Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 5 – There are three
signs that the long-haul truckers’ strike may succeed in forcing the Russian
authorities to back down on the Plato system that takes money out of their
pockets via the imposition of special fees for the use of highways and puts it
into the hands of a Putin ally.
First, the strike is spreading from
its original bases in Daghestan and several major Russian cities to ever more
regions of the country, despite heavy-handed harassment by the siloviki (rusmonitor.com/protesty-dalnobojjshhikov-okhvatili-vsyu-stranu-ehkspert-ob-itogakh-pervojj-nedeli-stachki.html).
Second, in some places, the truckers
are getting support from other groups in the population, with merchants in
Makhachkala among the most prominent to join their complaints about the
irresponsible behavior of the powers that be (kavpolit.com/articles/platon_protiv_vseh-32872/).
And third, and possibly from the
regime’s perspective, the most important is that the strike is beginning to hit
the general population now that the truckers aren’t delivering food and other
goods to the cities, thus adding to the population’s woes (rusmonitor.com/protesty-dalnobojjshhikov-okhvatili-vsyu-stranu-ehkspert-ob-itogakh-pervojj-nedeli-stachki.html).
It is, of course, possible that the
Kremlin will be able to repress the strikers, find enough strike breakers to
undermine the truckers’ solidarity, and even turn the tables on them with its
propaganda channels. But the strikers are a more determined lot than many who take
part in pro-democracy protests; and they can only be encouraged by where they
are now.
What has not happened yet but what
should is for other opponents of the Putin regime to show understanding and
solidarity with the truckers rather than see them as engaged solely in a
narrowly economic form of protest. (On that, see Leonid Gozman’s remarks as
summarized in windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/04/for-russians-plato-no-longer-just.html.)
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