Ben Judah - Fragile Empire - How Russia Fell in and Out of Love With Vladimir Putin

Their guys mostly came from the industrial towns around Moscow and in the Urals, gang-like brotherhoods that held ‘study sessions’ with Marxist thinkers and staged rallies, where they rattled chains at policemen, started fights and on the ground were indistinguishable from the KRPF youth, whom in Ekaterinburg I found completely out of control and dreaming of the day Udaltsov would seize the party – ‘So we can smash OMON!’ Their policies included shutting down the stock exchange and their banners read ‘1991 – Never Again.’ This was their protest too.

The Romanov flag was flying, the shouts of ‘Russians, onwards’ as they marched holding it before them, waving it above them, announced the nationalists. These were men shouting ‘Russia for Russians’, young men whose fathers could have been tempted into voting for Zhirinovsky the populist – ‘because he tells the truth’. These were men led by the likes of Vladimir Tor, who believes all illegal immigrants should be deported, that Chechnya should lose its autonomy and be subject to direct rule and that the ‘Russian state should work for the Russian ethnos’. As he told me all of this he snapped – ‘I love the mosaics of Samarkand, but in Samarkand… we cannot have these 15 million migrants in the country that belongs to my children. I love my children!’ Those shouting ‘Russia, Russia’ on the square were those that Putin could no longer fool with patriotic tough-talk: for all his nationalist posturing, it was hard to argue with Tor when he said, ‘this clique rules not in the interest of Russians, but in its own interests’ or that ‘they have done nothing to stop this tidal wave of Muslim immigrants, because we don’t even have a visa regime with Central Asia.’

That day there were protests of over a thousand people in St Petersburg, Perm, Samara, Kazan, Ekaterinburg and Novosibirsk – but Moscow to Russia is like Paris to France, and this was the only protest that mattered. From the back of the stage, watching as first Boris Nemtsov spoke and was booed, waiting for his turn to speak Navalny could have been forgiven for feeling vindicated – the idea he had tried and failed with NAROD – was coming together right in front of his eyes. There was indeed a huge constituency out there against Putin, but it was heavily made up of nationalist and leftists that the democrats needed to compromise and unite with. Only 60 per cent of the protesters considered themselves ‘liberal’. 31These were the slogans on Sakharova that day:

‘Down with the party of crooks and thieves’.

‘Don’t forgive, don’t forget’.

‘Russia has no future’.

‘Russia will be free’.

‘All for one, one for all’.

‘Putin – Thief!’

There was no euphoria in this crowd, but a serious sentiment, mixed with concerns and resignations. It was then that Navalny came to the stage. His performance, mesmerizing and at times shrieking, for a moment held the crowd. Everyone but him had been booed by some of those present. This was the moment he became beyond doubt, the opposition’s pre-eminent leader. But on stage Navalny himself was in a huge panic. ‘I climbed onto the stage and I… it was really cool actually, there were so many people, I had never seen so many people in my whole life. And then as I grabbed the microphone I realized that I had forgotten everything I was going to say… there were no words there…’ He sighs and looks at his shoes. ‘Out came these strange words’:

‘I read a thin little book. It’s called the Constitution of the Russian Federation . And it is clear that the only source of power is the people of Russia. So that is why I do not want to listen to people who say we should now appeal to the government. Who is power? We are the power here.’ 32

Navalny, pulling himself back slightly, moves into a softer cadence before shouting out:

‘Do we want their blue-bucket lights on our cars? Do we want their privileges? Do we want to drink oil? I see enough people to take the Kremlin and the White House right now. But we are peaceful people – we do not do this. But if these crooks and thieves continue to deceive us, continue to lie and steal from us, we will take back what is rightly ours.’ 33

As Navalny spoke, 100,000 people wondered if they were watching a revolution in Russia and asked themselves, their breath turning to a vapour in the cold air, if Putin’s career could be measured in years or months. But with the right pair of eyes, looking over the crowds and the Romanov flags, to Navalny clutching the microphone with bulging pupils, you could see his speech was the point where the wave broke and began to roll back. It hit a wall inside Russians minds, because this is still a cautious country. The meaning of Sakharova was not revolutionary – because most Russians did not want a revolution, they wanted change but not at any price. The protests reflected both how much Russia had changed under Putinism but also how it was still a scarred country, not at ease with itself. After the rally Navalny clicked play on the video: ‘Afterwards I watched that speech online and I thought… “Oh my God what a bullshit.”’

Three days later Vladislav Surkov found himself demoted. ‘Stabilization had devoured its children,’ he snarled on the radio, before letting out a sudden laugh. ‘I am too odious for this brave new world.’ 34Surkov was reassigned to a ministerial portfolio. ‘We are already in the future,’ he remarked, ‘and the future is not calm.’ He said he would no longer play domestic politics. Out amongst the protesters his new brief as minister for modernization projects was mockingly referred to as the ‘minister for nothing’.

Cutting the cords from the puppet master was not the end of the show. It set the stage for a huge and hateful firework display of political ventriloquism to keep Putin in power and jump the hurdle of the March 2012 presidential election. The first act was designed to distract the opposition and give the illusion of concessions to those out on the streets. The lead role was taken by Dmitry Medvedev who, in tones of concern and aghast expressions, proposed a package of reforms that at first glance appeared to be concessions: the return of gubernatorial elections, easing party registration, meetings with senior editors and selected protest leaders. But not Navalny. Medvedev began parroting protest slogans and encouraging his subordinates to do the same. At first these declarations were greeted excitedly, until it transpired that a ‘presidential filter’ would apply to gubernatorial elections and the eased party registration had seen a rush of obvious Kremlin clones like the Party of Beer Lovers.

This was a distracting flare from the main propaganda effort; the main stage would be the most emotive high point in Moscow, the Poklonnaya Hill. The name means loosely ‘the kneeling hill’, the place of submission, where Napoleon had waited in vain after the battle of Borodino for the Kremlin keys to be handed to him. It is today home to the gigantic dome of the victory park, the memorial to the 1941–5 war, the site of the eternal flame and the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It is not a place to desecrate, this is a place emotively visited by that now frail generation in their final years.

Here the ‘anti-Orange’ protest took place. To demonstrate to those in the swamp that whatever they could muster, they could muster more, an estimated 125,000 people were brought to Poklonnaya on 4 February 2012. From a stage emblazoned with the slogans ‘Meeting of Patriotic Strength’, and ‘Russia Forever’, the crowd was told that the opposition would hand the keys of Russia’s nuclear weapons to the United States. The agitators bellowed and frothed at the mouth. The speakers of the ‘anti-Orange committee’ tried to scratch every Russian scar in the crowd until it drew blood. The ‘Anti-Orange Appeal’ announced: