Saturday, March 16, 2019

Ten Issues Dominate Protests in Russia Last Month, Institute of Regional Expertise Says


Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 15 – For the second month in a row, the Moscow Institute of Regional Expertise reports on the pattern of protest across the Russian Federation, identifying the chief issues that caused people to go into the streets, the regions where protests were most frequent and why, and the organizations responsible for demonstrations.

            In its rating for February 2019, the institute pointed to ten issues that comprehended almost all the protests that occurred in Russia: ecological issues, the government’s anti-social policies, city problems, pension reform, commemoration of Boris Nemtsov, support for political prisoners, calls for ouster of regional heads, support for taxi driver strike, possible hand back of the Kurile Islands, and the freeing of whales trapped in the Pacific (irex.group/articles/reiting-protestnoi-aktivnosti-regionov).

            The institute found that protest activity, defined quantitatively and qualitatively, rose in Krasnoyarsk kray, Orenburg, Sakhalin, Vladimir, and Ivanovo Oblast, and Buryatia but fell in Moscow. Two super-regions remained relatively protest free – the North Caucasus and the Far North – not because there aren’t problems but because of repression in the first case and the difficulty of assembling people in a low population area in the second.

            As to organizers, the institute said that the KPRF remained the most important but that local groups played a larger role in February than the month before and that in many places, where officials sought to prevent all protests, individual actions became more important.

            Assuming that the institute will continue to issue these monthly surveys, they will constitute a better picture of the protest climate in Russia than does the media which often focuses on high-profile demonstrations than on more widespread but perhaps less intriguing kinds, at least in the view of the Moscow media.

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