Draining the libertarian way

"Antipension" protests turned out to be no one to lead

Liberal journalists, deputies from the "systemic opposition" and leading Facebook analysts scare each other with a popular revolt against pension reform. Faced with a 90 percent disapproval of raising the retirement age, the authorities seem to have decided not to risk it either. At first, President Putin said that he did not like any of the proposed reform scenarios. As we noted, this happened the day after United Russia voted in the Duma for the government's reform project in the first reading, so it turned out that the government headed by Dmitry Medvedev and the parliament, where the majority belongs to the party headed by him, suddenly turned out to be in opposition to the president. Immediately there were rumors about the readiness of the authorities for an all-Russian referendum - if this happened, it would be an unprecedented phenomenon for the country's recent political history.

On the last weekend of July, the country was supposed to be shaken by mass “anti-pension” demonstrations. Rallies against pension reform did take place at the federal level, but they were least of all like a popular uprising. The agenda of the mass mobilization of citizens under the slogans of social justice was duly sub- and intercepted by representatives of the Communist Party. Armed with kumach flags, party activists took to the streets in different cities of the country where hundreds, where dozens, and where just a few people. These rallies tried to avoid political demands, which is not surprising, because the Russian Zyuganov communists have long been fighting for stability together with the president.

In some regions, for example, in Ivanovo, the communists did not seem to be able to bore the citizens enough, and noticeably more citizens protested there - up to several thousand. But what is called “rebellion” in everyday language, and what in reality looks like politicization, did not happen anywhere.

Politicization is the involvement of a significant part of the citizens in the protest, the transformation of activism into a civil cause, the emergence of new leaders and political structures.

They still remember how it happens: the last time we experienced such events was in 2011-2012.

In Moscow, a record number of people in the country came to the rally of the Communists on July 28 - about 12 thousand people. The next day, “new leaders and political organizations” were supposed to appear on Sakharov Avenue - democratic forces held a rally after raising the retirement age under the auspices of the Libertarian Party.

With the libertarians, speaking under socialist slogans, there was a clear embarrassment - Zyuganov looks exactly the same, who is baptized under a portrait of Lenin and in a pioneer tie.

Libertarians are in favor of an unregulated market, the party's program contains a course towards reducing the role of the state in the economy and abandoning the state pension system as such. With supporters of such views, citizens are offered to go to the barricade to protect the retirement age. The rally was headlined by libertarian leader Mikhail Svetov, who unexpectedly declared that “the state must return the debt to the people,” diluting this socialist slogan with more traditional statements that “you need to learn to hate” and “take away freedom.”

Aleksei Navalny supported, albeit from some distance, the libertarian socialists, to whom state propaganda instantly recalled his old economic programs. In 2014, when the Russian authorities promised that there would be no increase in the retirement age, Navalny consulted with leading Russian economists and included a clause about the inevitability of pension reform in his program texts. Most likely, there is no contradiction here: as we have already explained, many consistent supporters of the reform, such as Yevgeny Gontmakher, severely criticize its current implementation, in which the retirement age is raised mechanically outside the context of structural changes in the economy, and the released money goes in an unknown direction .

Be that as it may, the political meaning of what is happening is obvious. At the start of the struggle for pension reform, the authorities outplay their opponents. The latter are fragmented and partly controlled, as in the case of the Communist Party, and partly act solely as tactics, momentarily turning to the pension topic contrary to their own ideology (before that, libertarians protested in the same format against Telegram blocking, which did not raise any questions).

The Kremlin, at the same time, is also gradually showing its cards. As expected, the president will take a “more balanced position” compared to the deputies, and some concessions can be expected from him in the process of passing the bill. The “popular revolt” eventually turns into mass support for Putin, and there seems to be no one to resist this either on the left or on the right flank of Russian opposition politics.

Of course, everything can change by autumn, when citizens, returning from summer cottages and vacations, will count the money left in their pockets. However, now the notorious "drain of protest" was clearly indicated. The only question is what is its nature: is it a brilliant Kremlin political technology, the victims of which are protesting citizens and opposition politicians. Or, on the contrary, we have before us the consequence of the failure of the opposition mobilization, collected from improvised libertarian means.