Where does Anatomy of Protest come from?

Denounced as “swindlers and thieves”, harassed by the demand for fair elections, the government seized the initiative and went on the offensive: the opposition has to justify itself

Denounced as “swindlers and thieves”, harassed by the demand for fair elections, the government seized the initiative and went on the offensive. After the screening of the film “Anatomy of a Protest,” the opposition has to justify itself.

Time has been working for the authorities all these months. The euphoria from the first victories has passed, and an understanding has come: the protesters are still not strong enough to dictate their terms. Vladimir Putin continues to ignore the protests, limiting himself to sarcastic remarks, while the opposition has run out of demands: it has said them all, and the Kremlin has turned a deaf ear to them.

It’s pointless to repeat it again in the same hundred thousand sips. Oppositionists name a different number of demonstrators, starting from which the authorities cannot help but listen: member of the organizing committee “For Fair Elections”, chief editor of Afisha-Rambler Yuri Saprykin speaks of 500 thousand, Sergei Udaltsov - about a million. But how can you attract half a million people to your side when you barely have the strength to hold on to your positions?

Both the observation of elections and the election of deputies to municipal assemblies in Moscow were essentially an opposition “course for a young fighter.” New faces, motivated people who know what they are protecting and from what, are now trying to lead people - their speeches were the “highlights” of the rally on Novy Arbat on March 10 . But those of them who are not exposed as “jackaling at foreign embassies” look like annoying litigators, annoying the authorities with a naive demand for honesty. The majority of Russians, for whom the opposition will have to fight, are little concerned about big politics. “If you are not involved in politics, politics will be involved in you” is a common phrase, but the desire to re-educate adults has never brought anyone their support in elections. “This energy, but for peaceful purposes,” many say today, watching the demonstrators and understanding by “peaceful purposes” their own selfish interests, far from big politics. It is into this gap that the “new opposition” will try to crawl through if it wants to survive.

The small-deal tactics have one big minus and one big plus. By abandoning “poster” slogans, opposition politicians will most likely disappear from television screens. According to data published by Rospechat last November, just before the start of the White Revolution, just under a quarter of all Russians view the Internet as a source of information. This means that the remaining three quarters heard on TV: “The opposition is corrupt!” and reading on the Internet: “NTV is lying!” , will not necessarily believe the Internet. For all these people, the disappearance of the opposition and its thousands of rallies from television screens will probably mean their disappearance from real life...

However, soon they will be able to see this very opposition not on the TV screen, but with their own eyes - this is the advantage of the “theory of small matters.” Moreover, such support is much more reliable. People will believe in those with whom they brought to light embezzlers and local bribe-takers, no matter how “Surkov’s propaganda” showers them.

In Russia, formal governance institutions are traditionally weak, but informal ones are strong – although, for the most part, they are “built-in” into the government. Bureaucracy as the basis of the state machine was controlled by the nomenklatura in the USSR, and in Putin’s Russia it is under the control of officials responsible to their superiors and personally loyal to them. The main merit of the second President of Russia, Vladimir Putin , has been repeatedly cited by both political scientists and ordinary people as the creation—or re-creation—of the “vertical of power.” But a servant of the people cannot serve two masters - both the authorities and the population of the entrusted territory.

The “vertical” has long ago turned from a support into a stopper. Even the most courageous fans of Vladimir Putin - those who threaten to come from the provinces and turn the heads of Muscovites who are dissatisfied with the “choice of the people” - will not even think of defending and praising the bureaucracy. Moreover, in the provinces, more and more often, in mayoral elections, as in Togliatti and Chernogolovka near Moscow, candidates from United Russia fail, letting popular self-nominated candidates pass ahead. In some regional centers , Vladimir Putin did not receive 50% of the votes in the 2012 presidential elections. The opposition has work to do.