Is the Kremlin really afraid of protests? And if people come out even more, will something change? We speak with the researcher of authoritarianism Margarita Zavadskaya

On February 2, Alexei Navalny was replaced by a conditional term with the real in the case of Yves Rocher. He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Given the time of house arrest, the politician will spend two years and eight months in the colony.

The comrade -in -arms of the policy Leonid Volkov after the sentence said that the Fund for the fight against corruption ( recognized as a foreign agent, we indicate this at the request of the authorities ) and the headquarters of Navalny in the regions will continue their work. Volkov also said that Navalny's associates initiate new rallies and processions and will increase pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin (both within the country and from abroad).

In support of Navalny, in dozens of Russian cities, two episodes of inconsistent shares were held - January 23 and 31. After the verdict on February 2, spontaneous processions were held in Moscow and St. Petersburg. According to the results of three performances, almost 11 thousand people were detained; In the capital's ATS and special receivers there are not enough space for all detainees.

The administrator of the telegram channel “Protest MSU” Dmitry Ivanov published a photograph-how the convicts in the special cost in the village of Sakharovo Moscow Region were forced to spend the night. There 28 people were placed in the cell for eight seats. Among them was the editor -in -chief of Mediazons Sergey Smirnov - hewas arrested for the retweet jokes, in which they saw the call to reach the action on January 23.

In previous episodes of the podcast “What happened”, we discussed why the rallies who passed in the beginning of 2021 gathered a record number of people in the regions, why the police act as cruelly as they treat the detainees in police departments.

Today we are talking with a political scientist, a researcher at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the European University of St. Petersburg, Margarita Zavadskaya:

• Can street actions lead to the democratization of the Russian regime or at least weaken political control over society?
• What is the state of Russian authoritarianism?
• If you reconstruct the logic of Navalny - what could he count on when he decided to return to Moscow from Berlin?

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From February 1, social networks under the law are obliged to delete users' posts in which there are obscene expressions. We recall the episode of the podcast “Medusa” about the Russian language “Rosental and Guildensterns” about the Russian mat . How did the mat appear? When was he forbidden? How much is really in Russian obscene words? The presenters Alexander Sadikov and Vladimir Pakhomov were able to record this issue without using a single curses!

Presenter - Vladislav Gorin

Editor - Natalia Kondrashova

Installation - Dmitry Bodrov

Music - Victor Davydov