Paris 1968, Moscow 2012

Paris of 1968, Moscow 2012-both there and there, protesting youth went out into the streets and remained on them-in May. The spontaneous folk festivities, which started on the day of the inauguration of Vladimir Putin, turned into a weekly standing opposition at the monument to Abay Kunanbaeva in pure ponds, continued on Kudrinskaya Square and were supposed to end the “Summer of Freedom” on Tver Boulevard. The New Times Correspondents walked along with angry townspeople

"You will litter, scream here, still to sing under the guitar!" - On the morning of May 16, one of the inhabitants of the Stalinist high -rise near the Barrikadnaya metro station was indignant when, in the morning, leaving the house for a walk with a dog, he found an opposition spontaneous camp under his windows. “And what kind of entrance are you from? Show the passport, ”the neighbor retorted at the same high -rise. “I have lived here all my life, I have never seen you, and I have nothing against these guys.” “I am disturbed by buzzing cars, motorcyclists, and these do not bother me,” Tatyana Evgenievna, a resident of the same house, shared with The New Times.
On May 17, the camp could move for the second time in a week. The Presnensky municipal assembly was sitting to legalize the spontaneous camp of the opposition: 11 opposition deputies out of 15 proposed to declare festivities to the Freedom Summer - from May 17 to September 1, 2012. “For the holiday“ Summer of Freedom ”, the territory of Tver Boulevard is allocated from the Square of the Nikitsky Gate to the monument to Sergey Yesenin, on which, as part of the holiday, round -the -clock access of guests and participants in the holiday, the installation of non -capital buildings (tents, tents), field kitchen and dry closets are allowed. Discussions, debate, concerts, demonstration of films are allowed, ”the draft decision said. The party of power, however, in the end, tore the meeting: acting The chairman of the meeting Elena Denisova stated that she became ill, and left, the deputy from the Communist Party of Roman Klementyev on the way to the meeting was detained by the police and sent to the military enlistment office - as a result, the quorum did not gather and the meeting ended unsuccessfully. The opposition, the second day standing by that time on Kudrinskaya Square, this, however, was not embarrassed - they did not plan to move to another place of their own free will.

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Scheme of the "good camp" on pure ponds

"Leaders are not needed"
On Kudrinskaya Square, the opposition were, after exposure to the riot police of their camp at the monument to the Kazakh enlightener Abay Kunanbaev in pure ponds. For a week by that time Sergey Udaltsov and Alexei Navalny had served his terms, and Ilya Yashin, who was considered the commandant of the camp at Abay, was detained by riot police during the clashes on Barrikadnaya - the next day the Presnensky court sentenced him to ten days of arrest for the resistance to police officers. OMON attacked the gathered under the pretext of the lack of a license for the distribution of food.
"The police demand that we do not go to the lawn!" - Civil activist Alena Popova shouted from a small parapet. The phrases surrounded by the chorus - such an open microphone, when sound -integrating equipment on stocks is prohibited and activists themselves fulfill this role so that the words of the speaker are heard by everyone, earned from the first days of festivities around the city. “They demand that we do not break the field kitchen here and do not sleep on benches.” If we fulfill these requirements, they agree to release all the detainees. Agree? " Most raised their hands, but someone shouted: "Listen to the lock!" - And, pushing the neighbors, began to make his way to the improvised rostrum.
In the very first days of work of the camp on pure ponds, there was a government authority - an assembly. People just gathered in a circle, took turns listening to the speakers and voted on one or another issues. When Avtosak with Ilya Yashin left Kudrinskaya Square, State Duma deputy Dmitry Gudkov invited the audience to choose a new protest coordinator on the spot. “And we do not need coordinators, we have no leaders here,” they answered him. The deputy was noticeably confused: "And who will negotiate, contact the press, coordinate the position?" “The format of the Assembly is the most interesting in this protest,” Maxim S. is sure, leading one of the assemblies. “It turned out that decisions can be made without leaders and moderators, without a hard hand, vertical and all Seliger commissars - this should be scaled in the future throughout Russia.”
The same picture could be observed the day before on pure ponds, when the news came from the Basmanny court that the court decided to disperse the camp. Protest leaders - deputies of Ponomarev, Gudkov and commandant of the camp Yashin - after conferring, decided to lead people to the area of ​​the revolution, where the picket of Just Russia, which was announced in advance, was to be held. But the assembly voted to stay on pure ponds until riot police and the first detentions. Neither famous politicians nor the nameless activist, who, as the last argument for transferring the camp to another place, produced by Abay Kunanbayev: “Pug the herd to the new place, as the last argument to the new place. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have to sleep. ” As a result, the leaders left alone on the Revolution Square.
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State Duma deputy Dmitry Gudkov invited the audience to choose a new protest coordinator on the spot. “And we do not need coordinators, we have no leaders here,” they answered him

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The “Good Camp” collected his things and went to a new place of deployment - Kudrinskaya Square. Not without detention that continued on the barric

