Some 100 protesters gathered for an unsanctioned opposition rally in central Moscow on Friday. At 6 PM, hundreds of riot police broke up the rally, detaining 47 people, some of whom were said to be journalists and passerby.
[...] Once again the police have broken up an opposition rally - an unsanctioned one, once again - on Triumfalnaya Square.
[...] At this point, young guys showed up, took out their gas masks with some uncertainty, covered their faces with scarves - they were getting ready, in general. [...] Some of them were quickly detained. [...] Sensing that the show was on, the police, riot police and plainclothes officers started detaining all suspicious-looking young people. [...] They threw everyone on the ground and tried to drag them into the cage. The dissenters resisted desperately.
[...] As usual, though, there were 20 photographers for every dissenter.
[...] At around 6:20 PM they started being rude to photographers. [...]
[...] Via walkie-talkie, they summoned additional help, to push all the reporters inside the metro station. [...] All of us entered the lobby cheerfully. [...] They locked us in. [...] Unfortunately, no one knew what to do with a crowd of journalists inside the metro station, so everyone walked out through the other door.
[...] Then the girls appeared. [...] They were also screaming about freedom of speech and fascists. They were quickly detained.
[...] By the end of this feast, blue [police] shirts significantly outnumbered journalists and the dissenters. [...]
[...] All as usual.
LJ user leosatthinks (RUS) that the Russian opposition is at a dead end:
It's not the first time that the Dissenters' March runs into a solid wall made up of riot police. There is no reason to expect that the regime is going to change its attitude towards the Marches. And why would they, if [their current approach] is efficient? Moreover, the number of protesters is going down and support for them is weakening (it seems to me). [...]
LJ user karimova, who attended the rally, does see certain changes (RUS) - changes for the worse:
I wasn't just chanting today, I was yelling like crazy. When something as wild is taking place right in front of you, it's impossible not to yell. I haven't participated in rallies in a long time, and I didn't expect that this is what it looks like in Russia of 2009. [...] I'm crying as I recall 2005. Most of all, I am shocked by the plainclothes people. [...] Riot police and the cops were chasing people back and forth, like cattle, rude enough. Two young policemen, however, with some special tenderness took me by my arms and pushed aside: "Dear miss, please go away, it's not our fault that you aren't allowed to stand here." In general, I was morally prepared to end up at a police station today. Next time I'll get there, I guess, because I will stand at the square to the end, [damn it], and yell. You're asking what I'm protesting against? Against this unbearable stuffiness, if you know what I mean."
LJ user oleg_kozyrevpinpoints (RUS) what might be considered a change for the better - but ends his post pessimistically, echoing LJ user karimova:
[...] It's good that people in gray [the police] ask photographers to erase their faces more often now - they understand that the internet's memory is long, and who knows, maybe there will be [lustrations] eventually.
The sad news is that 5 people out of the nearly 50 of the detained have been hospitalized [...]. Cruel even for the times of Putin.
- Who are you voting for? - United Russia. - Oh, okay, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to.
In the last sentence of her post, brazzaville may or may not be revealing her voting preference, through what may or may not be an allusion to one of the contenders in this election - Grigory Yavlinsky's Yabloko ("Apple") party:
When it gets unbearably bad, I'll move into my friend-lenta [LJ friends' feed]. There's civil society in here, and freedom of speech, and democracy, and the absolute victory of SPS [Nikita Belykh's Union of Right Forces].
SPS and Yabloko are not expected to get past the 7-percent eligibility threshold in this election.
At the polling station, there's a line for cheap pastries. They are also selling silver and imitation jewelry there.
Observers don't look older than 18.
A woman is making a scene: "Why are you writing me down, you've written my number down and now you'll be able to trace down who I've voted for! I wanted to [vote], but now I'm not going to!"
No one wrote down my number - but I'm not making a secret of it: [I am] for Yabloko.
In a comment, LJ user vladimir_morf writes about who the observers are most likely are:
First- and second-year students. Paid 2,000 rubles [$80]. A bus takes them there and a bus takes them back. Food is included.
I'll vote for SPS, though it's not as easy for me as it was four, eight, 12, or 16 years ago (no matter what [SPS] was called then).
Because this is how I've always done. Because this is where [Anatoly Chubais] is. Because I do not see a better option. Because someone somewhere has completely lost it, and I'd like to drop him a hint.
