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01.04.10
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Fractured Opposition
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By Tom Balmforth
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Dozens of opposition demonstrators were arrested in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the “Strategy 31” demonstrations yesterday, but many of the event’s usual mainstays boycotted it, instead laying flowers in memory of the victims of Monday’s suicide bombings. But violence even marred that solemn event when a bystander cuffed an 82-year old veteran human rights activist around the head. Tensions remain high after the bombings, and they have also exposed a division in the opposition. The opposition argues that post-March 29 Russia will be a tough environment for it to operate in.
Dozens of “dissenters” were arrested in central Moscow and 40 more in St. Petersburg yesterday at the latest action in support of Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, which enshrines freedom of speech. As in all preceding “Strategy 31” demonstrations, which take place on the 31st of every month that has one, the “dissenters” were denied official permission to meet.
This time permission was refused on the grounds that the Triumph Square was double-booked for an event organized by pro-Kremlin youth groups. After the terrorist attacks on Monday, it was billed as “Youth against Terror,” a tribute concert to the victims of the bombings, and proceedings began with a minute’s silence.
The sanctioned event was cordoned off, closed to outsiders and well choreographed, with some 3,000 participants waving Young Guard and Young Russia flags. They listened to speeches from the policemen and emergency service officers who were first on the scene at Lubyanka and Park Kultury Monday morning.
Proceedings carried on regardless of the chaos taking place behind the stage near the Mayakovskaya metro station. Opposition figures were being arrested by police, who in turn were being mobbed by photographers, some of whom even joined in the opposition chants of “shame” and “give us freedom.” Eduard Limonov, head of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP), and key opposition demonstration organizer Konstantin Kosyakin were among the most prominent to be arrested.
However, Strategy 31 mainstays, such as Boris Nemtsov, head of the liberal Solidarity party, his colleagues Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Milov, as well as veteran human rights activist, 82-year-old Lyudmila Alexeyeva decided to stay away because of the Monday bombings. They instead met last night at Park Kultury to lay flowers to the 39 victims of the blast, although the ceremony was marred when a bystander attacked Alexeyeva as she spoke to reporters. Speaking to the opposition Other Russia Web site today, Alexeyeva said: “I’m an old woman. I behave in a law-abiding fashion. If a young man hits an old woman, it’s not normal.” She was taken home immediately and doctors were called to her house, RIA Novosti reported.
Nonetheless, the focus of debate has been the alleged “schism” in the opposition – the event on the 31st of the month has been bringing the opposition together for over a year. But yesterday the more liberal and human rights oriented parties decided against attending just after the national day of mourning, which was observed on Tuesday. “It seems to me that it is not very correct to attend political demonstrations while the bodies of the victims of this terrorist act have still not been buried,” Yashin wrote in his blog. Limonov took a different stance, but categorically denied any schism. “Last time, on January 31, 2010, a thousand people took part in the demonstration. They will come this time. Maybe some won’t come, they’re the minority, I think. What kind of schism is that? An elderly 82-year old woman, a human activist won’t come – she has her own understanding of mourning. This is her right. But for me, freedom is more important than mourning,” he told the Svobodnaya Pressa Web site.
The very notion of a schism presupposes a unity that the opposition doesn’t have. “It’s incredibly fragmented, not having a leader who can install himself as an organizing center so that many issues can be crystallized. But without any structures to rely upon, and without any sources of funding, it is not so much an issue of the political opposition per se, but of the discontent in society, which is not very organized,” said Pavel Baev, a professor at the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo.
Discontent across Russia has been on the increase of late, with large opposition rallies and even the occasional political victory – demonstrators’ forced a U-turn in local tax policy in Kaliningrad and an opposition candidate won the mayoral election in Irkutsk. But most of this is underpinned by localized dissatisfaction with the authorities. “Small things trigger big reactions – sometimes it’s an increase in community tariffs, sometimes it’s an issue to do with cars and traffic. There are many of these small things,” said Baev.
At the Strategy 31 rally yesterday, Viktor, a NBP supporter and dissenter who declined to give his surname, said he personally had come to the Triumph Square to decry Boris Yeltsin’s “betrayal” of the country, which “continues to this day.” “We still don’t have enough money for medicine, or military capabilities, and education…I spoke with some [youth group] demonstrators and they said that I was an agitator. They did actually apologize to me, but they don’t understand that the budget is the people’s – it is not a budget for plundering,” he said.
The liberal opposition, members of which were targeted last week in a smear campaign suspected to have been directed by pro-Kremlin youth groups, differs radically from NBP supporters like Viktor (who went on to proclaim himself a “racist” and said that the United States was Russia’s “enemy”). Although growing, social discontent is a long way from uniting in a single direction. “There is this feeling that something is building up. The opposition that we have is not able to exploit it, but they are definitely closer to the sources of this discontent,” said Baev.
Meanwhile, the liberal opposition party Solidarity fears that post-March 29 Russia will be a hard environment for the opposition. “We know that in discussions on the fight against terrorism, there will be an increase in repression and pressure on the opposition and hatred toward Caucasians will be propagated. However, neither of these things will solve the problem. The problem will be solved with a change in policy and a return to the rule of law, civil rights, and constitutional order,” a Solidarity Party statement said yesterday.
The rationale that the bombings will play into the hands of the Kremlin, to the detriment of the opposition, buttresses one of the most popular (however spurious) conspiracy theories surrounding the bombings – that they were engineered by the authorities themselves.
But Baev said it was too early to say if the bombings would have an impact on the opposition. “It all depends if it remains an isolated incident, or whether we will experience a series of attacks, as we have had several times before,” he said. Yesterday a double suicide bomb attack killed 12 in Dagestan, but routine bombings in the North Caucasus will not change the politics in Moscow. “Attacks in Dagestan are perceived differently – no just as local affairs, but as the local way of life. Whatever Putin and Medvedev say about those attacks being links to the same chain, they are actually not. But, if we have another attack in Moscow, we can expect a shift, not just in the political climate, but in the behavior of the authorities.” |
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