| How youth policy is done Two protests by youth organizations dedicated to the State Duma’s abolition of nine of the 25 existing deferments from military conscription clashed on Sunday near the Ministry of Defense building. A Vremya Novostey correspondent turned out to be a witness to the “collision.”
On Friday, young Yabloko members led by Ilya Yashin announced their intention to protest against the cancellation of deferments. They prepared slogans: “I don’t want to build dachas for generals!”, “Down with conscription, give me a contract!”, “Students in pairs, the government in barracks!” According to the plan of the event, potential recruits from the ranks of young Yabloko activists were supposed to practice cleaning toilets with toothbrushes.
When the Yabloko members arrived at the site of the action, they found there activists of the Local organization, calling themselves the “movement of young political ecologists of the Moscow region” and enjoying the support of the Moscow region governor Boris Gromov. For some time, the protesters stood thirty meters from each other, then they had a kind of dialogue.
In their press release, “Locals” promised to come to the building of the Ministry of Defense with patriotic music and posters “Yashin, why not in the army?”, “There is such a duty to defend the Motherland,” “We are for reducing military service to 1 year.” . By the way, the bills adopted by the Duma last Friday provide for a reduction in conscription service life to one and a half years from January 1, 2007 and to twelve months from January 1, 2008. In addition, the press release promised that after the rally, those demobilized from the “Mestny” “will tell the guys about their service in the armed forces, show demobilization albums and photographs,” and “the leader of the youth Yabloko, Lev Yashin, will be given an original gift.” Why Ilya was named Leo remains a mystery. Either the Locals’ love for football (Lev Yashin is the great goalkeeper of the capital Dynamo) was reflected in it, or they simply decided to joke.
The theme of football, by the way, ran through this political performance as a red thread. Even the activists of both youth organizations themselves, separated by a police cordon and chanting “chants” in each other’s faces, evoked a strong association with football fans. "Down with puppets!" - Yabloko members shouted to the “Locals”, by that time they had already managed to pretend to clean the toilet. “Yashin, why not in the army?” - the “Locals” readily answered. “Your place is on Tverskaya!” - “Apple” activists retorted in unison. The bickering was interrupted by the police, who, however, were fairly entertained by the spectacle. “We tried to approach them and talk, but the police immediately lined up between us, and the Yabloko members were pushed towards the metro,” Ilya Yashin told Vremya Novostey. According to him, the Yabloko members had official permission to picket, unlike the Locals.
But the law enforcement officers finally drove away the Yabloko members. Yashin and the company, toilet at the ready, headed to their headquarters, and the “Locals” stood for another fifteen minutes at the Ministry of Defense for formality. Then they folded the flags and grouped together for a couple of minutes. Apparently, it was at this moment that the serving activists briefly informed their comrades about serving in the armed forces. The promised gift to Yashin turned out to be a bag of rotten apples, which the Locals never delivered because, as one of the activists admitted to a Vremya Novostei correspondent, some of the props got stuck in a traffic jam. True, the leader of the movement, Sergei Fateev, for some reason considered the gift to be given: “Did you see that they had a toilet there? Look, we ate rotten apples.” The support for the police clearly inspired the Locals' sense of humor. They joked and laughed, but they should have looked around carefully.
After a while, Ilya Yashin said that the Yabloko members, having left the picket, left three of their agents with the Locals so that they would follow where the political ecologists of the Moscow region would direct their steps. According to Yabloko activists, the “Locals” were taken to McDonald’s, where they were fed hamburgers, after which the coordinator gave each of them 500 rubles. and a metro card. Under the guise of a “local”, Yabloko member Igor Yakovlev also received prizes.
Then the well-fed and satisfied “ecologists” drove to the Vykhino metro station, where they were loaded onto two buses. On one of them there was a sign “Lyubertsy”, on the second - “Electrostal”.
And the policemen guarding the rally of Yabloko and the Locals went on their next task - to provide security at the Russian Football Championship match taking place that day in Moscow. Ksenia VERETENNIKOVA |
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