Please do not disturb

They say that our citizens do not fight for their rights and freedoms at all. Not true! At least, these are not the kind of citizens who live in Samara. Proof of this is a lawsuit filed by a group of Samara residents against... the organizers of the “March of Dissent.” Because of the March, streets and alleys were blocked, and the plaintiffs were “forced to sit in traffic jams or walk.” And now they demand that the “dissenters” compensate them for moral damage.

Well, the residents of Samara can be understood. Being stuck in traffic jams due to blocked streets is really annoying. Another question is that the “dissenters,” in general, did not ask for such increased attention. The “march” was quite modest in scope; the organizers intended to march, as far as I understand, along a small section of a single street. The rest is already a “sergeant major’s gap.” This is when each subsequent “policeman,” trying to better fulfill the orders of his superiors, shows additional zeal. They told me to block one street - they will block two. They ordered to send five policemen, and they drove up a riot police bus. They ordered the detention of, say, Kasparov, and they went to grab everyone in a row, and even hit them with clubs for added weight.

I was once told about the “sergeant major’s gap” by a person who, in Gorbachev’s security guard, was responsible for organizing the movement of Mikhail Sergeich’s motorcade. Few people remember this now, but the streets were not blocked for Gorbachev’s passage! Except for rare cases associated with visits of foreign leaders. And this respected man told me in detail how they managed to deliver the President of the USSR to the Kremlin without delay, and not paralyze street traffic. Even though back then this movement was, of course, not as hellish as it is today, but the principle is interesting and quite applicable today.

However, we are talking about something else. When the “March of Dissent” took place in Nizhny Novgorod, according to various estimates, up to 20,000 policemen, riot police, soldiers, security officers, Emchesovets and whoever else had not yet been driven there were driven into the city and its environs! Even if there were not 20,000, but 10,000 of them. But in the city they blocked everything that was possible, they actually introduced a state of siege! Something very similar happened in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The “march” took place along one street, but dozens of streets and alleys were blocked. And, of course, traffic jams arose, people could neither drive nor pass, some of their business was disrupted, plans were broken, they actually suffered moral, and sometimes, quite possibly, material damage. But what does the March participants have to do with it? What is the need to protect them, calling on the police not even in a 1:1 ratio, but, as in Nizhny - seven people per “dissenter”? Nothing terrible would have happened if these citizens had walked along the streets they wanted, proclaimed their slogans, stated their demands, and in an hour or two everything would have ended peacefully. The vast majority of outsiders wouldn't even notice. At worst, we would have walked around this street, wasting a few minutes. Moreover, such actions and marches always take place on weekends, when there is not such a big crowd on the streets.

But why don’t those citizens who are so annoyed by demonstrations file a lawsuit somewhere about why the hell they should stand in terrible traffic jams during rush hour on a weekday, letting the presidential motorcade pass? This is where I remember about the “sergeant major’s gap.”

So a specific guard receives a command to block such and such a street on the route of the motorcade, conditionally, in five minutes. But he, playing it safe, closes it not in five minutes, but in three. He was ordered to open traffic a minute after Samo passed, but he opens it after a minute and a half. And since there are tons of such guards along the route, and each one adds their own “gap,” you can stand in a traffic jam for God knows how long. So you sue for such a disgrace!

I understand that the president, unlike all of us, is busy with important government affairs. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not find an article anywhere in the Constitution requiring that streets be blocked for the sake of it, forcing us to “stand in traffic jams or walk.” But in this Constitution there is an article guaranteeing us the right to peaceful rallies and marches.

But, so be it, I’m ready to wait for the president while he rushes past me to work. But here’s another wonderful story, which I think I’ve already told, but that doesn’t make it any less wonderful. I'm going to work in the center of Moscow. I see: New Arbat is blocked. In the middle of a working day. From all sides (and there are six different directions). For what, or rather, for whom? And I see a car with a flashing light driving away from the nearest restaurant, driving out onto Arbat, turning where it is forbidden to turn, and going where it needs to go. It was not Putin and, judging by the car, not even one of the top officials. Some deputy, or police chief, or who knows who else. Servant of the people, in short. I ate it and went!

Of course, we lost, by missing it, not an hour or half an hour, but even in these few minutes, thousands of people standing and swearing in this huge traffic jam were humiliated and suffered undoubted moral damage. They were all shown who they are here. So let at least one of this crowd of humiliated people write down the number, identify the owner and sue! So that later you don’t have to stand in traffic jams and walk, experiencing unbearable moral suffering.