Well, an absence of some months from this blog… mea culpa: been rather busy running here and there…
Back in Moscow now following events in the run up to next Sunday’s (December 2nd) parliamentary elections, which will see a landslide victory for the party that most slavishly supports President Vladimir Putin – United Russia. They’ll poll 70% or 80%.
Russia’s tiny dissident opposition are mostly not even running in the election – either they have been prevented from doing so, are banned (in the case of Eddie Limonov’s bizarre black-dressed anarchists the National Bolsheviks) or have too little support to meet election commission requirements.
What they lack for in size they make up for in street presence and sheer braggadocio. There were a series of ‘dissenters marches’ across Russia today and I went down to take a look at Moscow’s, where a couple of thousand people had gathered on a cordoned off section of Prospekt Akademika Sakharov (known as Novokirovksy Prospekt in Soviet times) to hold an officially-sanctioned rally before handing in a protest letter to the nearby Central Election Commission.
Speakers at the rally early this afternoon had to shout above a very loud and unpleasant screeching that was emitting from a hidden loudspeaker somewhere nearby – some in the crowd suggested it could be the work of pro-Kremlin elements, but was unable to verify that after failing to find the source of the sound, when I and a couple of colleagues left the rally to try to track it down. As we returned to the main inner ring road to find a group of several hundred flag waving National Bolsheviks had meanwhile broken out of the cordon and fled onto the ring road, where cars came to an abrupt halt, to try to take their protest direct to the election commission building. It was obvious what was going to happen next and no sooner than they had headed down a side street did scores of very tall and mean looking OMON riot police in their distinctive blue camo fatigues, bone-dome helmets and long stiff rubber batons, stream after them, massive paddy wagons following behind. They trapped the protestors in the street and although it looked more like street theatre than really rough stuff, scuffles were soon breaking out.
The OMON officers were clearly using plainclothes helpers – one OMON officer warmly greeted a bunch of tough looking young skinheads dressed in the ubiquitous Russian ‘gopnik’ (slang for any rough looking young guy) uniform of jeans, short coats and small tight woolen hats. Some of these plainclothes guys had walkie-talkies and wired ear-pieces.
There were some scuffles and arrests – including of leaders of the anti-Putin dissidents Garry Kasparov, Lev Ponomarev and Eddie Limonov – but nothing I saw that would count as heavy violence. As we left a group of other young and middle aged toughs in plainclothes were walking down the street alongside uniformed cops pulling on red armbands that identified them as members of a pro-Kremlin civilian group.
Here’s a news piece I filed as a contribution to a wider ‘Russia on the eve of elections’ that one of the London Sunday papers is running tomorrow.
Saturday November 24 2007
MOSCOW – Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion turned leader United Civil Front Group, part of the anti-Putin coalition The Other Russia, was arrested by riot police in Moscow Saturday (Nov 24) along with around a dozen other activists following a protest rally.
Kasparov was arrested by members of Russia’s camouflage-uniformed OMON riot police after a group of several hundred mostly young anti-Kremlin protestors broke away from a government-sanctioned demonstration.
Lev Ponomarev, a Soviet-era dissident who heads Moscow-based NGO “For Human Rights”, Eduard Limonov, leader of banned anarchist group the National Bolsheviks (Natsbols) and Ilya Yashin, head of the youth wing of western-oriented social democrat party Yabloko were also detained in scuffles with police near the city’s Chistyi Prudi metro station.
Kasparov was taken to Moscow’s Basmanny police station and the others to the nearby Taganksky police station, The Other Russia said in a statement later.
Kasparov was last arrested during an anti-Putin protest in Moscow in April. He was briefly detained before being released after paying a small fine for public order offences.
The arrests came after an officially-sanctioned gathering of some 2,000 flag-waving anti-Putin activists broke up and a large group of mostly younger members of the ‘Natsbols’ – waving trade-mark black hammer and sickle festooned flags – burst beyond a police cordon.
A ragged column of noisy protesters brought traffic to a halt as they streamed onto Moscow’s busy five-lane inner ring road before pouring down a side street headed towards the nearby headquarters of the Central Election Commission.
“We are the dissenters march!” the protestors shouted as they were pursued by OMON riot police armed with long rubber batons and wearing helmets with darkened visors and body armour.
None of the anti-government groups at Saturday’s rally – with the exception of Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces – which had been represented at the sanctioned rally by its leader Boris Nemtsov – have been permitted to stand in next week’s parliamentary elections, due to take place on Sunday December 2.
Authorities had earlier allowed a small group from the official rally to hand a protest petition in to the electoral commission.
Earlier Kasparov had told supporters at the rally that Putin was using “fear to maintain authority.”
Straining to be heard above a loud screeching directed towards the demonstrators from hidden loudspeakers nearby that demonstrators blamed on pro-Putin youth group Nashi, Kasparov said: “We need to understand that if we are not afraid and keep on the streets, the regime will itself be scared and will be unable to maintain its repression on society. Either we maintain a criminal regime or we save our country.”
He added that despite record oil prices the standard of living for ordinary Russians had not improved and the cost of living was rising sharply.
“Our aim is to dismantle a dishonorable regime that is ruining our country. We know they have no aversion to spilling blood – Beslan demonstrated that. But we can win if we remain united,” Kasparov added to cheers.
The Moscow demonstration was one of a series of national ‘dissenters marches’ that took places in cities across Russia that included Voronezh in central Russia, Irkutsk in Sibera, Kazan, Krasnoyarsk, Murmansk, Rostov-on-Don, Tomsk, Tula, Ekaterinburg and Kaliningrad.
Here's a link to the story that was published in the Sunday Telegraph - a joint effort between myself and my London-based colleague Colin Freeman.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/25/wmoscow125.xml
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