Moscow No Longer ‘Epicenter of Protest’ in Russia, Oreshkin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 16 – Moscow rather than the regions “shows stable support for Putin, Dmitry Oreshkin says, the result of both the greater optimism of young people who are concentrated in the capital and the greater pessimism of older people in the regions and the skill the regime has shown in decapitating protest and preventing it from taking a more political form.

            As a result, the Russian political scientist says, Moscow has ceased to be “the epicenter of protest” in Russia while protests about various issues have taken place in regions beyond the ring road in increasing numbers but of a kind the Kremlin can live with (pointmedia.io/story/691b2a30e657f59b666dce60).

            That is because these protests in the regions, Oreshkin says, are about local issues and involve people who assume “the good tsar” Putin can solve if only he will take on “the evil boyars.” In the absence of political entrepreneurs who might lead them – such people are in jail, in exile or dead – there is little chance this will change anytime soon.

            According to the analyst, those in charge in Russia today have studied what worked and what didn’t in dealing with protests both at the end of Soviet times and a decade or more ago in Putin’s. They have drawn conclusions that work for them, and thus they are likely to be able to hold power for a long time even though the country will continue to deteriorate as a result.

            The current rulers of Russia understand that environmental protests in the last decades of Soviet power got out of hand because regional officials joined them and new political leaders had time to emerge. Today’s leaders have committed themselves to doing whatever is necessary lest that pattern repeat itself.

            These same rulers also drew the correct – from their point of view – conclusions from the protests of 2010-2011. They recognized that new political leaders could emerge quickly and so they quickly removed them from the scene. And they recognized that winning young people to the side of the regime would eliminate much support for any alternative.

            Fifteen years ago, young people were dissatisfied and ready to protest, while pensioners who were generally supportive of a return to Soviet values supported Putin’s positions. But now as a result of Kremlin policies, the situation has been turned upside down, and young people are “approximately twice as frequently as pensioners” to say Russia is moving in the right direction.

            The Kremlin has worked to give the urban young more opportunities even as it has done little to ease the plight of rural pensioners, and it has concluded that as long as young people are generally supportive but have no leaders to transform them into a political force, those around Putin can sleep peacefully.

            There are reasons why the young in Moscow are more supportive of the regime. They have higher incomes than they could have imagined, and they aren’t being drafted to go fight in Putin’s war. Consequently, at a personal level, for them, things are good and promise to remain so, even if there is a recognition that the situation in the country as a whole is getting worse.

            As long as the Kremlin can maintain this pattern, the Putin regime will not have to face protests in the politically sensitive Russian capital and will be able to safely ignore the feelings of those who had supported the regime in the past but now are upset by what its representatives are doing to them now.