Translated material
Marying. New format of a rally in the kitchen near Navalny
The rally in Maryino became a serious test for the Moscow intelligentsia - some first visited this area of the capital. But now they know that it would be more correct to go to Bratislavskaya, and not in Maryino, as many did, including the author, naively believe that the names of the district and metro station should match. There is another logic of the place: there are more distances, and the principles of orientation are different, approximately as in the mountains: just like that, without a map, to understand what is there, behind the next ridge of the same houses, it is impossible. This problem was helped by the police: many simply went to the noise of the helicopter hovering over the rally.
The rally also gave rise to a moral dilemma in the spirit of Dostoevsky: whether I am a creature trembling within a garden ring or beyond. And it turned out that the question of a place is of a fundamental character. This is quite unexpected when it comes to people who have gained experience completely unique for Russia for three years (since December 2011). We survived the year 2012, and swamp, and boulevards, and auto -zaks, and Abay, and folk gatherings on Tverskaya, and protests against the war, overcame the squeamish collective feeling. For them, as a captain from a song, a serious test was not a storm, but a calm: moving from the center of the capital to Maryino, not the most comfortable, but not at all a depressed area of Moscow, where, in the middle class, the middle class bought apartments, earned its first capitalist money.
Participants in the opposition rally "For the replacement of power" in the Maryino area.
ITAR-TASS / Vyacheslav Prokofiev
We remember that the proposal to hold rallies in Maryin was heard for the first time in the winter of 2015: then, in early March, this did not happen because the rally turned into a mourning procession of Boris Nemtsov’s memory near the Moskvoretsky bridge. But on the eve of his death, the word “humiliation” was the key in this strange dispute: “it is humiliating to rally in Maryin.” This word, as we know, is the key to the discourse of the authorities - especially in the last one and a half years. Thus confirms the assumption that power and opposition are made of one human material. The discussion about whether it is humiliating to rally in Maryin, - this time resumed this time, in the same expressions and with the same force, although it seems to be a humiliating one already enough: for example, the removal of opposition candidates from the elections.
Moscow snobbery, along with love for comfort - Achilles's heel of political protest
At first, the authorities were sure that protests were such a flash mob of the Moscow Center, which "was furious from fat." But the composition of the protesters over three years has changed a lot and ceased to be the privilege of any one social group. Now this union is not hipsters with restaurateurs, but democratic grandmothers with the lower border of the middle class. The authorities know about this, but continues to pretend that nothing has changed. And Maryino was proposed precisely in order to emphasize the social narrowness of protest: let the Golden Ring feel its insignificance against the background of “folk life”. Given the fact that Navalny lives in Maryin, it turned out: want to walk, well, go there “with your Navalny”.
The authorities, of course, were used by Moscow snobbery, which, together with love for comfort - Achilles's heel of political protest.
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