limonov’s children.”

Meanwhile, the Kremlin denied the existence of any contact with the opposition at all. One high-level presidential representative, speaking under condition of anonymity to Gazeta.ru, said that he had no knowledge of any such negotiations.

In any case, opposition leaders are categorically refusing to abandon Limonov.

“I think the proposal is obscene,” Nemtsov said, noting that Limonov and his supporters had participated in Strategy 31 since the very beginning in July 2009. “And although it’s now a shared event, nobody has the right to start colluding with the government in this regard,” he concluded.

Vsevolod Chernozub, co-chairman of the Moscow branch of Solidarity, commented that the Kremlin’s proposal “reflects the cop-like and Chekist style of thinking of the current government.”

Strategy 31’s organizational committee has routinely consisted of Limonov, former Soviet dissident and Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva, and Left Front representative Konstantin Kosyakin. The three have applied to the Moscow mayor’s office for official sanction on seven separate occasions – on each month with a 31st date – and have been denied every time.

Alexeyeva also said that she had no plans to exclude Limonov for the upcoming rally on July 31. “I’m in favor of holding consultations with the Moscow government, as is required by law. Like always, three representatives of the event will hold these consultations,” she told Gazeta.ru.

Limonov added that, as a Strategy 31 organizer, he is currently participating in mediation procedures with Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin and Moscow Human Rights Ombudsman Aleksandr Muzykantsky. Their most recent session was held on June 1, one day after police violently broke up May’s Strategy 31 rally. During that meeting, said Limonov, a different proposition was made: “The July 31 event could be held on Pushkin Square, and then as a reward they would supposedly give us Triumfalnaya [the next month], and the next time again on Pushkin, and so on,” he explained. “But I said that this was unacceptable to us: we aren’t migrant workers who can be driven back and forth.”

The Kremlin offer comes two weeks after Limonov announced the creation of a political party based on the Other Russia opposition coalition and his intentions to lead the party in upcoming parliamentary elections. Reports about the Kremlin proposal itself come on the same day as the pro-Kremlin youth organization Young Guard announced that they have been denied sanction by the Moscow authorities to hold an event on Triumfalnaya Square on July 31 – the same date and place where the Strategy 31 rally is planned to be held. A representative from the Moscow regional government told Gazeta.ru that a three-day automobile festival has been planned for the last weekend in July on Triumfalnaya Square.

The leadership of Young Russia confirmed that they had been denied sanction for their event, and also expressed a great deal of disbelief. As has been the pattern until now, Strategy 31 opposition leaders are continually denied sanction for their own rallies, with one commonly-given excuse being that pro-Kremlin youth groups have already applied to use the same space at the same time.

At least 60 protestors were detained by police on New Year’s Eve night in Moscow for participating in a rally promoting the freedom of assembly, Kasparov.ru reports.

Approximately 400 people attended the rally, which was organized by leaders of the Other Russia opposition coalition.

Eyewitnesses claim that police acted with particular brutality when arresting journalists and photographers.

Among those detained was 82-year old Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a former Soviet dissident who now heads the influential rights organization Moscow Helsinki Group.

Ilya Yashin, a rights leader and member of the Solidarity movement, claims he was detained immediately upon appearing at the rally and denied the reason for his arrest.

Members of the pro-Kremlin youth organization Young Russia attempted to provoke protestors early in the evening by scattering flyers printed with the phrase “Bad Santa will not pass!” while a young man dressed in a Santa Claus costume offered flights “home” to America and large sums of money.

All those detained at the protest were released the same evening at approximately 10 pm. Moscow Chief of Police Vladimir Kolokoltsev had allegedly ordered all the protestors to be released by 9:30 that night.

The actions of the Moscow police drew widespread scorn from the United States, the European Union, and domestic and international human rights groups.

In a press release from United States National Security Council Spokesman Mike Hammer late on December 31, the White House expressed its dismay at the attempts of authorities to prevent citizens from peacefully protesting: “In particular, the United States notes with concern the detention of protestors, including prominent human rights defender Lyudmila Alexeyeva, and reports of their mistreatment by authorities while in custody.”

The release went on to mark the importance of freedom of speech and assembly, adding that “The United States stands with those dedicated to promoting these human rights.”

European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek expressed similar dismay concerning the detention of Alexeyeva.

“I am deeply astounded, that this highly regarded 82-year old woman spent New Year’s Eve night under arrest,” he stated.

Buzek noted that Alexeyeva had been among recipients in 2009 of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for her work in human rights. He added that she had been asked at a press conference following the ceremony whether she was afraid to return to Russia.

“The actions of the police in Moscow gave a very disconcerting answer,” Buzek concluded: “Human rights activists in Russia still cannot freely hold demonstrations.”

The New Year’s Eve rally was part of a series of demonstrations held by the Other Russia coalition on Moscow’s central Triumfalnaya Square on every month with a 31st day, in reference to the 31st article of the Russian Constitution guaranteeing freedom of assembly. The previous four protests in October, August, July, and May ended when police began detaining numerous activists.

Photographs from New Year’s Eve Rally

Photographs sourced from LiveJournal users Yashin, Drugoi and Zyalt, and Grani.ru.

The rally turned violent when members of the pro-Kremlin youth organization Young Russia, which had been scattering fliers with the phrase “Western vampires were gathered here,” began to light fireworks. Blaming the provocation on opposition protesters, police began making arrests and forced remaining protesters into a nearby metro station.

Ten activists temporarily escaped from an OMON special forces bus when they managed to tip it over from the inside and crawl out the back window. According to activist Sergei Aksenov, all those detained on the buses were severely beaten by police.

The unsanctioned protest was attended by about 500 human rights and opposition activists, including members of the United Civil Front, Solidarity, the banned National Bolshevik Party, and many others. An application to hold the protest was denied by city authorities.

The square had been cordoned off early on by police forces that included twenty OMON buses and internal military vehicles. Among those detained was Eduard Limonov, a leader of the Other Russia coalition and the National Bolsheviks, as well as activist Marina Litvinovich. Limonov had been dragged along the asphalt by police, and neither he nor Litvinovich were allowed access to lawyers.

All those detained, including members of Young Russia, were released later that night. Limonov and Litvinovich face charges of police antagonism in court on Monday. If convicted, they face 15 days of administrative arrest.

Early November is a time of traditional protest throughout Russia. Police on Thursday practiced new techniques for crowd dispersal that focused on pensioners.

Leaders of the Other Russia coalition file applications to rally on Triumfalnaya Square every month with a 31st day, in reference to the 31st article of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of assembly. The previous three protests on May 31, July 31, and August 31 ended in the detention of activists.

A video of the protest can be seen by clicking here (in Russian).