Chapter II
The protest movement that swept the streets of Russia in the autumn of 2008 was a direct result of the earlier war against Georgia. Though the war itself was not unpopular – Moscow claimed correctly that Georgian forces had fired the first shots – its aftermath and resulting decline in living standards caused deep bitterness in many Russians. Particularly amongst the younger generation, millennials who did not remember the Cold War, there was a simmering feeling of discontent.
Sanctions had already been imposed by the United States, along with other Western-bloc powers. With oil prices steadily on the decline and the world having slid sharply into a recession, people began taking to the streets at the end of September. On the 28th, the first major demonstration took place as approximately 5,000 people gathered in Moscow beneath a cold, grey sky. Under heavy Militsiya - Moscow's police force - surveillance, they marched through the streets, culminating their gathering in the city’s Revolution Square, located in the Tverskoy District.
Over the course of the next week, protests would grow in size by some number, taking place not just in Moscow but in other cities as well. Protestors came with banners demanding that the government hold corrupt officials to account, and that political prisoners be freed. People skipped work or school in order to attend the protests, but the Russian media tried hard to present them as nothing more than a minor inconvenience. RIA Novosti, a fiercely pro-Kremlin news outlet, defended the government and denounced the protest movement. An article on RIA Novosti’s website accused the movement of being orchestrated by Georgian agents seeking revenge for their military defeats the previous summer. Russia Today, another well-known Kremlin mouthpiece, aired footage of children belonging to the Young Guard, the youth wing of United Russia, marching outside the Kremlin, carrying out military-style drill manoeuvres. The video was titled “the future defenders of the motherland.” It was a display of nationalism unseen since the 1980s, in what seemed to be a call to arms for the nationalist right, which held its own views regarding Medvedev & the current state of affairs. On the other hand, from more liberal opposition groups, online blog posts and messages on social media had denounced the party, and the government of Dmitri Medvedev, as, in the words of one student-blogger, “rife with corruption and thievery.” Members of Parliament & local officials, including members of the Moscow Militsiya, were called out individually, suspected of taking bribes and stealing public money.
Truckloads of Militsiya officers armed with batons & who wore visored riot helmets and clunky body armour watched these marches take place, but surprisingly found little cause to interfere. This uneasy peace was not to last. On October 7th, the largest of the recent demonstrations took place, with the number of attendees numbering as high as 15,000 in Moscow alone. Smaller protests also occurred in St Petersburg and also in Nizhniy Novgorod, under close watch by throngs of police officers just as those demonstrations in Moscow were. As the marchers stood in Red Square,several outspoken anti-Medvedev, or perhaps more accurately, anti-Putin individuals would take turns making impassioned speeches against the United Russia Party.
Amongst them was Boris Akunin. Akunin was best known his work as a crime novelist rather than for his political work. He was a Jewish man of Georgian origin, and had much to say about the current goings on in Russia’s southern neighbour, as well as the treatment of political opposition to the regime of Medvedev, who he also accused of being a puppet for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Medvedev was accused of being nothing more than a 'placeholder' for Putin until the former President could run for the highest office in the land once again.
Gennady Gudkov, chairman of the Just Russia party, also spoke passionately. Gudkov was known for his charisma as a businessman and political figure, and his criticism of Putin – not Medvedev – drew a wave of applause from the gathering crowds in Red Square.
Human rights activist Oleg Orlov was another keynote speaker on that frosty Moscow day. He joined the growing trend of speakers denouncing Prime Minister Putin rather than President Medvedev, calling Putin a “corrupt KGB thug” with “secret bank accounts everywhere from Kazakhstan to the Seychelles.” As Orlov stepped down from his makeshift podium, police officers moved in to break up the gathering on the claim that those marching had no permit to do so. Officers wearing blue riot-gear and carrying thick metal truncheons shoved their way through the crowd. They did not attack civilians, as those standing by apparently expected, but rather they attempted to reach the speakers who stood at the front of the crowd. Protestors moved to oppose the police officers, standing arm-in-arm to block them from swooping in to arrest Orlov, Akunin, Gudkov, and other individuals who had either made speeches or were preparing to do so. What had been a preaceful protest degenerated into violence.
The policemen shoved and the marchers shoved back; punches were thrown, and then glass bottles. Police officers charged forwards with extreme aggression, trampling down civilians as they went. Batons cracked down onto people’s skulls as they attempted to flee. The sole consolation was that no gunshots were fired. At the end of the day, over six hundred people would have been taken into the custody of the Moscow Police Department. Gennady Gudkov would be amongst them, charged with “inciting violence”. Many others would receive harsh prison sentences, and nearly all those arrested were denied bail after they were detained.
There had also been two deaths in Moscow that day; a thirteen-year-old boy, attending the march with his older sister, was trampled to death by the fleeing crowd as the police closed in. The Kremlin callously blamed the boys sister for not taking adequete protective measures, and also slandered the other protestors who had not stopped to help the boy, rather than accepting any responsibility for the violence. Additionally, a man in his thirties would die in hospital after receiving severe head wounds from the truncheon of an anonymous police officer. This was claimed by Moscow Militsiya to have been an act carried out in self-defence when the individual had assaulted police officers during the riot. Statements from passers-by told a very different story. For the Kremlin, it appeared as though this was a success. Although a significant amount of violence had taken place, it appeared as though the early stages of a protest movement had been suppressed without the need for soldiers or tanks on the streets, and many political activists who might have caused trouble were now in prison awaiting trial for their actions earlier in the day. It was not, however, the coup that Moscow had at first thought. Though the protests had for now been suppressed, they would soon reignite with renewed fervour, and this time the police alone would not be enough to stop them.
|