As for the rest of it:
Lately, there's been one thing that's beginning to frighten me: logic has disappeared from the regime's actions. The logic that I can understand, that is - I disagreed with them on certain things before, but I could always understand their reasoning.
I don't understand why Putin is so scared, why [United Russia] is overreacting like this, why they are strangling SPS, who needs such an exaggerated image of the enemy.
The only possible - though not universal - explanation is that the West and [a collective Sechin], acting spontaneously together, have chased [Putin] into the corner.
I still hope - even though it's getting more and more difficult to have hope - that he'll leave. I'm positive that he wants to leave.
Something along these lines.
LJ user puschaev_y posts this comment to favorov's entry:
Don't you think that he really cannot leave [...] - and one of the reasons is that he needs guarantees that [Mikhail Khodorkovsky] will remain in prison. And he's the only person who can provide such guarantees to himself - and only if he stays, one way or another. Otherwise, he risks switching locations with [Khodorkovsky]. Basically, the year 2008 was predetermined by the year 2003 [the year Khodorkovsky was jailed].
LJ user mcmamusposts a photo of a rather huge United Russia's campaign ad, seen on the election day at Manezh Square in downtown Moscow. LJ user kuteev, in a comment, reports that such ads have not been taken down all over the Russian capital, in violation of the election law.
I text-messaged the family we are helping and asked: "How is it going? Did you go to the polling station?" The head of the family replied: "Yes, we did. I've voted for United Russia, because I'm a member of this party and I'm obliged to."
Damn. They live a half-hungry life, their house is half-ruined, the state is throwing miserable bits their way. They are now re-registering disability status for their boy, and that's why they cannot count on getting pension money in the next few months. If it hadn't been for the volunteers with their humanitarian aid, I can't imagine how they would've survived.
The conditions they live in are nightmarish, a child with oncology should not live in such quarters. In addition to this, they've got a grandmother there who can't get up from her bed, and the toilet, please excuse me, is outdoors. I decided that we should somehow try to get them a new house next year. That we should write to the governor, demand something from the local authorities. I asked one experienced person whether it is true that the officials might respond that since the boy is severely ill and would die sooner or later, they have no reasons to give them a new house. Is it possible that they might respond this way? "Yes, they might." This is how they respond more often than not.
Why are they voting for United Russia? I don't understand this.
It's making me feel utterly discouraged. Volunteers and charity foundations have to mend the holes created by the state, and people who are suffering and need help don't even understand what's going on.
The "Russian March" rally by the Leo Tolstoy monument at Devichye Polye in Moscow. (Photo by LJ user hegtor, taken from the staircase of a 16-storied apartment building nearby. More of hegtor's Nov. 4 photos are here, here, and here.)
A few thousand ultranationalists rallied at Devichye Polye in Moscow Saturday morning. About 1,000 anti-fascist demonstrators counter-rallied at Bolotnaya Square later that day. Both events were heavily guarded by riot police.
Due to the worldwide LJ outage, live blog coverage of the controversial "Russian March" (which took place not just in Moscow but in other Russian cities as well) was scarce. The mainstream media, however, seem to have done even worse. Below is part of a discussion on Russian journalism that took place on the blog of LJ user plushev, a Radio Ekho Moskvy host (RUS):
plushev:
Freedom of Speech
Information blockade of the "Russian March" has been declared on federal TV channels. At least, until the evening news, when they'll tell us how a "provocation by a few nationalists" has failed.
I was watching Vesti-24 channel (at which I'd been lucky [to work]) at 6 pm. The whole newscast - not a word about the marches, only the celebrations all around, and Putin. There was an excellent intro to the video about [the president]: "After laying flowers, Putin answered questions of the cadets." But on the video, it's the cadets who are answering Putin's questions. This isn't the funnest part, though. As they talk about celebrations, they are using a quote from [Moscow mayor Yuri] Luzhkov, who is speaking about possible disturbances, "all those instigators" and "provocations" - and it totally looks like Luzhkov has gone nuts: everyone's celebrating, and he is talking some nonsense.
wombatik: [...] Let's imagine a semi-ideal situation. The ideal would be for you to produce a newscast at an absolutely independent channel, where there is no editorial policy in favor of these or those [political] forces. And you have an event - the "Russian March." Will you include a story about it? It seems as if you have to, since there is the fact of it, which belongs in the informational picture of the day. But how can you do it so that the viewers, after watching the piece about the march, don't come running to join the demonstrators? Should history segments be included? I really can't imagine what to do in a situation like this. What would you do?
plushev: Are you serious? Imagine that a few thousand people took to the streets in London. Doesn't matter what for. In any case - it's an event. I'd like to see a TV company that would decide against showing it.
