In December a protest movement claimed the streets of Moscow. but by January its goals seem hard to accomplish as the movement still lacks real structure. Unfortunately, because of the low level of trust between the protesting citizens and the opposition -politicians the odds for such a structure to take shape seem rather small.

The underlying reasons for the explosion of protest activity at the end of 2011 will likely remain a mystery for quite some time.  We can sort of objectively describe what happened, but we cannot yet understand it completely. According to one of its definitions, politics is a method by which citizens make collective decisions. But as long as this protest movement has not yet acquired formal shape and seems not to be in a hurry to do so, it remains unclear how such decisions can ever be made.

Kommersant journalist Oleg Kashin: ‘None of us really had the time to meet in person, so 10 of us organized a chat on Facebook. We all had come to the first protest, the day after the elections at Chistye Prudy. We all wanted to also go to the 10 December demonstration at Revolution Square and we agreed that a second demonstration should differ from the first in a few key aspects’.

Kashin describes how he and other journalists got actively involved in the preparation for the meeting on the 10th of December. His companions were amongst others Yuri Saprykin, the editor in chief of Afisha and Sergey Parkhomenko, at the time editor in chief of the magazine Vokrug Sveta. Both men actively partake in the practical aspects of the organization of the demonstration, including the negotiations with the authorities as well as the meetings of the organization committee founded after the demonstration of December 10th. According to Kashin’s blog, it was Sergey Parkhomenko who finally convinced Boris Nemtsov to move the location of the demonstration from Revolution Square to Bolotnaya, thereby avoiding a conflict with the authorities.

We can treat Kashin’s blog as a historical document, because his account of the events has not been explicitly disputed. It is symbolic that the main source on these events is formed by the voluntary notes of a journalist. His notes describe how people began to converse over Facebook and came to a common understanding of what they wanted. In a later stage social media even became a resource in itself. And that was in turn symbolic of the high density of a political protest environment that suddenly entered a new situation in which several tens of thousands of people unexpectedly decided that the time had come to take it to the streets. It also shows how before the non-systemic opposition [politicians without a party represented in the Duma, JM] lived in its own world, having no sense of what was going on in the country. This time, perhaps clutching to their last straw, they listened seriously to the empathetic advice from the side.  In other words, they had no clue what to do themselves.

Kashin somewhat mythologizes our activities, Yuri Saprykin says. ‘We simply have a group of people among which we talk, regardless whether there are elections, protests or whatever. At the time the demonstrations came to the center of our conversations and in the process of our thinking we came up with a few ideas. Most influential was Seriozha Parkhomenko who went in head first. I know that during the nervous episode when the city administration insisted on moving the location of the demonstration to Bolotnaya it was Parkhomenko who talked the politicians into sensible rather than idiotic moves. Some of us had a hand in making that process most comfortable and non-traumatic. By virtue of our particular professions each of us thought about how we could communicate most effectively.  How could we improve the event so that it would become vibrant and memorable.’ Saprykin believes that the journalists made their most important contribution by ‘dragging Parfenov and Akunin to the demonstration’. An interesting thought, that is.

The participation of Grigory Chkhartishvili (Boris Akunin) and Leonid Parfenov became a  symbol of a qualitatively new situation, created at Bolotnaya Ploshchad. It became obvious that the people who gathered at the square wanted to hear words of support from anyone, except from the politicians. The fact that Akunin did not come as a celebrity, but as a citizen with his own views and ideas, was much more important then all the proposals made by Ryzhkov, Kasyanov and Udal’tsov. Add to that list all ‘non-systemic’ politicians  with the specific exception of Alexei Navalny.

Boris Akunin and Leonid Parfenov also took part in the organizing committee meeting of 13 December during which the preparations for the new demonstration where discussed. The meeting was broadcasted on the internet, as proposed by Akunin. A few such meetings took place. and along the way the composition of participants somewhat changed. Opinions about the actual formation of the committee differ. Duma deputy for Fair Russia Il’ya Ponomaryov, for example, claims that the initial decision was made by Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov himself disagrees. He says that the general principles of the formation of the committee populated by both politicians and representatives of society were formed organically during the discussions. Nemtsov however does name Sergey Parkhomenko and Vladimir Ryzhkov specifically. One way or another no one really made special reservations against the formation of such a committee.

