Gleb Pavlovsky: "Power passed to the tactics of bullying"

The Investigative Committee continues to promote the case of riots on July 27 - and the police and the Russian Guard make it clear that the next action is ready to disperse again. So far, the case is being conducted, against five people, but this does not mean that new defendants will not appear in it. At the same time, the action on August 3 has not yet been agreed, but a new action is being prepared, on August 10.

Political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky told the correspondent “Polit.ru” Ane Goldman about what is happening and what should be prepared for.

Today, the opposition has no consensus on any issue, they cannot even agree on the day of the next rally - some believe that they need to be released on August 3, while others insist that Saturday can be skipped and prepared on August 10. There is not even a common opinion about where exactly to hold a rally-on Sakharov Avenue, on Lubyanskaya Square, on Kaluga or somewhere else. The lack of a clear position and disagreement will certainly affect the number of people who will go out or will not go outside on Saturday.

The main event now is not opposition demonstrations, but the actions of the authorities. Since last Saturday, we have been observing the demonstrative use of power of power structures, and I think that the power actions of the authorities will continue.

Power tactics always have success, for that it is power. In war, the balance of power is important and you can argue about whose power tactics are more successful. In peacetime, the opposition has nothing to contrast the power tactics of power, except for legal actions, and the authorities block legal actions. It turns out that the authorities are conducting its own demonstrations, and at the moment they look much more convincing than opposition. All the advantage of power is obvious.

In fact, now we do not even have any opposition, there are a certain number of disagreements, but they are extremely scattered, they do not have a single position on any issue. They themselves are very in need of legal protection, they have no clear requirements for power, nor clear proposals for citizens.

It seems to me it is pointless to draw parallels between the current protest performances and the movement of the White Nerders in 2011-2012, when, due to the lack of political leaders, the protests were doomed to failure from the very beginning and went to decline literally after the second rally.

I think that now neither society nor the authorities will be backward. Russia is large, and in addition to Moscow, there are many other points of development of civil initiative, civil resistance and civil self -defense, so the protest movement has a potential for expansion. It is pointless to conduct calculations and try to translate the protest to the Bolotnaya format, when for some reason the organizers endlessly calculated how many people went to the square, and were proud of large numbers, which, in the end, had no political significance.

Now the power defiantly violates the law on elections and the Constitution. It is completely pointless to answer this walks in Moscow, whose participants run the risk of being detained and even spend several years behind bars. Oppositions are now necessary thoughtful and sober awareness of a new level of danger.

Power passed to the tactics of bullying. Civil forces cannot be succumbing to bullying and you can not respond to bullying power, because the power of a priori is stronger - not only paid provocateurs from the SERB nationalist group, but also the Russian Guard play on its side. The authorities also use popular telegram channels that have turned into collective scammers and provoke new arrests and new heavier criminal charges. Even those people who were previously considered liberals are now included in the bullying side of the authorities.

Oppositionists now need to stop taking empty disputes about where the best place for the rally (by the way, such disputes were carried out in 2011, then many prominent figures of the protest movement claimed that a rally on Bolotnaya is humiliating), instead they need to clearly determine the agenda and goals. What exactly are we protesting for? If the goals are not achieved, it is necessary to set new goals. Now the election campaign in the Moscow City Duma is practically disrupted, and instead of responding to this, oppositionists are conducting endless empty disputes.