Marching Together, lazily

It looks like after media debacles early in the group's history, where rank-and-file "youth activists" ostensibly affiliated with Marching Together - a.k.a., Walking Together, Moving Together, Idushchie Vmeste in Russian - were interviewed at demonstrations and told the press that they had been deceived about the purpose of the event or promised freebies for attending, the organization has decided to take the very simple step of preventing the press from talking to participants in its demonstrations:

BBC Monitoring
Pro-Putin youth group protests against "pornographic" Russian opera
Source: Ekho Moskvy radio, Moscow, in Russian 0800 gmt 14 Mar 05

[Presenter] Any minute now the [pro-Putin youth] movement Marching Together will begin a picket outside the Bolshoy Theatre. They are protesting against the staging of an opera with a libretto by [well-known author] Vladimir Sorokin. Now we join our correspondent Nataliya (?Shapel). Good morning Natasha. [Passage omitted] What's happening now at the Bolshoy Theatre?

[Correspondent] [...] We managed to talk to the deputy leader of Marching Together, Boris Yakemenko. He said that he hasn't actually read Vladimir Sorokin's libretto himself, but he is against the opera being staged at the Bolshoy Theatre. "I'm protesting because I think Vladimir Sorokin is a pornographer", he said. This is why he doesn't want to see the opera on the Bolshoy Theatre's stage.

As for the opinions of the young protesters, unfortunately we can't give you any information. As soon as I try to approach one of them, people move them away and won't allow journalists to talk to them. I asked Boris Yakemenko why this is the case. He said these people don't have the right to give interviews. So unfortunately we haven't been able to hear the personal opinions of the protesters.

[Presenter] Thank you. That was our correspondent Nataliya (?Shapel). I can add that the management of the Bolshoy Theatre reject the accusations made by Marching Together. They say that the opera, "The Children of Rosenthal" is not morally offensive. [Passage omitted]

This is simple. Now the "protesters" are transported to the spot of the "demonstration" and/or promised some benefit for participating as before, except that they are told in no uncertain terms that they are not to talk to the press. This means there will be no more stories like this classic one from a few years ago:

Wall Street JournalMay 29, 2001
Efforts to Indoctrinate Russian Youths With Love for Putin Has Mixed Results
By GUY CHAZAN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

MOSCOW -- Building a personality cult isn't easy these days. Not even in Russia. Witness the youth rally held May 7 to mark the first anniversary of Vladimir Putin's inauguration. It looked like a great success: 11,000 youngsters wearing T-shirts with portraits of Mr. Putin over the punny slogan Vsyo putyom! -- Everything's hunky-dory! -- gathered on Red Square waving Russian flags and chanting "Ross-i-ya!" and "Poo-tin!"

The event was organized by Walking Together, a new youth movement that is unabashedly pro-presidential. Some participants seemed to have fun. Others hated it so much it put them right off both Walking Together and Mr. Putin.

"I didn't want to go on a demonstration," says Alexei, an English student from the Black Sea town of Taganrog, who refused to give his last name. "They said there were going to be rock stars and Olympic champions. All we got were a couple of people making speeches, and we could hardly
hear them anyway." [...]

So far, 45,000 young people nationwide have answered the call [and joined Walking Together]. Members are asked to set up so-called drug-free zones in schools, with military-style checkpoints and 24-hour patrols, and take part in subbotniks, voluntary collective cleanups that used to be a springtime ritual in the Communist era. Then, to sugarcoat this rather bitter pill, they get a range of eye-catching freebies: free pagers and Internet access, free movie and theater tickets, free horse riding, roller skating and martial arts.

It is this combination of carrot and stick that attracted Alexei from Taganrog. He liked the free gifts -- though he did raise an eyebrow when asked to take part in local demonstrations against NTV, the independent television channel renowned for its criticism of the Kremlin, and in support of Pavel Borodin, the Kremlin official briefly imprisoned in New York and extradited to Switzerland to face money-laundering charges. "Odd, considering they said they were apolitical," Alexei says.

Still, he had few objections when the local leadership of Walking Together offered him a trip to Moscow. Alexei and some 900 other young people from Taganrog signed up. It isn't every day you get a chance to visit the capital for free, after all.

But the trip was a nightmare. "We were put in this clapped-out old train, in third-class carriages, nine to a compartment, without water or bedding, and slept in rotation, like convicts," says Alexei. "It was so bad you just wanted to throw yourself out the window."

They arrived in Moscow after a hellish 26-hour journey and walked to Red Square. After an hour or so listening to boring speakers, Alexei and his friends slunk off to do some sightseeing instead.

The return journey to Taganrog was equally unpleasant. Walking Together officials carried out raids, searching people's luggage for alcohol and Putin T-shirts. "They wanted to check we hadn't sold them to tourists or swapped them for a beer," he says.

Alexei wasn't the only person upset by the May 7 rally. Liberal politicians said the event brought back dark memories of the Komsomol, the old Communist Youth League, once a bastion of Soviet-style indoctrination. One lawmaker said it was like a demonstration for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.

Mr. Yakemenko denies he is trying to create a personality cult -- though he admits he is a fan of Vladimir Putin. "He's the only person who can consolidate society and drag Russia out of the moral swamp it's in right now," he says.

Alexei from Taganrog doesn't agree. "I might have supported Putin before, but certainly not now," he says. "They think they can just buy our votes with free trips to Moscow. They're wrong."

Creating the illusion of a protest is much easier than actually educating young people about the issues and convincing them to go out and protest. Of course, the tradition of creating elaborate illusions for political purposes dates back centuries in Russia.

Note that Yakemenko remains the head of this organization - if he can't be troubled to read the libretto of the opera they're now protesting against, we can assume the rank-and-file protest participants are even less informed about what they're actually doing there. But the press is no longer allowed to talk to them, so their ignorance can't be exposed. Hence, "Marching Together, lazily" - this has to be the most intellectually lazy youth movement ever.

Yakemenko may not have sufficient interest in the issues read up on the cultural phenomena against which organizes protests. However, he has not been lazy at all in organizing - no doubt at the direction of his Kremlin masters - a new youth movement, "Nashi," which has been the subject of some controversy already. More about that in a later post.