Let's destroy this prison

The outgoing year began with euphoria, and ends with depression. Both - without sufficient grounds

April 2012: Poet and Left Civil activist Kirill Medvedev sings in the car carrier "And the walls will collapse ..."

Hopes and illusions

After the success of mass rallies at the end of the last year and Medvedev’s political reform, neophytes from the opposition for some reason decided that if not today, then tomorrow, in the coming months, Vladimir Putin will announce the re-election of the State Duma, which in turn will appoint new presidential ones. The victory over the regime seemed to be at the distance of an outstretched arm, another hundred or two of the white ribbons, a dozen or two creative posters, and the Kremlin will fall to his knees, there would only be the power to pick up.

However, some reasons for illusions were. The exit to the people of the people who have been held, including the long-term Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin and the TV presenter, who personified the success of 12 well-fed Putin years, Ksenia Sobchak, as well as owners of medium, large and very large companies with billions of dollars, testified: the elite of the split, part of it, which did not have a direct “access to the body” Either Medvedev’s rewriting for a second term of Medvedev was too active, she was tired of waiting and being afraid when people will come in uniform and take the business. Moreover, the prospect of living, while still in quite reproductive age, somewhere in London or Prague was by no means a radiant: there is no language, the reputation of the “Russian business” does not open the door, but it closes, and not everyone can go to the “Chelsea”.

War

The authorities answered the well -known slogan “You can’t even imagine us”: do not laugh, we very much imagine, thank God, the experience of the KGB and its ideological counterintelligence from the Chekist clan is known firsthand. On February 4, the Kremlin brought to the bow-exactly to where, according to legend, Napoleon was handed over the keys to the city 200 years ago-the “aggressive-auditory majority” (read more on page 34). Historical hints were read at a time: and now, after we send Medvedev to the White House, we will drive you for the hill, as Russian weapons once drove the French.

In short, Putin and his clan declared an active society a war. The current head of state made a statement about this personally - on the day of the glory of Soviet weapons, on February 23 at the Luzhniki stadium: “Freeze under Moscow, how our brothers died!” (p. 38).

I did not have to die. Several battalions of riot police, accelerated by swamp (p. 52), stripping on Moscow Boulevards on May 8 and 9 (p. 56), a short -term thaw called "Okopayabai" (p. 58) and suddenly awakened Astrakhan. Further, the Duma, who earned in the “furious printer” mode, 19 defendants in the case “On Massions”, of which 12 are sitting, followed by the conspiracy of the left and Georgians-“Anatomy of Protest-2” (whose detailed knowledge was demonstrated at a press conference on December 20), two more in bars in different cities-so searches and arrests became a symbol of the arrests and arrests became a symbol. outgoing 2012. This is all our “chronicle of current events”, the form of which The New Times borrowed from the experience of dissident times. True, then the “chronicle” was sent to prison and a link.

"

Putin and his clan declared an active society a war. The current head of state made a statement about this personally - on the day of the glory of Soviet weapons, on February 23 at the Luzhniki stadium

"In the interval, it was the case of the Pussy Riot punk group (p. 77), which promoters from the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church successfully brought to the top list of world brands. And all year-a frenzied anti-American rhetoric, from the accusation of the State Department of the opposition, to the last" antimagnitic law "that prohibited the adoption of patients with Russian Russian (sic!) Children of US citizens-forced to recall the end of the 1970s, when Soviet troops entered Afghanistan, and the Western powers declared a boycott of the 1980 Olympics.

Suddenly it became quite obvious: Putin and his brothers in Lubyanka, who readily accepted market reforms and the accompanying wealth and comfort, mentally remained in the Brezhnev-Andropov times, where everyone who is against are “hires of imperialism”, the USA-a probable adversary, who, if it cannot be caught up and overtaken, should be more painful and really love Russia is only those who are with a party party (ruling party) in a pocket. But the story, as you know, is used to repeat in the form of a farce: the children of Brezhnev and Andropov today live in the USA today, and those who were in their fathers who were chasing dissidents, or stole technological secrets in the West, today are most afraid that they will be ordered exactly to the west and will be ordered. Hence such a reaction to the Magnitsky act, which allows you to block accounts and avuars not only for the Atlantic - throughout Europe.

