Watch for Russian protests on September 9
Last weekend I was with a friend who actively follows politics and he asked me: Has the Russian opposition said anything about the hacking of American election systems by Russians? I guess we would feel corroborated if it had — there has definitely been some reporting by sources in Russia — but the Russian opposition is pretty busy these days. Watch or listen to your favorite news source tomorrow morning, Sunday, September 9, to see what coverage is offered of planned protests across Russia in 83 cities and towns, coordinated by Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. As has become usual lately, many of the key figures have been harassed or arrested: Navalny was arrested for 30 days on August 27 so that he would miss the day of the protests; Sergei Udaltsov, leader of the socialist Left Front, was arrested about the same time and has been hospitalized three times to treat him for the effects of his hunger strike (a “dry” one, without drinking water).
What is happening tomorrow? It’s day of elections nationwide for a variety of offices, including for mayor in the four cities nationwide which still have direct elections (all others are appointed by their equivalent of state legislatures) and for mayor of Moscow. The current mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobianin, spooked by Navalny’s fiercely competitive results in 201x, has essentially no competition: there is “one Sobianin and four little Sobianins” and all serious opposition figures have been prevented from running by a signature-gathering requirement of Byzantine complexity (otherwise known as the “municipal filter”). While the opposition generally has trained several hundred election observers, Dmitry Gudkov (whose candidacy for mayor of Moscow was blocked) commented that observers probably won’t be out tomorrow: no one regards the ritual tomorrow as a true election. In Moscow, they’ll save their energies for a later election for the Duma, which are likely to be a more genuine competition.
The protests are focused on the change to the retirement age for men and women, typically called “pension reform”: in the first version, men, who currently can retire at 60, would retire at 65; women, who currently can retire at 55, would retire at 63. (Of course, if you work in the right branch of government, such as law enforcement or prosecutorial services, this change doesn’t affect you or your probable eligibility to retire even earlier.) The changes were announced on the first day of the World Cup in June, but even the good mood produced by that flashy sporting event did not dampen outrage throughout the country. Even while I was there, sociologists were reporting that the resulting anger had finally broken Putin’s immunity: usually, people associate him with the tough-guy brand of foreign policy that we have known since the invasion of Crimea in 2014 and blame domestic policy on their legislators, but now they are linking Putin to domestic policies and the general economic stagnation. In fact, as the delightful political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann likes to point out, Putin’s approval ratings started falling in April and had fallen 15% by June; they are now at the level they were right before the Crimean situation. The anger at pension reform just consolidated this decline. As other commentators note, there can be no second Crimea to pump up Putin’s ratings again: the rest of the world (perhaps even still the US) is primed to resist that kind of behavior a second time.
You may have heard of some protests last Sunday, September 2. The Communist Party ran their own anti-pension-reform protest in a few cities, and they were nothing to sneeze at: in Moscow, the Communists had from 6000 to 9000 people at their rally, while the Liberal Democratic Party gathered about 3000 people. Gennady Ziuganov headed the Communist protest — yes, the same Ziuganov who was running against Yeltsin 25 years ago. Udaltsov was still under arrest. The separation of the protests by a week probably indicate the failure of these groups to agree on a common approach to opposing the authorities, but those numbers should be added to what we hear about tomorrow. Any protest right now is significant, so don’t let anyone tell you they “weren’t that big.”
Meanwhile, even though Navalny is sitting in solitary confinement, the daily YouTube broadcasts from his foundation have not stopped. While I’ve heard several discussions over the past few months about whether the Russian opposition can even be called an “opposition” if they are shut out so completely, and whether they should properly be termed “dissidents,” something crucial is that we aren’t talking about just a handful of charismatic figures in Moscow with a type of political ambition often frowned on in Russia. Gudkov cited the existence of 50,000 volunteers. A smart, skilled network of activists has developed across the country; when they arrest Navalny, half a dozen people take his place in front of the camera. In a country with a deep historical emphasis on falling into line with the leader, it’s not clear what this growing group can accomplish yet — but please, please know that they exist. The goal of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia Foundation is to train people in political participation so that when Putin’s reign is over, at least some of the population will have the capacity to keep pushing for a truly responsive system. This is also the apparent effect of Navalny’s foundation: there are protests planned in 83 cities because Navalny’s campaign for president last fall opened 83 staffed campaign offices, rather than simply sitting in Moscow. Many of these volunteers are in their 20s, but a staffer from a provincial city commented that many people of retirement age have been coming in to sign up and participate.
It’s telling that one of Putin’s responses to all this is to have had his leading supporter on TV, the Sean Hannity-like Vladimir Soloviev*, create a documentary about how wonderful he is. There is also a weekly TV show planned to reinforce the official presentation of Putin as “the friend of children and lover of animals.” Gudkov commented in an interview that he couldn’t bring himself to watch it, but heard that even a loyal audience found it a little much, reminding them of the times of Brezhnev and even causing many to use the term “cult of personality” that accompanied Stalin’s authoritarian rule. (*Please, PLEASE do not confuse this shill with the brilliant nineteenth century philosopher of the same name, a beautiful soul.)
Meanwhile too, Britain got really specific about the two Russians identified as the perpetrators of the poisoning of the Skripals. This is likely to lead even to additional sanctions, isolating even further than the US sanctions which promise to deprive Russians of innovative technology that the country can’t seem to produce itself (corrupt petrostate, anyone?). Head of Alfa Bank Oleg Sysuev recently commented that the country’s economy is being held hostage by thuggish revenge attacks, showing that Russia’s foreign policy is stupidly based on “street principles” rather than true national interest. Maybe transfer of power might be a better idea?
You might not know any of these names (let me know if you’re curious about more detail), but I use them to show just how diverse the Russian political landscape is, or could be if it were allowed to develop more. “Russia” is not just the Kremlin, or Putin, or whatever hackers were sponsored in their past and current efforts. Wherever on the political spectrum your congressional legislators stand, I recommend demanding that they have a more three-dimensional view of the county, so that we’re prepared to have real dialogue when we break the double bond of would-be tyrants.

