Lately it’s been quite popular to say that there is something wrong with people in Russia.
That they support their shiny leader and the war wholeheartedly.
That they support everything and never say a word against.
State propaganda has always promoted this statement and it’s clear why.
But some opposed-minded people (especially those who left the country) started to say this
as well as some foreign audiences, especially in Ukraine.
Such views make life easier.
It’s a very simple thought that there is a broken nation somewhere in the North which failed as a nation
and which is happy to have a firm hand of a tyrant.
It means that this nation is an enemy and it must be fought with.
The world is black and white.
Well, they of course support those who left here, because "it's the right thing to do, how to live with such people".
But there are two problems there.
First, it’s not true.
We’ll discuss it later in detail.
Second, if it were true, it would mean that humankind doesn’t have long to exist.
It happened that this nation (allegedly broken) controls the largest stock of nuclear weapons.
So, Russia can’t be defeated by occupation or external intervention.
It means the war will be endless and will become nuclear in the end.
Is this what's going to happen?
The war will end if internal changes do happen in Russia, and it becomes a normal peaceful country
which is busy making its citizens’ lives better instead of destroying other cities.
Is Russian society able to achieve it?
In a convenient picture I described earlier, it can’t.
But the reality is different.
There is a personality-based autocratic regime in Russia which controls all the aspects of social life –
from a district newspaper to the General Prosecutor’s Office.
That’s why they can create the illusion of unity among people and support.
One of the main reasons why I have my YouTube channel
is to give my viewers the objective picture of what’s going on.
Sometimes this objective picture coincides with what my audience wants to hear
and in this case I’m popular and have a lot of views.
Because I say what people agree with and it spreads well.
Sometimes, like today, I say something the majority of the audience doesn’t agree with.
But I think objective information is important to understand the world and make the right decisions
instead of living in pleasant illusions.
So, today let’s discuss what’s going on with protests in Russia and what will happen next.
Now, when we watch the marching troops of Rosgvardia (Russian National Guard)
or when the police are hitting an activist who is against the war,
it seems to be a horrible but still regular picture.
It means it has become normal.
Bad, but still normal.
But still we do understand that it can’t be normal.
Street activities, meetings and protests are one of the most effective ways to express your opinion to the power.
It’s a standard thing for democracies.
How can you show that you are unhappy?
You can phone your local deputies and they could deliver your message to the government
if they choose to do so, of course.
Or you can go for a meeting after work or instead of work, it’s even better.
In normal countries the government hears what people say immediately.
And the result can be moderately quick as it is with the regular protests in Paris.
Or it can take 8 years like it was with the protests against the Vietnam War.
But the result is the same – the governmenthas to change its mind.
Or modify it somehow.
Rewrite the laws or stop the war.
But this is in the case of democracies.
In Russia it works differently.
People who protest are not heard, they are hit by clubs and threatened with imprisonment and fines.
Well, the laws can be reviewed, of course.
Just to make them more severe.
The Russian government has been living in the mode “no protests, no problems” for 10 years now.
They hit the activists – they feel happy that people support them.
They invented 80% of people’s approval in anything –
from the eternal President to the crazy war – and they bathe in the shine of this invented love.
And as to those who disagree, you can protest right in the police van.
Active citizens are not discouraged by that though.
Huge sentences here and there, organizers’ imprisonment, temporary imprisonment and fines for all the picketers –
it hasn’t always been like that but it’s not easy to think about it now.
It took us long to get used to the streets cleaned up by the police.
It took Putin more than 10 years to create a country where participating in a meeting
is the highest form of civil disobedience and a very risky and courageous thing to do.
And that is a normal thing for any citizen in the West.
What was it like?
Now, when you read another ludicrous nonsense posted by Medvedev in Telegram, you can’t believe
this man was a President of Russia 10 years ago.
And he was the President who could have started liberalization as some people hoped.
Though Putin was close by and never actually left.
When in September 2011 Medvedev said shamelessly that Putin and himself had already arranged things
and Putin would be the next President, it looked like an outright mockery.
Over the citizens, laws, policy in the country.
Over the Constitution which is a rigid corpse now.
Wealthy 2000s and a relatively calm crisis of 2008 allowed people to live in sweet ignorance.
Therefore, if someone didn’t understand what the Russian government was like,
they could see it with their own eyes then.
Things became worse since Putin’s first year but in 2011 they gave up hiding
the real government’s attitude towards people.
We’ve got people’s power and human rights here but we don’t actually think
you are a nation and only one person has rights here.
No wonder, most of the people didn’t think it’s right.
And gave up on the United Russia (Putin’s party in Russia) during the nearest election to the State Duma.
In order to prevent the ruling party from failing, there were unprecedented frauds during the election.