This schizophrenia in the heads of the current Russian government is that light at the end of the tunnel, which the opposition dreamed last December.

However, “our madhouse votes for Putin” - this is only one component equation in the answer to X: when will this come to an end?

Bolotnaya, December 10, 2011

Citizens

Despite the fact that street protests practically came to naught for the simple reason that the winter was not stormed (even Eduard Limonov preferred a regular column in the “Izvestia” gravitating column to this), civil society responded to repressions (however, still quite vegetarian), as it had never responded, at all 12 years.

For searches and arrests - “Rosusznik”, “Ovdinfo” and “Agora”. For corruption, indifference and plague feasts of power - the creation of dozens of groups, funds, committees engaged in help from those who have nowhere to wait for help (about how it was in Krymsk - on page 72): social networks are full of messages about the collection of money, gifts, any other assistance to orphanages, patients, old people, those who are already sitting or who are just threatening. Actress and TV presenter Tatyana Lazareva, top model Natalya Vodianova, owner of the clubs Varvara Turova (protection of innocently accused of pedophilia), journalists Irina Vorobyeva (Lisa-Alert), Mitya Aleshkovsky (Krymsk and Dunno) and hundreds of others-after work and often began to replace the corrupt corruption with their own money with their own money. And the rotten institute of the Russian state. In political science, this is called the creation of horizontal connections necessary for social capital to form. And again, as a year ago, when tens of thousands suddenly went to Bolotnaya, it became clear that all the moans and sobs about the “bad” (or “unproductive”, “imperial”, “anti -democratic” - choose what more like) Russian political culture, supposedly organically incapable of self -regulation and self -government and infinitely incorporating tsarist (dictatorial, fatherly) - all this - all this - all this No more than a historical background, excusing conformism. Well, yes, our story is not very good. In Germany - better, and in the same XX century? In fact, as the political theory predicts, people first want a piece of bread and safety, then bread with butter and safety, and when they also have a piece of cheese, coupled not 24/7, but at least five to six days a week, they have thoughts that freedom is given to a person by birth, this is his natural law, and slavery is somehow disgusting, somehow not the author It is elected and re-elected by those who pays with their taxes that stability is good until it turns into stagnation, and that if it is impossible to declare all this at the selective area-yes, you need to go to the square or at least stop waiting for something from this power and ask for something. The ability to demand will come when many will understand that it is useless to wait for security in the city captured by bandits.

"

The ability to demand will come when many will understand that waiting for security in the city captured by bandits is useless

“Finally, maybe the best thing that happened to us this year is the election to the coordination council of the opposition, in which more than 80 thousand people took part. 45 elected members represent almost the entire polyphony of Russian unofficial policy: from left -wing to liberals, from centrists to radicals and nationalists. Those who were ready to cut each other in street skirmishes (antifa and nationalists), who are used to those who were used to To talk exclusively in the stylistics of mutual accusations and denunciations (and these habits are difficult to get sting), they were able to sit down at one table-moreover, to develop some joint solutions. Umbrella movements are a necessary condition for the collapse of the authoritarian walls.

"And if you press your shoulder"

And the fact that “the walls will collapse, collapse, collapse” or, more precisely, they can collapse into any unexpected moment for the authorities and society, we were again convinced in the last weeks of December. The “anti -magnetic law” completely unexpectedly caused mass rejection - albeit only in Moscow. At what speed, the active part of the society, it would seem, was “blurred” out of the blue (how many were the monstrous documents have been accepted lately?) And how much Putin and his Kremlin were not ready for that, it was noticeable not only for reactions on social networks. Within 36 hours, the New Gazeta collected 100 thousand signatures against - about the same amount of Sakharov Avenue on December 24, 2011. The country learned about this thanks to the direct broadcast of state television channels broadcasting the press conference of Vladimir Putin. "Are you a sadomasochist?" - asked the furious Putin of the journalist Alexander Kolesnichenko, who was the first to ask a question about the "cannibalist", as he put it, the law. And it became obvious: Putin did not understand anything.

In this last year, the large issue of The New Times, we tried to talk about the main, as it seems to us, the events of this year. Be happy, Happy New Year!

Photos: YouTube screenshot, LJ Erast Galumova