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Protest stays festive, leaderless
Anna Arutunyan - Moscow News - themoscownews.com - 2.6.12 - JRL 2012-22

The third "Fair Elections" rally in Moscow attracted another huge, festive crowd to Bolotnaya Ploshchad on Saturday, but left two key questions unanswered: Which strategy will the disparate opposition pursue, and who will lead it? If the diverse crowd of about 100,000 people, who braved temperatures of minus 19 degrees Celsius frost, were hoping to hear another stirring speech from Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption blogger-turned-opposition hero, they were to be disappointed.

Navalny appeared on stage but declined to speak. Earlier, he told The Moscow News that he would give up his spot as speaker to give other people a chance.

"I want to give new people a chance to speak on the stage," Navalny said, going on to explain why he was taking a relatively minor role in the protests ­ for now.

"In order to take part in a presidential election, you need a presidential election," Navalny said as he marched the 2 kilometers from Kaluzhskaya Ploshchad to Bolotnaya, wearing his trademark ushanka fur hat. "But what's about to happen isn't an election. This is a march calling for free elections. Once they happen, I will run [for president]."

Given the number of posters depicting Navalny as a favorable alternative (such as one calling for his presidency in 2014), here was a presidential hopeful in all but name. Even though he didn't speak to the crowd, Navalny, who all but threatened a march on the Kremlin during the last mass protest on Dec. 24, drew large cheers each time he appeared.

Nor was he shy of giving public vent to his nationalist sympathies ­ turning to greet one of the leaders for the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, Vladimir Tor, with a cry of "Glory to Russia!"

Kudrin and Prokhorov

The disputed parliamentary vote Dec. 4, in which Putin's ruling United Russia party won a narrow majority of seats in the State Duma with an official vote of 49.3 percent, sparked a spate of unprecedented anti-government rallies in Moscow and across the country. But after a demonstration on Bolotnaya on Dec. 10 and another on Prospect Akademika Sakharova on Dec. 24, many felt the protests would peter out in the cold.

Saturday's march and rally disproved this, however, and went ahead despite tough negotiations with City Hall to get it authorized.

Numbers at the rally were disputed, with police estimating that about 36,000 people turned up for the march. Calling from the stage, organizers rallied the crowd with cries that the turnout had exceeded 120,000 people. Online portal Lenta.ru put the number at a more conservative 50,000 to 60,000.

Prominent allies of Putin's, such as former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who has repeatedly called for dialogue with the opposition, also turned up on the march.

"There's still practically no dialogue, but the government is taking into account everything that's happening," Kudrin told The Moscow News on Bolotnaya.

After offering to mediate between the government and the opposition, Kudrin, who resigned from his post just days after the Sept. 24 announcement that Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev were to switch places, came to join Saturday's march as a private citizen.

Booed when he took the stage on Prospekt Akademika Sakharova, on Saturday Kudrin stood quietly in the crowd and did not shout out any of the rallying calls, merely smiling occasionally to himself as Putin was criticized from the stage.

"It was good to see so many decent people in the crowd," Kudrin said as he left the square toward the end of the rally.

Another prominent figure also appeared in the crowd, but did not take to the stage. Billionaire presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, who also attended the Sakharova protest as an ordinary participant, towered in his ski hat over journalists and cameramen crowding around him.

Protest anthem

A song written by a group of paratrooper veterans that went viral on Youtube became an anthem for Bolotnaya-2 ­ and possibly summed up the protesters' key message for Putin. "You're just an official, not a tsar, not a god," the former paratroopers sang from the stage, joined by Navalny. "But for you every human is merely a Bandar-log."

Dubbed revolutionary hipsters, the motley crew that turned up for Saturday's march were anything but. From luxurious furs to deliberately shabby leather coats, it was a middle class flaunting its way of living as if it say, "We're not nearly as rich as you think we are."

Young people in "Anonymous" Occupy-style masks marched next to pensioners, while businessmen mingled with bearded intellectuals smoking pipes.

Dmitry Bykov, the writer, poet and oppositionist, turned up in a shabby winter coat, carrying a placard that said: "Don't rock the boat, our rat is getting sick."

For many protesters, the march was symbolic ­ a necessary but insufficient measure of change.

"This is just the beginning," Nikolai, a bearded furniture entrepreneur, told The Moscow News. "God forbid there is a revolution. But regime change normally comes from the top in Russia. We need to work on everyday things... [and to] build civil society, just by being decent to one another."

