Russia’s Civil Unrest about More than Economy
The biggest news in Russia over the weekend was the sudden and unexpected large protest in Kaliningrad, which drew between 7,000-12,000 citizens into the streets of Russia's Western outpost territory, as well as several other smaller protest actions in solidarity from St. Petersburg to Moscow to Vladivostok. According to Luke Harding's report in The Guardian, "the scale of the Kaliningrad protest appeared to have caught the Kremlin off guard."
That might be one explanation for the harsh repression of the protestors by the police, as about 100 people were arrested in Moscow, revealing a fear on behalf of the government that the anger and demonstrations would spread to other areas of the country.
However instead of hiding the incident and discouraging further civic action, these arrests have attracted major international attention and prompted outcries from human rights observers and foreign governments. Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch issued a statement saying that "Russian law clearly grants the right to freedom of assembly. But the arrest... of the peaceful demonstrators is an excellent example of the authorities' blatant violation of this right."
Jerzy Buzek of the European Parliament also took note: "On behalf of the European parliament I have to express my consternation on hearing of the detention of some 100 people, including Oleg Orlov...I call on the Russian authorities to cease this heavy-handed treatment of peaceful demonstrators." He was joined by a statement from the US government.
So what is new here? During the transition between Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev there were protests all the time, followed by arrests, followed by NGO statements of disapproval of human rights violations.For one, the Kaliningrad protest represents the largest demonstration against Moscow to have occurred in the enclave in more than a decade, rivaling the massive marches after the fall of the Soviet Union (many in Kaliningrad believed their geographic position would lead to sovereign status as an independent nation). Remember the outbreak of protests in Vladivostok in 2008 over the automotive trade? This one was six times larger. Blogging on Global Voices, Vadim Isakov translates part of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov's popular essay on the events posted to his LiveJournal:
I haven't seen such a grandiose rally for the last ten years. At the protest, people expressed their political demands: the resignation of Putin and governor Boos. The uniqueness of the Kaliningrad phenomenon is participation of all oppositional groups of the region in the protest.
Secondly, the protests this past week collected representatives from across the political spectrum with a coherent series of specific demands ... such a level of organization and specifically defined demands had been lacking in earlier opposition protests throughout the Putin years, to put it lightly. Although the protestors were expressing their outrage over their locally appointed governor Georgy Boos, and shouting the slogan "Partiya YedRo - Pomoinoye Vedro" ("United Russia is a bucket of filth"), they also presented a unanimous declaration published on rugrad.ed demanding that Putin should lower taxes, restore direct gubernatorial elections and fire the regional governor.
Lastly, this demonstration is especially remarkable because the Kremlin is actually responding with desperation. Immediately following the event, Kremlin envoy Ilya Klebanov was flown to Kaliningrad for an emergency meeting with Boos, while United Russia also sent a delegation and hinted at replacing the governor. Nikolai Petrov of the Carnegie Center in Moscow told RFE/RL that this protest may have been organized by other political elites in Kaliningrad in order to force the ouster of Moscow's appointee to the region.
It's important to be clear that there are different immediate claims sought by these protestors in different cities. In Kaliningrad, there was much anger over the especially high 10.5% unemployment rate and $17 million owed in back wages to workers. Meanwhile in Moscow, the protests were based on "Strategy 31" and were led by Nemtsov, Eduard Limonov, Lev Ponomarev and others, which meets every 31 days to demand that the 31st article of the constitution guaranteeing free assembly is upheld and observed. Back in 2008 in Vladivostok, the public anger was inspired by trade law restricting imports of cars (a big industry for the city), while more recently the Pikalyovo protests were simple unemployment of a mono-town.
But while these immediate sparks which start the fires may be different, the underlying trend is common and growing: there is an intolerable gap between the institutional failures of Putinism and the reform promises of Medvedevism. Everything goes only halfway - when the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky dies in prison, Medvedev fires prison officials and passes laws for no pre-trial detention for those accused of financial crimes. Russia makes the surprising decision to ratify the charter for the European Court of Human Rights, yet has failed to uphold or observe many of its decisions. While this government claims to be fighting legal nihilism, the second show trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky lurches forward with dystopic authoritarian despair. To make matters worse, we have new and continuing violations of rights and process every day, from the journalist who was beaten to death while in police custody, to the persecution of the whistle blowing YouTube cop who denounced corruption in his organization.
In other words, people are becoming exhausted of always having two answers to every question, two leaders to be responsible for two different ideas of Russia inside just one country, and this is leading to the publically expressed frustration which now, with Kaliningrad, has become a very serious matter for the government to deal with.
Big decisions will have to be made soon, as Nemtsov correctly observes, "Kaliningrad is the trend, it's not an exception."
By James Kimer, Guest Commentator to the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev Center