Protest performances. May

Svetlana Kovaleva, Demos Center

PERVOMAY

On May 1, marches and rallies were held in various regions of Russia, which opposition forces traditionally use to demonstrate political and social protest.

In most cases, the organizers and the most active participants in rallies and marches were supporters of the Communist Party. It was they who, for the most part, coordinated the holding of events with local authorities.

Among the main demands, the demonstrators put forward the following: an increase in wages and the repayment of debts for its payments, the abolition of existing housing and communal services tariffs, "the abolition of the abolition of benefits." , traditional for the communists, sounded less frequently Radical demands : "We demand the resignation of the president, the government, the State Duma for betraying the interests of Russia and its people!"

Although, as far as radical demands are concerned, members of the NBP and anarchists were typical speakers that day.

Members of radical youth organizations did not have the opportunity to hold their own rally that day. Even in the case when the notice of the rally was submitted in advance, law enforcement agencies did not allow it to be held. So, for example, it happened in the city of Naberezhnye Chelny . An anarchist movement activist who filed a notice of the picket was detained. Before the start of the picket, about 40 policemen gathered at the declared location of the rally, who detained and sent all potential participants of the rally to the ROVD. The juvenile detainees were released after 2 hours, the organizer of the action was charged with holding an "unauthorized picket" and "distributing unregistered mass media."

Therefore, in most cases, the radicals tried to join the actions organized by the Communist Party.

In Chelyabinsk, the Communist Party refused to go in the same column with the NBP. As a result, the members of the NBP organized their own column and continued to move chanting "Re-vo-lu-tion", which attracted the attention of law enforcement agencies. One of the NBP leaders appealed to the protesters with a request to encircle the NBP members and not allow the policemen to arrest them. However, this did not have the expected result. According to the press service of the NBP of Chelyabinsk, posted on the website of the official website of the NBP: "... rushing at the crowd, two dozen riot policemen simply began to break the encirclement of the National Bolsheviks, beating ordinary passers-by along the way. As a result of the attack, several old men were beaten and 15 National Bolsheviks were detained." The detainees were released two hours later.

The Krasnodar National Bolsheviks managed to march along the central street of the city together with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the SCM, Narodnaya Volya, the Union of Military Officers, Labor Russia and other political organizations. At the same time, the National Bolsheviks chanted: “Peace, Labor, May - a rifle”, “We reached Berlin - we will reach the Kremlin”, “We need Another Russia”, “Amnesty for everyone”, etc. After congratulating the participants of the rally on May 1 , the day of solidarity of all workers, on behalf of the NBP, a statement was made about the illegality of the existing government of V. Putin. After some time, a group of people joined the column of demonstrators, who, according to the National Bolsheviks, were law enforcement officers: "They followed us on our heels and" wanted to fight. people, then there will be 50 of us, if there are 50 of you, then there will be 100 of us.

In St. Petersburg, the police only after some time allowed the activists of the "Petersburg Civil Resistance" blocking Nevsky Prospekt, including National Bolsheviks, to enter Palace Square. The rally was attended by about 300 people, including members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the NBP, the Communist Youth Union and the Vanguard of the Red Youth.

In Ufa, the May 1 rally was of a competitive nature. About seven thousand supporters of the official authorities and about 300 representatives of the opposition and the Communist Party gathered on Lenin Square. Supporters of the authorities, mostly young people from Ufa and other regions of the republic, held the flags of Russia and Bashkiria in their hands and chanted: "Peace, work, May!", "We are for Putin!", "We are for Rakhimov!" In turn, supporters of the opposition and the Communist Party of Bashkiria tried to shout them down, chanting: "Down with Rakhimov!"

9TH MAY

The experience of May Day forced the authorities to change tactics. Fearing a repetition of excesses, doubly undesirable due to the fact that large-scale celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Victory should not have been overshadowed by anything, the authorities took preventive measures: activists of "unreliable" parties were detained in advance. As a result of these actions, for example, a rally of left-wing movements on Tverskaya Zastava Square did not actually take place. About 150 people - potential participants in the rally - were arrested for several hours and then released without saying a word about the motives for the detention. The newspaper "NG" published a comment received by the correspondent of the newspaper from an employee of the Moscow police department about the reasons for the arrests: "Regarding a number of representatives of youth organizations, operational information was received that made it possible to doubt their law-abidingness."

At the same time, the rally on Belorussky Station Square turned into a clash with the police, after several activists of the Red Youth Vanguard attempted to break through the police cordon that had been put up around Moscow's Belorussky Station Square. OMON officers, lining up in a chain, pushed back the left-wing radicals, who lit smoke bombs and threw firecrackers towards the OMON officers. Together with the communists, "Limonovites", monarchists, students gathered on the square, who shouted slogans glorifying the feat of Soviet soldiers in the victory over the Nazi invaders. At the same time, the government was sharply criticized at the rally.

NBP: ACTIONS AGAINST ARRESTS OF PARTICIPANTS OF PREVIOUS ACTIONS

The shares of the NBP are more and more noticeably acquiring two directions. These are actually political actions, such as: hanging on the facade of the Rossiya Hotel a poster "Putin! Leave yourself!", holding a picket "No to police arbitrariness!" and so on.

And the actions themselves, designed to draw the attention of the general public to the reaction of the authorities to the political actions of the party activists.

In May, three successive and different actions took place in Moscow. On May 28, a rally in support of political prisoners was held with the participation of several parties (KPRF, NBP, Yabloko, Motherland) and several public organizations. One of the main demands was to change the measure of restraint for the National Bolsheviks, who had previously been convicted. On 29 March, a rally was held in support of imprisoned members of the NBP, initiated by their parents . Both actions were sanctioned by the authorities. On May 30, several members of the party handcuffed themselves to the gates of the Historical Museum . They demanded the release of participants in the action in the President's reception room on December 14, as well as the authorities' reaction to the hunger strike of NBP activists taking place in the prison in Pechatniki. The protesters were detained.