Portrait of the inhabitants
On May 11, sociologist Olga Krystanovskaya and colleagues interviewed in the camp on pure ponds more than 100 of its inhabitants, compiling a portrait of protesters. The average age of protesters is 31 years, 65.8% have higher education, and 10.1% are two or more higher education. There were about 35% in pure ponds, 45% - specialists: programmers, translators, lawyers, managers, banking employees, scientists and university teachers. “People who have come to protest promotions are hyper -discharge. They satisfy their need for communication on social networks. But when there was an opportunity to communicate in real life - it was instantly implemented, ”says Krystanovskaya. - They crave “smart conversations”, want to discuss every step of the authorities, every bill, and international politics. For such people #Occupyabay - a sip of fresh air, a holiday of communication. " An important difference between this protest and those that happened in Moscow five to six years ago: then a narrow circle of people familiar with each other came out in the square. Absolutely unfamiliar people came to the monument to Kunanbaev, who, if they suspected each other's existence, then exclusively thanks to Twitter and Facebook. “Such a community does not need physical leaders like a traditional party,” sociologists concluded. -Such communities are difficult to destroy. They instantly turn off, disappearing from the streets and turning into a network cloud with obscure boundaries. Some protest organizers are anonymous and interchangeable, and therefore invulnerable. ” The core of the camp-approximately 40%-participants in the rallies "For honest elections" in December-February. At the same time, the core is growing rapidly - up to 30% of the participants in the mobile Maidan joined the protest movement in the last month. Another 15% noted that they suffered during rallies at the hands of law enforcement officers, but contrary to the common opinion that after one acceleration, people are afraid to go further out into the street, not only ready to protest further, but also became more radical.
“The main thing that struck me: before you come to the action and see all familiar faces, but here in the first minutes I was surprised that I don’t know anyone. This is a real breakthrough, ”Kirill agrees with sociologists, 28 years old, a PR manager of one of the breweries.
Another important feature of the mobile Maidan: the people who gathered in it, for the most part, do not know and do not remember the Soviet repressive car and they speak very calmly about the possible dispersal or entering the police, as about something that is reasonable and not terrible. A student of the Faculty of Media Communications GU HSE Gulya told The New Times: “For the first time I went to the rally in December, to Bolotnaya Square. At the same time, my parents react to my protest performances extremely negatively. In disputes, they admit that Putin is in many ways right, but they still vote for him - this infuriates me. ”
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The district police officer noted that in a week of camps on clean -up boulevard it became not only clean, but also decreased crime rate

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Barric. Activists on the asphalt wrote the law "On the Police" and asked not to trample it

Open to everyone
After the decision of the Basmanny Court on the acceleration of the camp, the police promised the audience not to touch them until 12 am the next day, but the dispersal happened at dawn. The result - much more radical people have already come to the barricade. They were ready to take buses with detainees in a ring, not let them leave and even pierce their tires. On December 4, these people intuitively felt that the authorities were deceiving them, and went to Bolotnaya Square, and now they encountered direct deception. So, the protest, the radicalization of which was spoke after clashes on Bolotnaya Square on May 6, will only be radical to further. At the same time, not a single serious conflict was recorded in the camp at the monument to Abai. When the protesters were driven into another place, the district police officer even noticed that in a week of camps on Chistoprudny Boulevard it became not only clean, but also decreased crime. The safety of what was happening was observed by tightly knocked down hut -headed nationalists, hiding their faces behind masks. “Do you have a desire to expel drunk and homeless, apply power to them? I don’t have it, but they are ready to do such a dirty job, ”said the New Times, one of the inhabitants of the camp. “I am in the camp for the fifth day, at first we just came to participate, and now we are engaged in safety. People here have things, products, technology - we are all guarding this, ”one of the nationalists who introduced himself to Dmitry confirmed in a conversation with The New Times. - The main problem is that a large number of provocateurs come here: “ours” or just drunk, who are trying to denigrate everything, show that everyone is thumping and dirty here. But I really like that there are a lot of different people here, many are just hanging out, someone is engaged in something special here. ”
Philologist Alexei did not see anything terrible in the presence of nationalists: “The Assembly decided that the propaganda of interethnic growth was prohibited in the camp, and they comply with this condition. And the main value of the camp is that it is open to everyone who is ready to play by the rules. ”
By the time of signing the number, the festivities lasted the third day on Kudrinskaya Square. The police, having decided to take the protesters with a rim, was a nightly arranged raids on a new camp, forbidding to distribute food and go to the lawns. The camp of Abay remained in the past, although it would go down in the history of the protest movement as the longest rally of protest over the past decade, which has also passed in the atmosphere of goodwill and tranquility, which surprised many.
But which the boulevard will continue to turn the protest movement and how the protest is evolved by the end of even next week - it will not be decided to say, probably, not one of the leaders of protest. If only such protests are still available.