Now the observers have seen these falsifications.
Budgetary workers mobilization, carousel voting, votes buying, bogus stories –
the whole elections menu for the years to come.
And yet, United Russia was still losing.
The opposition urged people to vote for anyone else except for “the party of frauds and thieves”.
And people were also sick of it and voted against it.
Then they started rewriting protocols shamelessly.
As a result, the power got the absolute majority in Duma.
You remember that meme about 146% for United Russia and the most massive protests since the 1990s.
In Moscow alone there were 120,000 of people who participated in the meetings
on Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Avenue.
And there were protests in all the biggest cities of Russia.
The meetings ended just in May next year with the March of Millions.
Putin who got himself the President’s chair back decided to suppress the ones who disagreed.
He didn’t want any dialogue, he openly despised people at the meetings,
and he called the symbol of protests (the white ribbon) a condom.
The march towards Bolotnaya Square was forced away.
Dozens of people (including the random ones) got criminal sentences.
We won’t discuss the meetings for an honest election today and raise the discussions like,
“Should have they gone to the Revolution Square or they shouldn’t have” – it’s a topic for another discussion.
For me it was the first rally in Russia, as it was for many Russians back then.
Russia had a real chance for changes, but it wasn’t ready to take it.
Most of the protestants weren’t ready to go for it and demand the complete change of power.
Still, the main slogan was "we want to influence the government, not change it.
The huge, gigantic amount of people who voted against United Russia
several months ago didn’t want to participate in the meetings.
Some people think that there haven't been any big protests between Bolotnaya and 2017.
Actually, people’s attitude didn’t change just because Putin cried on the stage and imprisoned 30 people.
But the meetings became more precise.
In 2013 people protested against Navalny’s arrest before the mayor’s election and against frauds during the election.
In 2014 – against military intervention into Ukraine.
The Peace March included up to 100,000 people in Moscow.
In 2015 the biggest event was the march in the memory of Boris Nemtsov.
In the spring of 2017, the protests started again.
The formal reason was the investigation “He is not Dimon to you” about Medvedev’s corruption.
By the way, look what an important trigger Medvedev was.
In reality, nobody actually cared about him anymore.
Some meetings were driven away.
Some meetings went relatively peacefully, but the next day the police cut people’s doors off
with an angle grinder to arrest them.
At that time, some actions were even approved by municipal governments but most of them were not.
And the reasons were quite ridiculous, like there were kids’ events planned all over the city venues.
The further it went, the crueler the power was.
Everybody was shocked how the meetings in Moscow were suppressed in 2019.
But it was just a rehearsal of cruelty before the meetings in 2021 against Navalny’s arrest
who came back to Russia after being poisoned.
Those were the biggest protests before the war with Ukraine.
ADS
Were there any results from 10 years of meetings?
Of course, there were.
But not like it could have been in Sweden, for example
(if it could ever happen in Sweden that elections were falsified and politicians killed).
The Russian government reacted in the only way it considered the best – with restrictions.
Actually, the government tried to sugarcoat it at first in its own way.
They got the direct governors’ election back in order to practice fraud more often.
In response to the protests in Moscow they showered the capital with money for improvements.
And by the way, they stopped rigging elections in Moscow for 10 years.
And here a very simple pattern of Putin’s system thinking became obvious.
A new wave of protests is coming.
What should it have shown to the power?
Problems with the system, right?
And what did it show? A new point for restrictions.
In response to Bolotnaya Square protests they made the rules for mass activities stricter.
When Navalny was this close to becoming the mayor of Moscow,
the government understood that he mustn’t be allowed to participate even in a housing cooperative election.
Other independent candidates were thwarted too just in case.
The government invented horrible bureaucratic problems for them.
But it was there before, but now it has increased.
When the meetings against the war in Donbas started in 2014,
they started pushing Nemtsov and finally killed him.
They introduced this “Dadin” law (informally named after Ildar Dadin who was the first one sentenced under it)
which allowed the imprisonment of anyone for meetings if the local Center for Combating Extremism wished it.
It criminalizes going to unauthorized rallies.
If you are caught several times at an unauthorized rally, you can get jail time.
And when people started getting around new and old nonprofit organizations,
the time for the foreign agents’ law came.
The main result of the meetings in 2017-2018 and of the President’s campaign of Alexey Navalny
was, of course, an attempt to murder him which also caused protests.
Yes, such an upside down world Putin’s Russia is.
“To forbid and frighten off, then there will be no protests”.
Putin’s logic hasn’t changed for 10 years, and he didn’t get that it had never worked anyway.
A new reason for protests emerged, and people went to the streets again.
