Maneuvers

Two weeks before the elections, there is no change on the front. Periodic forays of mobile detachments and local skirmishes between the authorities and individual opposition units are done solely to measure the degree of activity and test the resolve of the scattered troops of the “hamster army”, its, so to speak, fighting spirit.

So the Minister of Disasters, Shoigu, got involved in the operation, inviting everyone to sign a “social contract” to observe the truce. The very fact that a paramilitary figure was delegated from the authorities suggests that the authorities view Bolotnaya as nothing other than a peat fire in the swamps in the Moscow region.

In the camp of the “offended citizens” there is confusion and vacillation. Carnival protest and masquerade performance are not yet associated with barricades and revolutionary fervor. It’s one thing to be indignant and allow yourself to joke and mock the authorities, and quite another thing to crawl under tanks under the leadership of shady leaders.

Outraged townspeople are ready to use their gadgets for discussion and are not at all ready to turn them into weapons of the proletariat to smash the enemy’s head with them. The authorities, frightened in December, came to their senses and, according to the old tradition, are ready, up to a certain point, to feign humility and readiness for a courtly dialogue, while at this time they themselves are frantically preparing the state machine for the most severe reaction.

After all, in essence, Bolotnaya is a protest of ruble millionaires against dollar billionaires. And most of the lucky owners of gadgets happened precisely during the very period of vertical construction, against which they so cheerfully and creatively took to the square, instinctively fearing to go too far and break the thread, which means with a high degree of probability of losing both their iPads and iPhones, and their social status.

There are clearly no poor and disadvantaged people among the protesters, and even less so among their leaders. The revolutionary situation has clearly not reached its normal state and has not gained momentum. The top can still do it, the bottom still wants to. But the situation is very unstable, and therefore can move into a new phase at any moment. Both the authorities and the opposition understand this, hence the constant attempts to find a compromise.

Well, the most important factor has not yet been used. A people who are silent, as usual, but this silence is becoming more and more threatening, and therefore it is impossible to predict the results of these maneuvers. And a bearded joke comes to mind: “And then the forester came, gave everyone cradles and dispersed everyone.”