No Reason to Think Protests in Russia’s Regions About to End, Sociologists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 29 – Many of the protests that have emerged in Russia’s regions over the last 18 months were unexpected in Moscow, but all of them reflected a longstanding pattern of unrest outside of the capital and have intensified as a result of growing income inequality and declining trust in regional officials local people don’t control, sociologists say.

            Consequently, Mikhail Dmitriyev and Denis Volkov tells the URA news agency, there is no reason to think that they are about to come to an end. “Occasions for dissatisfaction will always be found,” Dmitriyev says, “but because of a deficit of trust in political leaders, the movement is hardly going to become an all-Russian one” (ura.news/articles/1036279203).

            Volkov for his apart agrees, arguing that “the situation is complex but stable. The size of protests now may begin to decline since in the course of the year social attitudes have slowly begun to improve with optimism and the ratings of the authorities rising a little.” But despite that, issues may arise “in many cities where there are civic structures.”

            A third Russian sociologist, Grigory Yudin, suggests that what is taking place in Russia is the emergence of a situation described a decade ago by French social theorist Pierre Rosanvallon in his book Counter-Democracy who says that people remain politicized even though they are alienated from the political system. They thus turn to public protests rather than the ballot box.

            (For a useful presentation and critique of Rosanvallon’s ideas, see Philippe Schmitter’s review of the French scholar’s original presentation of this idea in his 2008 book at eui.eu/Documents/DepartmentsCentres/SPS/Profiles/Schmitter/PCSRosanvallon.pdf.)

            These conclusions come at the end of an article by URA journalist Denis Kolchin on the wave of regional protests in Russia in recent months. He discusses three of them in particular – the anti-trash movement in Shiyes, the protests about border shifts in Ingushetia, and demonstrations against sacrificing a park to build a cathedral in Yekaterinburg.

            No one in Arkhangelsk expected the protests against Moscow’s plans to build a trash dump at Shiyes would last so long, sociologist Olga Russova says.  But because it has, the protests have become “a structured movement” that has succeeded in preventing radicalization that could be used against it while maintaining its opposition to the planned dump.

            Now, “the standoff at Shiyes,” she says, continues with the authorities refusing to change their policies and the demonstrators refusing to back down. There are only two possible ways out, Russova suggests. Either the authorities will drop the project as the demonstrators want or they will use force to disperse them and go ahead.

            The Ingush protests about the deal that gave Chechnya 26,000 hectares of Ingush land seemed inexplicable to Muscovites, but only because residents of the capital do not understand the importance, even sacred status, of territory in the North Caucasus.  Some 5,000 to 10,000 Ingush protested every day last fall, and smaller numbers resumed this spring.

            Then, on March 27, the powers that be in Magas and Moscow decided to end things by bringing in siloviki from other republics and arresting large numbers of Ingush protesters.  That didn’t save Yunus-Bek Yevkurov who signed the border accord, however. He was removed as republic head three months later.

            Adding to the anger of the Ingush protesters, regional specialist Yekaterina Sokiryanskaya says, was growing anger among the population at the corruption that was endemic in the Yevkurov regime and the general inefficiency of his government. Researcher Yevegny Ivanov adds that ethnicity and religion “united the protesters and the local siloviki,” something that constrained the authorities until they went outside the republic for reinforcements.

            Ivanov continues that the task of Yevkurov’s replacement, Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov is only the short-term one of freezing the situation where it now is rather than addressing the key problems. He says that he believes the land issue will be resolved “if an individual comparable in authority to Ramzan Kadyrov appears in Ingushetia or if the situation is changed in Chechnya.”

            And the third regional protest Kolchin discusses is that against the construction of a cathedral in the center of Yekaterinburg. There the population was arrayed against the Russian Orthodox Church, big business and the city authorities. Finally, Vladimir Putin intervened and said there should be a referendum on where the church would be located.