Of the actual political actions in May, the most notable was the action "ascent of the Limonov climbers" to the Rossiya Hotel , where for more than two and a half hours they hung at the level of the 10th floor of the hotel, hanging a poster on the facade: "Putin, leave yourself!" . The Metropolitan Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal case (Part 1 of Article 330 of the Criminal Code - arbitrariness). During the arrest, NBP activists (19-year-old Evgeny Lagovsky and 20-year-old Olga Kudrina) did not put up any resistance. They were taken to the Kitai-Gorod police department.

The answer to this arrest was the demand to "stop the criminal case against the National Bolsheviks -" political climbers ", which was put forward by the starving people in the Moscow headquarters of the NBP for the release of political prisoners - participants in the action in the presidential reception room on December 14. It is difficult to say whether this action was successful, but it is difficult to say the Bolsheviks - "alpinists", in the end, received 15 days for petty hooliganism.

PICKETING OF THE PETISH COURT

On May 16, a sanctioned picket of Khodorkovsky's supporters took place outside the Meshchansky Court, where the announcement of the verdict in the Khodorkovsky-Lebedev-Kraynov case began. After the participants refused to disperse, despite the calls of the policemen, the police and riot police dispersed the picket , detaining 30 of its participants, including Mitrokhin, the leader of the Defense movement, Ilya Yashin, and the coordinator of the Beslan teachers' committee, Vissarion Aseev. Mitrokhin and Aseev were beaten. OMON also tried to detain Garry Kasparov, but the security of the leader of the "Committee-2008" did not allow this. The picketers were charged with violating the rules for holding street events and disobeying the authorities.

However, the case did not reach the court. All those who appeared on the agenda for the analysis of what had happened on the eve of the incident were released, saying that no criminal case had been opened against them. According to Garry Kasparov, chairman of the "Committee-2008", the charges brought against them turned out to be so groundless that the court refused to accept the case for consideration.

Kasparov and Mitrokhin thanked the journalists who covered the incident with the detention. According to them, this "small success was possible thanks to the journalists," otherwise Mitrokhin would still "sit in handcuffs."

KIDNAPPINGS IN THE CAUCASUS

The North Caucasus remained a separate focus of protest activity. The main theme of the actions that took place in May was a protest against kidnappings by law enforcement agencies.

On May 20, in the center of Grozny , in front of the building of the Committee for the Protection of the Constitutional Rights of Chechen Citizens, several dozen people gathered, holding photographs of their missing loved ones, demanding to know where their relatives were, detained at various times by law enforcement agencies. The protesters said that the authorities are not taking real action to search for missing people.

The Committee for the Protection of the Constitutional Rights of Chechen Citizens reported that a special commission is being created to search for missing and abducted citizens on the territory of the republic, which includes the heads of all law enforcement agencies. "Such a proposal was made by our president, and now a special commission will be engaged in the search for missing and abducted people. First of all, a complete data bank on missing citizens will be created," the committee's employees said.

On May 30, relatives of abducted residents of Chechnya picketed government buildings in Grozny . In the end, a man who introduced himself as the head of the presidential security service demanded that they leave the territory of government buildings within five minutes, otherwise he would give the order to use weapons. People were forced to disperse.

On the same day in Dagestan, residents of the Untsukulsky district blocked the road for six hours, demanding the release of a detained fellow villager. After the meeting with the head of the district administration and the head of the ROVD, the rally participants dispersed.

MOTORISTS: ORANGE HINT

On May 19, at a meeting of the Government of the Russian Federation, a bill was considered restricting the import of right-hand drive cars into Russia on the basis that these cars do not meet safety requirements.

took place throughout Russia In response to the possibility of making a prohibitive decision, on the same day , protest actions of motorists . On Sakhalin, more than three thousand owners of Japanese-made cars took part in the action. In Vladivostok, several hundred Protestant cars passed through the central streets of the city. In Khanty-Mansiysk, 44 car owners took part in the protest action. Similar actions were held in Khabarovsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Magadan.

In Moscow, the owners of about 300 right-hand drive cars intended to picket the government building on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, but were stopped by traffic police and riot police on Kutuzovsky Prospekt near the White House. Not everyone was able to get to the embankment - those who removed all the propaganda from the car. The authorities declared the rally unsanctioned, and tow trucks were called. The protesters were addressed through a megaphone with a request to disperse.

It is noteworthy that motorists chose orange ribbons as the identification mark of the action. Despite the fact that the Protestants did not express any political demands - their demand was as specific as possible and did not go beyond the framework of social protest, the Protestants used precisely this color of "revolutionary threat" that frightens officials to achieve maximum effect.

On the same day, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Energy, Viktor Khristenko, made a statement that the government does not yet plan to ban the operation of right-hand drive cars.

POLICE ARRESTED PROTECTORS OF THE RIGHTS OF POLICE MEMBERS

An unusual rally was held on May 30 in St. Petersburg. was held near the St. Petersburg OMON headquarters A rally against the participation of St. Petersburg policemen in operations in Chechnya . The action was carried out by activists of the St. Petersburg civil resistance, and it was held under the slogans "Stop the war in Chechnya", "Down with the war for Putin's rating." . To this we can also add that the militiamen and riot police who returned from Chechnya will transfer to Russia those brutal methods of action that they were forced to do in Chechnya.

The authorities of St. Petersburg were notified of the action, but refused to approve it. For "organizing and participating in an unsanctioned rally," the police detained the organizers of the rally and took them to the police station.