‘What Would They Do in Shiyes?’ Anti-Trash Protesters in Other Parts of Russia Ask

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 11 – The most important consequence of the anti-trash actions in Shiyes is the extent to which they have become the model for others.  “With Shiyes before our eyes,” activists in Sverdlovsk oblast say, “we know how to act,” an indication of how social media can guide others to act.

            That is the message of an article bearing that title by Ivan Zhilin, a Novaya gazeta journalist, who describes in what to those who have followed the Shiyes story is a familiar scenario in which eight villages near Yekaterinburg have copied the Shiyez script (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2019/10/09/82291-shies-pered-glazami-znaem-kak-deystvovat).

            His interviews with those taking part in the Sverdlovsk oblast protests and their actions are so similar to what has occurred in Shiyes that they hardly bear repeating. What they do call for, however, is an affirmation that the Russian state for all its power cannot now prevent people in one place from being inspired by what people elsewhere have done.