Moscow April 22, 2013

3. The Public Situation Prior to the 6^th of May Events

The events of May 6, 2012 were preceded by a huge outbreak of civil activity. Yet it cannot be called unexpected. The ground for it was prepared by three interconnected tendencies.

Secondly, public inactivity allowed the elite to establish a recurrent practice of violating the Constitution of the Russian Federation and other laws to remain in power. The judicial system, which for 80 years had been merely a unit of the administrative apparatus and started to realize its independent role in the formation of social compliance only in the first half of the 90-ies, was easily cut down to size. Those judges, who started to feel their true independence and tried to serve the law, were removed, and the judicial system lost its indispensable part – free and independent courts. The independence of the judicial system from the administration and law-enforcement agencies was again eliminated and did not manage to revive. At the same time, the fake veneer designed to add the events a touch of legitimacy was getting obsolete, and finally became completely unnecessary both for the government and for the ever-silent society. The small numbers and passivity of the opposition caused the government to form a persistent perception of the possibility to ignore opposition sentiments in the society. This fact, in its turn, made the opposition grow more radical.

Thirdly, there was a subsequent alternation of generations which included the appearance of the true New Russians – the middle class in its modern meaning. These people were maturing after the collapse of the communist experiment, in relatively free conditions, and were not parted from the rest of the world by the iron curtain; they got rid of the patriarchal soviet paternalism and were capable of achieving personal success. These people possess self-confidence and dignity, although often subconsciously, for these feelings were not cultivated in the country for almost 100 years.

The biggest part of the new middle class kept at a distance from politics during the last 10-15 years. Yet the constant ineffectiveness of the state has been raising new social issues before the society. The middle class has quickly learned to unite with the aim of collective resolution of such issues and frequently achieved success. The state authorities didn’t pay much attention to the middle class, because the public activity oriented towards the social sphere did not pose direct threats to the government stability. Yet the state ineffectiveness, recurrent and ever-worsening problems, the absence of normal communication between the society and the government would sooner or later reveal the obvious truth: the process of resolving the social issues is constantly running into politically generated obstacles, created by the government during the last decade. There was a need of a single event, which could become “the trigger” releasing the tight spring of discontent.

Such an event took place on September 24, 2011: during the pre-election assembly of the party United Russia, the President D. Medvedev suggested nominating Prime Minister V. Putin as the candidate for the presidential elections. The latter, in his turn, promised Medvedev the post of the Prime Minster. The pompously glamorous atmosphere of the event and the cynical disregard of the Constitution, which formalized the job swap of the duet, were completely in tune with the governmental practices established during the past several years. That is why the unusually massive discontent turned out to be unexpected for everyone: for the authorities, for the scarce traditional opposition and for the middle class itself, which saw and realized itself during the protest demonstrations.

The feeling of self-respect of the middle class, offended by Putin and Medvedev, quickly transformed into the movement of constructive observation of the elections. The preparations of the opposition to disclose the habitual violations during the elections were assisted by a huge number of volunteers, previously trained and present at the voting stations in different Russian cities on the election day. Despite the numerous violations of the legislation, the results of the elections revealed a significant drop in popularity of the state powers; United Russia lost its constitutional majority in the parliament, and the fact that it had received the insignificant simple majority of votes was conditioned by open and unprecedented frauds. As a result, the awakened feeling of self-respect, which was initially insulted by the principal governmental duet, found its new targets in United Russia and the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation. This became clear during the first mass meeting on December 10, 2012, where dozens of thousands of people from the middle class claimed to give them back the stolen elections.

The first mass meeting revealed the incapability of the government to adequately react to protest movements, which has been developing throughout its past experience. Instead of a dialog, the powers resorted to public insults. As a result, Putin became the primary target of the public discontent, the overall atmosphere changed from a kind mockery to a sharp satire, and the demands of the protesters became more radical. It is also important to underline that all of the protest actions were extremely well-organized, and the overall atmosphere was nothing similar to mass riots.”

Prior to the presidential elections, the government was extremely worried about its result and decided to imitate negotiations with the opposition. However, the imitation was discovered very quickly. That is why the primary source of the off-street protest activity was directed towards the preparations for the presidential elections and was based on a great number of volunteers, which had no equals in Russia before.

The control exercised over the election process hit the weakest aspect of the government, which was related to its illegitimate character. Until autumn 2011 the illegitimate character of the Russian government was realized only by the two unequal groups of the population. The first one, smaller in number, was the opposition. The second and the large one – the bureaucracy, which constituted the pro-Putin vertical of power. The first group wasn’t dangerous for the government due to its small number. The second one was also interested in the illegitimate character of the government, as it makes the political authorities dependent on the bureaucracy. After September 24, 2011 and the new illegitimate elections, the issue of the government’s illegitimacy broke outside the tight borders of the traditional opposition and became a point of discussion for a significantly larger circle of people who could outnumber the attendance of all the previous meetings and public marches many times.

It was exactly the issue of the government’s illegitimacy that constituted the core problem of the events, which took place after the presidential elections. Because Moscow became the center of the protest movement and had the highest concentration of public observers, the government decided not to use the traditional technologies of violation inside the city and resorted to just experimenting with new technologies. It was no accident that Putin could not win half of the total votes in Moscow. But the violations outside of Moscow were as massive as usual.

This time the results of the elections produced a demoralizing effect on the public, and the two demonstrations that followed after the elections, were attended by a smaller number of people than previously. Yet by May, 2012 it became clear, that the protest movement did not disappear, just as it was not dissolved by the New Year celebrations and winter holidays. The core reason for the revival of the protests was the understanding of the illegitimate nature of the government, which was preparing ‘for May 7, 2012 and the inauguration of the newly elected President (according to the Central Election Commission).

Immediately before the inauguration, the government could not afford another mass demonstration, the principal concern of which was to be the illegitimate character of the Putin’s victory, who usurped the presidency by relying on the mass legal violations. Only the government that realizes its illegitimate nature could empty the streets of Moscow on the day of the President’s inauguration. The government feared the electorate, and this fear, combined with the complex of illegitimacy and the fear of a color revolution, formed the background for the events, which took place on May 6, 2012 on the Bolotnaya Square in Moscow.

It should be noticed that the protesters did not give the Russian government a single reason to use mass violence neither before May 6, 2012, nor afterwards.