Simultaneously an action team was formed, created by suggestion of Ilya Ponomaryov. Everyone with an interest could join that group.This much larger action group, which could be joined by anyone with an interest, became a vehicle for the representatives of various political groups, not represented in the organizing committee. The nationalists for example had been excluded from the organizing committee. The meetings of the this group were also broadcasted on the internet. The question that created the most heated debate was the selection of people who would speak from the stage during the demonstration.

Not in their own environment

The formation of parallel structures clearly was the result of a conflict, even when it was never said openly. At stake was the control over or most direct association with a demonstration, in which tens of thousands of people planned to participate. All the political forces were involved this game, but they never openly spoke about a confrontation between the organizational committee and the action group. Why was that?

Over the past years the representatives of liberal, national and other opposition groups didn’t that often display balanced and wise political behavior that we could expect it from them it at this critically important moment. That’s why we need to find another reason.

It is particularly doubtful that after realizing the magnitude of the coming demonstration, any of the organizers thought himself capable of leading the process. None of them could seriously believe that all these tens of thousands of people would come for them specifically. And besides that, not only politicians participated in the process.

One of the conflicting issues for the December 24th demonstration was the formation of the list of speakers. The action group disputed the fairness of the facebook vote [in which only facebook members could partake, JM]. The idea for another facebook vote was proposed by the organizing committee based on the experience of the previous demonstration. As a result of that dispute a second vote was organized [using SurveyMonkey, JM] , in which the first place unexpectedly went to the scandalous ultranationalist Maksim Martsinkevich, better known under his nickname Tesak.  When the situation seemed to get out of hand, mediation had to be provided by Alexey Navalny, who had just been released from detention, where he had been held since the demonstration at Chistye Prudy.

It was Navalny who forced the decision to exclude some of the representatives of the nationalist groups [from the SurveyMonket list, JM]  who were unacceptable to some [of the liberal, JM] members of the organizing committee (in particular Dmitry Demushkin and Alexandr Belov [both have been associated with at least condoning racist violence, JM] ).

In the compromise proposed by the action group [I. Ponomaryov, JM] not only the frontrunners in both of the online votes would speak, but there would also be quota for speakers from the various ideological movements. [3 speakers each for the liberals, nationalists and leftists, JM]

[From my own observations I can say that the Facebook poll attracted liberal leaning voters, while the Survey Monkey which could be distributed by email was much more popular among the public in support of nationalist leaders. At a certain point it became clear that the nationalists were better in mobilizing their vote. Only on the last day, the real bot - driven irregularities occurred that spurred the aforementioned Tesak to the top of the list. These irregularities were then used by the liberals - Kasparov’s man did the ‘calculations’  - to discredit the SurveyMonkey vote. JM]

Commenting on the situation Oleg Kashin says that it wasn’t just Navalny. ‘Actually, if it hadn’t been for Akunin, everything could have easily fallen apart. It is clear that because of Akunin Navalny successfully tried to convince some of the more ‘unacceptable’  representatives of the nationalist movement to withdraw their candidacies. Navalny understood that without Akunin’s consent there wouldn’t be a demonstration at all. No one knows what words Navalny used to explain this to Belov.

There is also another side to the story. ‘I and many who I know got intensively involved hoped that the next demonstration would sharply differ from the situation at Bolotnaya for the people standing in front of the stage’, Yuri Saprykin says. But in the end the sharp divide between oppositionist leaders and the non-traditional protesters in the streets could not be bridged.  Both groups are strangers to each other. They speak in different tongues. Even though the sound at Sakharov [arranged by Saprykin, JM] was much better and the voices of the oppositionist leaders could reach the public, their words had not become more comprehensible’. Kashin is even harsher: ‘All these oppositionist structures of the zero years [first decade of the century, JM] are objectively speaking Putin’s last line of defense. I don’t know if they do it consciously, but effectively they play into the hands of the authorities’.

Since Gandhi died, there is one one left to talk to [famous Putin quote, JM]

One way or the other the demonstration at the 24th of December went ahead and is now history.  How the events will evolve from here and who will coordinate the process remains an open question. The next big protest is planned on the 4th of February (on the same date of Moscow’s largest demonstration in 1990.)  If we believe Boris Nemtsov there are currently no disagreements between the organizing committee and the action group. According to Nemtsov the organizing committee will decide upon a set of concrete questions with regard to the preparation of the demonstration, while the action group forms a forum of supporters that ensure the representation of different political forces.

