Translated material
Navalny as an effective manager?
Today, when dozens of people are still in the police areas, the Investigative Committee feverishly falsifies new criminal cases, and Alexei Navalny himself is preparing to spend the next month in prison, criticism seems inconvenient and inappropriate. However, this inconvenience is not only moral in nature: any critical remark risks raising his author into the swamp of doubts, resentments and speculation, in which sincere critics quickly become indistinguishable from pessimistic and cynical comments of endless Kremlin “experts”. Therefore, I will say right away - I was on Tverskaya and I do not regret it at all. However, it seems to me that right now, in this turning point for the protest movement, an honest public conversation about his strategy is needed.
When, on the night of June 12, Alexei Navalny announced a radical change in the format of the upcoming action, his supporters could only take his word for him. It is significant that no one even discussed the argument of “sound amplification” on Sakharov Avenue, by default it was clear: this is a political move, the purpose of which is an increase in a degree of protest. Navalny leads the power dialogue with the authorities in which the authorized rally - with any quality of soundaging - does not matter. In order to force the Kremlin to change the approved scenario of the presidential election in March next year, it is necessary to go at risk and constantly increase pressure. Only crossing the boundaries of the permitted, you can force yourself to hear and at least somehow extend these boundaries themselves. However, the problem is how much, entering into a similar dialogue with the authorities, Navalny remains ready for dialogue with people who go out into the streets.
Just like in December 2011 the slogan "For honest elections!" He became a point that accumulated discontent spilled in society, today the presidential campaign of Navalny (in the form of rallies against corruption) has become a catalyst for protest. And as well as “honest elections” six years ago, the actual agenda of the protesters is much wider than the presence of Navalny’s name in the ballot ballot or the more “answers” by Medvedev to the question of the origin of his cottage. This real agenda - the growth of poverty, the opacity and cruelty of the state, the endless new requisitions and reduction of the social sphere - will bring more and more people to the protests who cannot be unequivocally recorded in the supporters of Navalny. These are not only people of different views and age, but also participants in existing social movements. And, for example, for activists of initiative groups against renovation, the format of the permitted rally, at which they can establish connections and talk to each other, is much more useful than clashes with the police. The “battle of good and neutrality” does not occur in the void, where only ruthless power and fearless leader of the opposition exist, but in society, at least a smaller part of which has the traditions of self -organization.
The paradox of today's protest is that, being a meaningfully wide coalition, it has the shape of a vertically organized election campaign. This is a “political machine”, which is more like a commercial corporation than to a political party, where there are at least formal mechanisms for monitoring ordinary members for leadership actions. Everyone has their own, strictly defined, a section of work: experts offer solutions, professionals make them public, but the public can just follow them. The only iron justification of such a model is its effectiveness: the protest wave is growing, its geography is constantly expanding, and it becomes more and more difficult to silence it. This logic of management also determines the political content of the Navalny campaign: the effective young team of professionals challenges the slurred, thieving party in power, which would inevitably lose in fair competition. Just as the right to single-handedly determine the format of the next protest has already been won by Navalny in a competitive competition among the opposition, most of which could not get to the finish line: someone sat down, someone did not have enough resources, someone had patience and qualifications.
It is already easy to notice how the logic of expanding movement itself enters the semantic contradiction with this success and efficiency that impregnes the campaign of Navalny. The future protest does not depend on the capital's “creative class”, but on the unemployed provincial youth, who are losing in the salary of state employees, ruined small businesses, poor pensioners and angry citizens. In general, from everyone who feels like a loser in this system (which, by the way, is also not averse to talking about effectiveness and competition - for example, conducting abbreviations in hospitals and schools). So, it was in the regional centers on shares on June 12 that the numerical growth was clearly visible, while in Moscow and in St. Petersburg it remained approximately at the level of March 26 (if not reduced).
In order to reflect this evolution of movement in the future, Navalny’s campaign will be forced to change rhetoric and form in one way or another. If in the field of rhetoric the emphasis is already transferred from corrupt officials to oligarchs, from opaque state corporations to the inaccessibility of education and medicine, then the form of “effective management” can be revised only under pressure from below, by manifesting consciousness and self -organization of the ordinary protest participants themselves. After the events of June 12, even the most devoted supporters of Navalny should think: will his campaign become weaker, if it opens up the space for internal criticism, will make it possible for a horizontal discussion of the program and strategy and will turn from the “political machine”, controlled by the few, into a real coalition, where the differences do not interfere, but help to agree on common purposes?