Russia’s hot winter

Washington Post: Protests in Moscow, December 2011

Russian activists promise to shake things up again in the country with a new march this Saturday, February 4^th, to demand honest elections in a month, when Vladimir Putin will probably win the Presidency back. It will be a continuation of the wave of protests that occurred in Russia at the end of last year, when parliamentary elections were deemed less than free and fair. The uprising, if we may call it that way, has been compared to the Arab Spring and even to the American civil rights movement.

To me, it sounds a bit exaggerated. First, because results are not likely to be as dramatic. And second, because the goals are different.

On the optimists side, Leon Aron, from the conservative group American Enterprise Institute, says that the movement is more than a political wave. According to him, what is happening in Russia is a “moral awakening akin to the American civil rights movement”. “[Activists share] a profound sense that lasting liberalization of their homeland would come about only through the realization of a mature, self-aware civil society able and willing to control the executive branch.”

That shared sentiment has come not from a specific desire to form an opposition or get involved in politics. What happened, Aron explains, was that it became inevitable to deal with the government -and almost certainly to get in trouble with the Kremlin- if one was against anything that is part of the status quo, be it transportation taxes or the cutting of trees. Suddenly modest objectors got themselves elevated to civil society leaders.

In common with the American counterpart, in theory, the Russians have as an “ultimate goal dignity and equality before the law”. “And just like the leaders of the civil rights movement, Russia’s activists seek to effect vast political and social change by personal and deeply moral effort fueled from within” to achieve their goals, affirms Aron.

I’m not sure, however, if the comparison stands. Maybe the Russians want an awakening of civil society, but they are not protesting against the social building of the country. They basically want the system to work better, with less corruption, and to get Putin out. They do not plan to extinguish the current system and build another one with a different social structure. In that, I think it is fundamentally different than the American civil rights movement.

For similar reasons, I think comparing it to the Arab Spring is a bit too much. The Arab Spring did not succeed in revolutionizing every political system – look at Egypt right now, with the military still in charge – but it tried. It was not about replacing one person or improving the political machinery, but about tearing something down and building something else in its place.

The goals stated by the activists in charge of organizing the February 4th event are much more simple: annulling the parliamentary elections and preventing Putin from winning again.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies assesses that “those who expect Russia to follow the path of Arab revolutions are likely to be disappointed”.
“The protests may herald a period of greater instability, but they are unlikely to prevent Putin’s return to the presidency in March 2012 or to substantially transform Russia’s political regime, which is democratic in form but authoritarian in essence. The most that the protesters could realistically achieve is to impose greater accountability on Russia’s political elite.”

The institute argues that while protesters want the end of the “Putin regime” and demand new laws and new elections, they do not have a “common vision of what should replace it”.

In any event, this weekend’s march will be a test to see how much the Russian society still is mobilized. If the opposition continues to bring dozens of thousands of people to the streets in temperatures of about 20 F, then I guess Putin should trust they can do almost anything.