Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 29 – Natalya
Zubarevich, perhaps Russia’s most prominent specialist on developments in the
regions beyond the ring road, says that today “there are no places where the
situation is “especially critical” because as the wave of protests shows, it
has become “critical” everywhere from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad.
As is almost invariably the case,
most Russian and Western reportage has focused on Sunday’s demonstrations in
Moscow and St. Petersburg. But what makes the current wave of protests new and
important, the director of the Independent Institute for Social Policy says, is
that protests took place across the country (snob.ru/selected/entry/122402).
(To get some idea
of just how widespread the demonstrations were, how many people turned out in
various places and how many of the protesters were detained, see the extremely
useful interactive map at meduza.io/feature/2017/03/27/skolko-lyudey-vyshli-na-ulitsy-26-marta-i-skolko-zaderzhali-karta-protesta.)
Zubarevich argues that the protests
outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg are important not only because they show
the extent to which the arguments opposition figures are making in the capitals
resonate but also because they underscore the entrance into political activity
of new and sometimes very different forces, a trend that challenges officials
at all levels.
“Both Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg,
where many people participated in the protests, are macro-regional centers with
a modernized population that wants the authorities to take their interests into
account,” the regional specialist says. They have always been leaders in such
protests.
But the situation in Makhachkala, the
capital of Daghestan in the North Caucasus, is very different. Although it has nearly a million residents if
one counts its suburbs, Makhachkala is hardly “a major macro-regional center”
or a place with a long history of participating in Moscow-led protests.
“The special quality of that city is
many interest groups operate there,” including ethnic and religious ones; but
they share one thing in common with other Sunday demonstrators: “Over the last several
years, with the arrival of Ramazan Abdulatipov, dialogue between the powers and
the population has collapsed,” with the former preferring to use force to
settle all issues.
Consequently, Zubarevich continues, “if
Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg are simply advanced centers which follow Moscow
and Petersburg, Makhachkala is a painful point where alternative points of view
have been maintained, and the level of pressure is higher than the average
elsewhere in Russia.”
“The estrangement of the powers that
be from the population has reached unthinkable dimensions,” she says; and “the
struggle with corruption has simply become a suitable euphemism” for a much
larger set of problems.
Two other cities at opposite ends of
the Russian Federation – Vladivostok and Kaliningrad – highlight other aspects
of these phenomena. In Vladivostok, the
specialist says, people have greater contact with the outside world and are
thus more inclined to develop critical views about the regime.
Kaliningrad, which one might have
expected to display a similar trend, hasn’t, Zubarevich says. There, people didn’t protest; and that
pattern allows for the following conclusion: “Participation in protests in
Vladivostok is good news, but non-participation in Kaliningrad is bad.”
“It is possible,” she says, “that
the passivity of the Kaliningraders is connected with the fact that in
2011-2012, they took an active part in protests” and then the authorities
responded in a better way: they paid more attention to local needs, they
maintained a dialogue, and that reduced political activism by the population.
All these means that now, “we are in
a very interesting situation: one cannot localize these problems: they are
everywhere.” This is “the first time in
Russian history” that there have been so many protests in so many places about
many of the same issues all on the same day, the Moscow regional specialist
says.
According to Zubareivch, this is not
a reflection of “the good work of Navalny.”
In many places, such as Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, he and his supporters not
that popular. Simply the process has matured, and the time has come. People
have told the powers that be: ‘it isn’t necessary to live on Mars.’”
The current crisis began in 2013 and
has only gained speed and size, more slowly where the authorities have
responded with dialogue and more rapidly where they haven’t. (For an example of
this, see how Kazan’s ban on protests there backfired and made the situation even
more tense (idelreal.org/a/28397619.html).)
From many points of view, the
economic and social decline of the last four years has been even worse in the
regions than in the capital: “On the periphery, people more often get involved in
informal activity because there are no social guarantees and one can lose work
at any moment. All this doesn’t contribute to optimism” about the future.
But now, Zubarevich says, no one can
avoid concluding that “this is a federal problem: the participation of local
officials only slows the decline in some places but more commonly accelerates
it.” And that crates “a very interesting situation: it is impossible to
localize the problems: they are everywhere.”
Moreover, as Sunday’s numerous
demonstrations outside of Moscow show, “in regional centers this crisis is felt
no less than on the periphery. This too distinguishes the current crisis from
all preceding ones.”
Zubarevich does not discuss this,
but geography also helped the Navalny protests in another way: The successful
demonstrations in the Russian Far East hours before they were to begin in
Moscow encouraged people in the capitals to come out, something that will only
intensify if there are more such demos in the future (afterempire.info/2017/03/27/meetings/).
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