Like Navalny didn’t get frightened for his life and returned to Russia,
thousands of people all over the country were courageous enough to go to the meeting in his support.
The government also used COVID to create another law allowing the arrest of political activists.
There is still a ban on all rallies in Russia because of the epidemiological situation.
This is the last remaining ban in connection with Covid.
So, what possibilities Putin had before the war to punish and frighten people who support him so strongly?
First, meetings against Putin had to be approved by his administration.
Why not?
You come to an unauthorized meeting,
And there are no authorized rallies, as we know there have been no authorized rallies since 2020.
You come to an unauthorized meeting, you willget a fine, obligatory works or temporary imprisonment.
Have you made a repost of this meeting?
Or you just retweeted.
That’s it, you’ve become an organizer.
The fines will be even greater, and you can get a lawsuit from a restaurant or
an underground that your meeting caused damages for them.
And after a couple of days in prison you’ll find out that you have a minus balance
in your bank account for several million rubles.
Is it your first violation?
No? Repeat offenders will spend more days in prison, get more fines
Fine up to $5,000 (300 000 rubles)
(if this is the second time you have been detained at a rally)
And the criminal case.
Have you done it during the pandemic?
Let’s have you under home arrest while your “sanitation case” is being reviewed.
And you’d better say nothing and post nothing in your social media.
Laws about fakes exist since 2019.
And you can be sure that there would be free bonuses.
Raids at your home at 5 am.
Or at your witnesses’ homes.
Taken (stolen) personal items from your home.
Laptops, phones, all these things will be taken away and never returned.
Pressure on your family, threats to your colleagues.
And of course, interrogations for hours.
What does this Putin’s fight against street protests show us?
This shows that he is well aware that he has no popular support.
It shows us that official sociology is worth nothing.
Well, 100,000 people go out to the streets.
So what?
According to your official data these 100,000 are literally everybody
who is against you but other millions are allegedly for you.
What are you scared of?
But that was enough to make Putin so scared that he couldn’t sleep well until he made
the Constitution article No.31 equal to crime,
And equated to such, more seriously than, double murder
They imprisoned his main opponent and dozens of other people
Until they increased the headquarters of the security forces by one and a half times,
until they spent a lot of money on new batons
We don’t know for sure when Putin wanted to start this war with Ukraine.
But it’s likely he wanted it for ages.
The fact is that until he destroyed law in Russia, imprisoned Navalny, changed the Constitution
and introduced new laws against meetings, he didn’t dare to start it.
It appears nation-wide love wasn’t enough.
He needed fear.
Ok, Putin got his methods of suppression.
Did it help him when the war started? Not really.
On February 24, on the first day of war, dozens of thousand people all over the country came out to the streets.
Someone was arrested on the way to the meeting,
someone was arrested even before the person managed to start a picket.
Everyone knew about that and yet they came.
From morning till evening, day after day.
They escaped the troops in the backstreets and joined the marches.
In 2 days after the war started 3,000 people were arrested, in a week – 10,000 people.
Meanwhile there were a lot of reasons to be scared.
Even before the war you should have had a lot of courage to protest.
You stood against the regime which imprisoned people, didn’t care for the laws, killed and poisoned politicians.
You're in a country where you can't look for the truth, no one can help you, but people came out to rallies.
But after February 24 people went against a more terrible power.
Those who stand against the war know that they go openly against people
who don’t hesitate to give orders to bomb civil cities, kill and terrorize people.
Moreover, they do it justifying it with such crazy logics that you can expect anything from them, any repressions.
It doesn’t matter what attitude they will have towards the opponents, activists or prisoners – nothing will be too crazy.
“Too crazy for Putin” is something we won’t likely hear in the future.
And it’s even scarier to protest against such power even based on the common sense.
But Russians did come out to the streets and they did it massively.
Do you remember when the State Duma had an unscheduled meeting on March 4?
Everyone expected martial law, mobilization, closing of borders.
But they were gathered just to accept new repressive laws and nothing more.
For 10 years Putin has tightened the screws, increased the number of policemen,
followed people through cameras on the streets – all that wasn’t enough.
He needed this absolutely crazy law allowing to imprison anyone who will call the war “war”
or speak out against the killing of people in Mariupol.
You didn’t manage to take Kyiv in 3 days, the Ukrainian army refused to be on your side,
the columns of machinery are burning and you think what else to forbid to prevent meetings.
That’s the one who was really scared.
It is clear that at this point the government hardly thought it had very high public support.
Anyone can become a victim of new laws.
During the first days they arrested people for meetings or pickets.
Very soon you can end up in a police station for a blank paper sheet.
Or for Ukrainian national colors on your jacket.
Or for discussing the protest action which has never happened. For a comment in Twitter.