Keywords: Russia, Government, Politics - Russia News - Russia

 

The third "Fair Elections" rally in Moscow attracted another huge, festive crowd to Bolotnaya Ploshchad on Saturday, but left two key questions unanswered: Which strategy will the disparate opposition pursue, and who will lead it?

If the diverse crowd of about 100,000 people, who braved temperatures of minus 19 degrees Celsius frost, were hoping to hear another stirring speech from Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption blogger-turned-opposition hero, they were to be disappointed.

Navalny appeared on stage but declined to speak. Earlier, he told The Moscow News that he would give up his spot as speaker to give other people a chance.

"I want to give new people a chance to speak on the stage," Navalny said, going on to explain why he was taking a relatively minor role in the protests ­ for now.

"In order to take part in a presidential election, you need a presidential election," Navalny said as he marched the 2 kilometers from Kaluzhskaya Ploshchad to Bolotnaya, wearing his trademark ushanka fur hat. "But what's about to happen isn't an election. This is a march calling for free elections. Once they happen, I will run [for president]."

Given the number of posters depicting Navalny as a favorable alternative (such as one calling for his presidency in 2014), here was a presidential hopeful in all but name. Even though he didn't speak to the crowd, Navalny, who all but threatened a march on the Kremlin during the last mass protest on Dec. 24, drew large cheers each time he appeared.

Nor was he shy of giving public vent to his nationalist sympathies ­ turning to greet one of the leaders for the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, Vladimir Tor, with a cry of "Glory to Russia!"

Kudrin and Prokhorov

The disputed parliamentary vote Dec. 4, in which Putin's ruling United Russia party won a narrow majority of seats in the State Duma with an official vote of 49.3 percent, sparked a spate of unprecedented anti-government rallies in Moscow and across the country. But after a demonstration on Bolotnaya on Dec. 10 and another on Prospect Akademika Sakharova on Dec. 24, many felt the protests would peter out in the cold.

Saturday's march and rally disproved this, however, and went ahead despite tough negotiations with City Hall to get it authorized.

Numbers at the rally were disputed, with police estimating that about 36,000 people turned up for the march. Calling from the stage, organizers rallied the crowd with cries that the turnout had exceeded 120,000 people. Online portal Lenta.ru put the number at a more conservative 50,000 to 60,000.

Prominent allies of Putin's, such as former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who has repeatedly called for dialogue with the opposition, also turned up on the march.

"There's still practically no dialogue, but the government is taking into account everything that's happening," Kudrin told The Moscow News on Bolotnaya.

After offering to mediate between the government and the opposition, Kudrin, who resigned from his post just days after the Sept. 24 announcement that Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev were to switch places, came to join Saturday's march as a private citizen.

Booed when he took the stage on Prospekt Akademika Sakharova, on Saturday Kudrin stood quietly in the crowd and did not shout out any of the rallying calls, merely smiling occasionally to himself as Putin was criticized from the stage.

"It was good to see so many decent people in the crowd," Kudrin said as he left the square toward the end of the rally.

Another prominent figure also appeared in the crowd, but did not take to the stage. Billionaire presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, who also attended the Sakharova protest as an ordinary participant, towered in his ski hat over journalists and cameramen crowding around him.

Protest anthem

A song written by a group of paratrooper veterans that went viral on Youtube became an anthem for Bolotnaya-2 ­ and possibly summed up the protesters' key message for Putin. "You're just an official, not a tsar, not a god," the former paratroopers sang from the stage, joined by Navalny. "But for you every human is merely a Bandar-log."

Dubbed revolutionary hipsters, the motley crew that turned up for Saturday's march were anything but. From luxurious furs to deliberately shabby leather coats, it was a middle class flaunting its way of living as if it say, "We're not nearly as rich as you think we are."

Young people in "Anonymous" Occupy-style masks marched next to pensioners, while businessmen mingled with bearded intellectuals smoking pipes.

Dmitry Bykov, the writer, poet and oppositionist, turned up in a shabby winter coat, carrying a placard that said: "Don't rock the boat, our rat is getting sick."

For many protesters, the march was symbolic ­ a necessary but insufficient measure of change.

"This is just the beginning," Nikolai, a bearded furniture entrepreneur, told The Moscow News. "God forbid there is a revolution. But regime change normally comes from the top in Russia. We need to work on everyday things... [and to] build civil society, just by being decent to one another."