Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 19 – In yet another
indication that enthusiasm for “Crimea is Ours” may be far less than many
think, Moscow backers – likely officials --paid many of those who did take part
in demonstrations yesterday up to 400 rubles (about seven US dollars) to do so,
a far from trivial amount in a country where monthly Internet connectivity costs
about that much.
(For background, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/03/russian-enthusiasm-for-crimea-is-ours.html
and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/03/five-signs-of-less-than-universal.html
and the comments of Russian sociologists on the declining significance of “Crimea
is Ours” among Russians at kommersant.ru/doc/3242517.)
Earlier Russian officials had
ordered universities and government firms to dispatch to the jubilee
celebrations specific quotas of people from their staffs, students and
employees. But to ensure that the demos were large enough, RBC reports,
officials organized a system of paying people to show up (rbc.ru/politics/18/03/2017/58cd73f89a79477e0a94fb34?utm_source=main).
The organizers of this effort told
potential participants that if they showed up for three hours of participation,
they would be paid 400 rubles each. They
even posted ads on line about this, but then took them down in order to deny
what they had done. But the RBC news agency
took a screenshot and so has evidence of this program.
According to the agency’s
journalists, “no fewer than 2,000” people lined up to get paid for
participation. RBC did not say whether this effort to boost crowd size was
duplicated in other Russian cities, but there is every reason to believe that
what Moscow does, others will be inclined to copy slavishly.
Some of those who came for money
were unhappy that the authorities weren’t paying them more. According to one
quoted by RBC, officials had given those who turned out for the demonstrations
on the February 22 Day of the Defender of the Fatherland 50 rubles more than
they were doing this time around.
Elsewhere in the Russian Federation, many were upset by official efforts to boost attendance at events marking this anniversary. In Kazan, officials decided not to have a meeting at all, and in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, people complained about being forced to take part in such actions (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/299451/).
Elsewhere in the Russian Federation, many were upset by official efforts to boost attendance at events marking this anniversary. In Kazan, officials decided not to have a meeting at all, and in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, people complained about being forced to take part in such actions (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/299451/).
Such
responses may mean that efforts to boost the significance of this anniversary
may prove counter-productive not only by reminding Russians of the kind of
state they live under but also causing them to reflect about what Putin’s
Anschluss of Crimea has cost them and their families.
To
say this, of course, does not mean that many of the roughly 150,000 Russians
who took part were not enthusiastic or that many who didn’t nonetheless back
Putin’s imperial land grab. Indeed, while officials tried to control the
placards people carried, those people wrote themselves provide evidence of
this.
Two
such slogans stand out in particular. Some demonstrators carried signs that may
have been printed declaring they were “for the Motherland, for [Russian]
independence from the US, and for Putin.”
Another, handwritten said “Crimea has been Ours for Three Years:
America, Accept Defeat” (meduza.io/short/2017/03/18/vesna-na-vorobievyh-gorah-tretya-godovschina-kryma-v-odnoy-fotografii
and yug.svpressa.ru/society/article/145197/).
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