For a message written by someone else on the bus stop.
For a print “No war” on your T-shirt on Gazmanov’s concert.
New laws don’t want to distinguish the levels of social danger or understand the details of “crime”.
They want to punish one person so that thousands were scared.
So, when we see that a provincial citizen is being prosecuted for riding with an anti-war poster
we think it’s logical at least in this distorted reality.
At least you understand what for!
We would have thought it absolutely crazy a year ago.
Well, sometimes we still do.
Meanwhile, just to kill two birds with one stone, Putin decided to solve the problem
of independent media in Russia completely.
Together with media itself.
This spring all the annoying editions were prohibited and blocked.
And not only the big ones like Novaya gazeta or Echo.
They prohibited even local editions which stood against the war.
Even if they were just writing about the war.
For example, they blocked the portal Sakhalin Info which used to be the main news portal in the region.
A local citizen complained that they publish fake news about the special operation
and they “couldn’t find any kind word about our soldiers”.
The Prosecution office reported they blocked 138,000 websites!
Dozens of media portals were blocked.
All this shows that the Russian authorities understand the real level of support for their actions.
Back when the government really felt supported, they didn't do anything like that.
They could even allow Navalny to run for mayor.
And they could have tried to win the election without any throw-ins.
If the government feels confident, it doesn't shut everything down and try to imprison those who oppose it.
Power does this when it is not sure of its support.
In the Ukrainian Internet very often I see the comparisons of current situation in Russia
with Maidan and even the trollings like the Ukrainians succeeded in overthrowing
Yanukovich because they are courageous and liberty-loving.
And the Russians don’t overthrow Putin because they have the mindset of slaves and they like a firm hand.
It’s a pleasant theory.
However, when they overthrew Yanukovich there were free media in Ukraine,
courts didn’t issue criminal cases here and there if you urged people to come to the meeting,
there was opposition in the Parliament, and the protestants faced approximately 4,000 of Berkut soldiers –
this is how many people participate in a regular small meeting in Moscow.
And in the end Yanukovic wasn’t overthrown.
The legitimate Parliament with legal opposition in it just voted against his laws.
And when he ran away, they appointed the acting President and then had the election.
There are no independent media in Russia, no opposition in the Parliament,
no legal opposition at all, no independent courts.
But it doesn’t mean that everyone in Russia supports Putin and his war.
It so happens that the position that supposedly everyone in Russia is for the war and for Putin
benefits Russian propaganda and many in Ukraine.
It benefits Putin because it makes it easier to suppress protest, so that people with opposing views feel alone.
Well, someone in Ukraine may find it convenient to mobilize society.
But the truth is that it is not.
It is a false and artificial consensus, it does not exist.
It is just like a big boiling cauldron, which boils and boils, but this steam will soon escape.
The war in Ukraine has been going on for 6 months.
That’s for how long the news about protests keep coming from different parts of the country.
There are pickets and performances or people just tear Z-posters off.
Putin would love if it was like in his beloved USSR when each protest action was an extraordinary thing.
Like the protest on the Red Square in August 1968.
But it’s not happening though the imprisonment for anti-war statements are real,
and propaganda is even stricter and more cynical than in the USSR.
And the support of the war is bound to decrease.
We’ve already mentioned the anti-war movement in America – their meetings were even less popular
than ours during the first year of war.
But in a couple of years these meetings became half-million marches.
Very soon military defeats, destroyed economy and repressions will open people’s eyes
better than any honest media.
Putin is trying to find the bottom when people stop coming to the streets, but fails to find it.
Opposition is imprisoned or forced out of the country.
Media are suppressed
They teach us on TV to like the pictures of bombed Russian-speaking cities.
And people keep protesting. And one blocked website with the truth is being replaced with two others.
In the conditions of wild antagonism, imprisonments, threats and pressure dozens of independent initiatives
emerged like Navalny’s Headquarters and OVD-Info and Agora.
All of them got an experience of fighting the most severe and unprincipled autocratic machine and they didn’t break.
And we need to save all of those projects, every sober-thinking person.
Because when the time comes, they will need to participate actively in the country’s fate
before people like Putin take this opportunity.
And there are more and more people like him during this war and dictatorship regime.
We discussed it yesterday.
Monstrous laws are the consequence of protests.
But the main result of those 11 years of fighting this regime is not in this.
It’s that they can do anything, threaten honest people, repeat that they are in the minority,
imprison them, but it doesn’t’ reduce the number of decent people.
Those people keep telling the truth and stand for peace and against criminal regime.
They don't change their mind, although they may refuse to answer sociologists on the phone.
And even if it seems now that protests have no chance, there will be definitely a chance tomorrow.
Till tomorrow!