Problems are to be decided in working order. Nemtsov thinks that the success of the December 24th demonstration showed that the organizing committee is performing well and that therefor there are no questions about who should lead such processes in the future.

Ilya Ponomaryov on the other hand emphasizes that the organizing committee has been formed for one specific cause; the realization of the demonstration at Sakharov. And since that demonstration has taken place, the organizing committee has completed its task. The same is true for the action group. This group, however, Ilya thinks, will be transformed in some sort of civic committee that will continue on a permanent basis. As for the organizing committee Ponomaryov adds: ‘Everybody is free act’.

In other words, the politicians will again try to talk civil language, while kicking each other under the table. It’s therefore unlikely that they can perform the task in front of them and become true representatives of those people that come out into the streets.

‘After all we cannot say that the protest mood was created by Solidarnost, by the Left Front or by DPNI’, Yuri Saprykin says. ‘Even when they would comradely bring all their supporters together in one square, there would be seven thousand people at most. The public figures that are trusted by the new crowd on the other hand are not  prepared to give up on their books and their TV programs, to work day and night, building coalitions and forming new coordinative councils’.

One of the ideas raised by Akunin and Parfenov and a brainchild of the Bolotnaya and Sakharov demonstrations is the formation of a Moscow Association of Voters. By the design this will become a union of citizens with the mission to achieve clean elections. According to Ilya Ponomaryov this association will be strictly a-political or to be more precise; politicians will simply not be welcome in it. Ponomaryov points out that it will be this association – to be formed on the 18th of January – that will apply for the permit of the next massive demonstration. In other words politicians are currently treated as pariah’s. [ Association was formed as League of Voters, but permit application was negotiations with authorities about location and route were again conducted by organizing committee: still a mix of politicians and public figures. JM]

Nevertheless at the protests of the 10th and 14th of December resolutions and demands were voiced. These demands – apart from the formation of an association of voters and the campaign ‘not one vote for Putin’ – are addressed to the authorities. The release of political prisoners, the cancelation of the election results, new elections, the resignation of [the chairman of the election committee Vladimir] Churov, and the democratization of political legislation. All these questions need to be decided in negotiations with the authorities. That is what practically all activists name as the ideal option. But how will this dialogue take place and who will represent who, still remains a mystery. At this moment the only indication of even a theoretical possibility of such a course of action, is [former finance minister]Alexei Kudrin’s observation about the need for negotiations.

The organizers of the demonstration on the 24th of December say that the organizing committee tried to connect to Kudrin from its start. Responsible for these attempts were once again the group of journalists and public figures. Like Akunin and Parfenov, Kudrin (although you cannot compare their roles) did come to the demonstration, undoubtedly after having noticed a qualitatively new political situation And all of them did not come by invitation of the political figures in the organization. At this time, it must be said, Kudrin’s idea remains just that: an idea. This is not the place to discuss the peculiarity of a situation in which the supporter of negotiations with the Kremlin about democratization of the political process happens to be a close associate of Putin, who for a long time worked within and for the conditions of ‘sovereign’ democracy.

To begin with it is unclear who will be capable of conducting negotiations on behalf of the protesters in a way that it would suit the protesters themselves. And what guarantees can they can offer authorities. Without such guarantees there is no point for the authorities to talk seriously. At this moment it has still not been decided who and in what way will determine the composition of the delegation, would negotiations suddenly commence.  The options under consideration – an electoral college formed on the basis of an online vote or a complex delegation representing the various ideological currents within the opposition, including places for the ‘neutral public’ are both equally vulnerable to criticism.

In any case, we can only speak of successful negotiations when the protest movement can prove its effectiveness: massive turnouts at the demonstrations, the nomination of productive ideas supported by the protesting citizens or the emergence of recognized leaders, or the formation of permanent structures, not expressing a marginal public opinion.

At this moment the movement is in an extremely unstable phase. Normal citizens can only hope that their interests are represented by this mix of politicians, respected public figures and interested representatives of the press.  They still work together, but it seems only because they realize that without greater whole of each other their great hope will immediately fall apart. The projects to strengthen the protest movement and its representation still exist only in the world of ideas.