Me, I'm telling about it at Ekho Moskvy anyway, without editing the information out. Why should TV be any different?
wombatik: What do you mean, am I serious? That I don't know how to present it and under what dressing? The problem is I understand that it is an event. But I wouldn't want to [advertise] the "March." At "my" TV station, this item would be given with some kind of analytical supplement. Like, this is this and that, this is where [the origins] are, and this is what the result of something like this was in certain countries. And would you present it just like it is, the way, say, it's presented on Ekho now?
plushev: Yes, I would present it the way it's presented on Ekho.
The problem is you treat news as PR. You've said it yourself. And you're not the first one who is genuinely surprised: on TV, they're good at beating this attitude into you, I've seen it already. And here are the results: a PR person is always thinking whether to include or not what's considered a news item. A news person, on the other hand, thinks only about whether something is news or not.
I don't understand at all why this issue is raised at all: "to say it in a way that wouldn't [inspire] people to rush to the march." This is not the goal of the news, to think if people will rush there or not. The main thing is to tell about what's going on.
Just imagine that today many people were walking next to a mob of potentially dangerous, unbalanced, aggressive persons. If someone (let's say with the wrong skin color) got injured because, for example, he unknowingly happened at Komsomolskaya [subway station, where the "Russian March" was supposed to begin), those who hadn't told him about the potential danger would share some blame for his sufferings.
There was plenty of inflammatory content at the Moscow rally, and a little bit of actual violence, with at least two cases that involved photojournalists.
I did end up getting punched in the nose. By the fascists. One was just passing by, approached me from behind and did a hook right into the camera while I was shooting. It didn't really hurt, but was disgusting. [...] When there's no one to beat, it seems, they are beating journalists. [...]
[photo omitted: three young demonstrators urinating under a tree]
In part 1, Klimov writes (RUS) about the antifascist counter-rally that he attended as well:
[photo omitted: "Nuremberg is a hero-city."
I've always thought that we don't have fascists. Turns out we don't have anti-fascists. The rally at Bolotnaya Square was a worthless event. Journalists, not understanding the difference between "antifa" and "fa" fighters, attacked the masked teenagers, assuming that they were fascists. But they turned out to be nothing more than a militant group of antifascists, and many were surprised when they began to chant: "Fascism won't come through!" Our anti-fascists are elderly people, liberals and demagogues, but they are being replaced by the generation of antifascists of "direct action," as it has already happened in the West.
Yesterday, at the [well-known disgusting event] some Russian [Cossack] beat up a female photojournalist - because she was photographing him.
When the riot police was seizing the Cossack, he was yelling that the girl attacked him first. A choir of [elderly women] was echoing him. When I interfered with the words "You are lying," the [elderly women] choir switched over to me and diagnosed me right away: "[female Jew]" (!!!) and "prostitute" (!).
Organizers tried to look decent. [Sergei Baburin]'s phrase that "you shouldn't raise your arms in a pseudo-Roman greeting because there are journalists here" characterizes the spirit of the event very well. Baburin didn't say that it's shameful IN GENERAL for a Russian person to do it - he said it shouldn't be done when journalists are around.
Crazy [old women]. My God, it seems as if it was a revelation for them yesterday that the poets who had made a huge contribution to the Russian culture, [Osip Mandelshtam] and [Joseph Brodsky], were ethnic Jews. They refuse to accept it. Just as they refuse to come to terms with a simple thought that all Tatars, Bashkirs, Jews, Chechens, Dagestanis living in Russia - are as Russian as the majority of us, because they speak the same language, read the same literature and obey the same laws. [...]
Anyway, people who gathered at the so-called "Russian March" hate Russia and refuse to accept it the way it is, and instead they are [obsessed with their own genes and genealogy].
I'm sorry that my acquaintances took part in [this], too. I hope they'll change their minds.
And yes. Luckily, the [disgusting] event was a failure, basically. The pathetic 1,000-1,500 of those who showed up, and of them at least a third were journalists and another third were totally sick and mentally unbalanced elderly people. Here's all of your "Russian rebellion."
