Shiyes Protests are What a Pre-Revolutionary Situation Looks Like, Dmitry Gudkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 4 – As more details emerge about the protests in the Russian North against Moscow’s plans to build a dump for the capital’s trash, it is becoming obvious that the demonstrations were far more political and radical than even initial reports suggested. (For a useful roundup of the later reporting, see svobodaradio.livejournal.com/3993724.html.)

            Epitomizing this radicalism were the remarks to the demonstrators by lawyer Andrey Nikulin. He told the crowd that “we see that in Shiyes, the authorities have approved the use of force to disperse a peaceful protest. This means that Vladimir Putin, the supreme commander, has declared war on the Komi Republic.

            “It is [Putin] who is the biggest supporter of the construction of a trash dump at Shiyez. He initiated it. And we must demand in the first instance his departure from office. Without this, nothing will change. Look at how the authorities ‘respect’ us – they buy up newspapers so that no one will find out we are holding a meeting.”

            But in this, they have failed, Nikulin suggested. “The entire world and all of Russia is following today’s measures. I know that even here are present representatives of the Presidential Administration sent from Moscow, but they are afraid to come out here and speak about their real position.”

            In response to this protest and these attitudes, opposition political Dmitry Gudkov argues that the situation in Shiyes is what a pre-revolutionary situation looks like (t.me/DmitryGudkov/1628).

            “You know what a pre-revolutionary situation looks like?” he asks rhetorically. “Here is what it looks like: Its when people have been left with no way out. When either they be poisoned [by trash] or they will save their own lives. ‘No one will give us any relief, not God, not tsar, and not a hero. We must achieve liberation by our own hands.’

            “Remember these lines? They come from a time of class struggle, but now they area about the struggle for one’s own life and the environment.”

            “Ninety percent of the protests in Russia now are green,” Gudkov continues. There may be enemies abroad and terrorists about. But trash dumps aren’t the work of the State Department or ISIS. They’re the work of “our very own powers that be, the friends of Vladimir Putin.”

When these powers that be accuse those protesting trash dumps as being “hirelings of Washington,” the people can quickly and easily see what the truth of the matter is, the opposition politician says. In Shiyes, they have begun to take action. Others will follow in their wake because that is how revolutions begin – and how they develop.