More on the "Dissidents' March"

LJ user misslob has a great post with lots of photos and comments (in Russian). Via the Yandex "top blog posts" page.

[Update: More photos on fishki.net - slow-loading, but comical juxtapositions of OMON guys with Moscow street advertising. Via Apricot Flan]

[Upd 2: great arty photos of the march in Moscow from drugoi; a pdf book of photos from SPB by studio204 (via GVO).

Also, the original title of this post misidentified the march as one of "dissidents" - while that may apply to some of the participants, I guess the generally agreed-upon title (aside from clunky ones like "March of Those Who Do Not Agree") is "Dissenters' March" - I'm not correcting the title because that would change the hyperlink of the post]

[Upd 3: I just posted one of drugoi's photos at moscow graffiti with a translation of the text]

Fear of an Orange Planet?*

I don't want to beat the topic to death, especially when the protests were probably not a good barometer of public opinion and ultimately may be just a blip, but it was an interesting weekend. And I should preface these comments by saying that I don't think any kind of color revolution is likely in Russia - or even necessarily desirable (although, as Berezovsky tried to say recently, it's hard to imagine the regime giving up power any other way). But of course beating on protesters is not the best way to make sure people stay loyal to the regime. Even people who didn't sympathize with any of the eclectic group of groups protesting have to acknowledge that this was authoritarian overreach.

Anyway, regarding Saturday in Moscow, the general consensus seems to be that the story was not the turnout for the protests (which was low) but the excessive force deployed to prevent the protesters from enjoying their day in the sun. Russia Profile has a good piece on the protests and some original photos by their correspondent, who also shares this vignette:

As the speeches concluded and the police tensely watched the dispersing crowd, Andrei Illarionov and a group of sympathizers stopped just short of Chistye Prudy subway station. A former economic advisor to the Russian president who is now an adamant critic of the government, Illarionov started to harangue an officer standing in a ring of riot police. Pointing vituperatively to a booklet of the Russian Constitution, Illarionov explained how everyone involved in the operation had violated basic constitutional freedoms and will inevitably be held accountable. The officer stared glumly and shifted feet as the jeremiad went on, until the shuffling crowd enveloped them.

Illarionov can't even get arrested in Moscow! He should come back to DC. This was the lede from RP's piece - titled "Springtime for Putin":

Lockdown on Pushkin Square effectively started before dawn, and by the time Muscovites emerged on Saturday morning for the unsanctioned “Dissenters’ March,” phalanxes of security forces left little to chance. Beginning inside the nearby subway stations, and continuing through the underpasses and along the many approaches to the square, rings of riot police and law enforcement corps of every stripe filtered the procession, minimized mobility, and descended swiftly upon the more vocal protesters. The much-vaunted demonstration was over before it even started.

The NYT on the related happenings in St. Petersburg:

The marches have become a test both of the determination of the opposition and the willingness of the government to use force to suppress it, imbuing the marches with more weight in Russian politics than the small numbers of demonstrators imply.

All of the talk of reminded me of something from nearly two years ago - the excessive force deployed to guard against protests at the Khodorkovsky trial, whicn became a story of its own, separate from the trial. At the time, I posted a partial translation of a commentary from Ekho Moskvy on the situation:

But one question remains, and it's not an idle one. Guys, if this is just a regular criminal court proceeding, if this is a clear-cut case of fraud, then why are you making such a fuss about it? Why did you wave your nightsticks a week ago, why did you deploy three cordons of guards and all of those trucks? Are you expecting Shamil' Basayev and his posse? Why do your eyes start darting around when people ask simple questions? And for whom did you set out the so-called [anti-Khodorkovsky] "general public" like hedgerows, for Bush and Schroeder? And if you're so tough and sure of yourselves, really, why do your eyes keep darting around? The way you're doing it looks so petty and pitiful. You can see the threads sticking out. Like blue jeans made in Sovok.

The difference between then and now is that the authorities seem to be a bit more organized (according to RP, it was "coercively administered crowd control, orchestrated and implemented with sinister precision") - if no less heavy-handed - in keeping a lid on things nowadays. I guess that is another accomplishment of the last few years.

As for the answer to the question "why," I guess the authorities believe their own hype about foreign-sponsored NGO's working tirelessly to effect regime change. This (rather vaguely sourced - which "critics of the Kremlin and political analysts"?) comment from the NYT:

Critics of the Kremlin and political analysts said that the abundance of Interior Ministry troops on the streets over the weekend — and their use of force — reflected concern by Mr. Putin and his advisers that street protests could snowball ahead of parliamentary elections planned for the fall. They point to the large rallies in Ukraine that came to be known as the Orange Revolution, which forced a change of government in 2004.

The MT - one of whose journalists was detained - noted that it's hard to see how fear of the color orange could provoke such an extreme response to the "Dissenters' March" - noting that, given the unlikely political success of any of the "Other Russia" leaders, "it is difficult to see how Saturday's gathering posed such a threat" of a color revolution.

Tangentially related - Lenta.ru's photo collection from the DPNI/Congress of Russian Communities protest. An especially classic sign - reminding Chubais that he won't escape jail time and depicting him springing forth from a privatization voucher. The MT had a brief snapshot of the level of discourse at that event:

Hundreds attended a nationalist rally on Bolotnaya Ploshchad to hear Dmitry Rogozin criticize "a Russia run by Abramoviches," in reference to Russia's richest man, Roman Abramovich. Hundreds of police near Bolotnaya Ploshchad stood by quietly.

* With credit and apologies to Public Enemy.

Journalists on the March

Lenta has a great roundup of Russian press coverage of the weekend's protests - and non-protests. The piece discusses coverage of the "Марш согласных" - which I guess could be translated as "March of Non-dissenters," or perhaps more accurately a "Sycophants' March" or "March of the Lemmings." Lenta's money quote (among others):

"The "Марш согласных" looked most respectable in Izvestia's reporting of events, which was consistent with the spirit and tone of Pravda's Soviet-era front pages."

Robert Amsterdam has a good post about journalists caught up in the action and getting beaten
along with the protesters and discusses what the authorities' motivations might have been for such a harsh crackdown.

Along with Amsterdam, Germany's Der Spiegel asks, "Just What Is Putin Afraid of, Exactly?" [via Russian Standard]

Russophile.com notices a distinct lack of US media coverage of the weekend's events. Big-time American blog the Volokh Conspiracy has a post about Kasparov getting arrested.

"Trafficking Arms on Europe's Doorstep"

Recently, there was some to-do about a French documentary about the color revolutions that was aired in Russia on the channel Rossiia (perhaps the most state-run of all state-run Russian TV channels) in a questionably edited version shortly after the Dissenters' March. The film was heavily advertised and purportedly showed Western involvement in the color revolutions in the post-Soviet space and Serbia. I couldn't find the original version on YouTube or Google Video. Here is (I think) the version that aired on Russian TV, with some portions edited out and the name of the film's French producer also chopped from the credits.

Here is another French documentary film, released last year. This one investigates the allegations that the Transnistrian de facto government has been and is engaged in trafficking arms - both those remaining in the Soviet-era Colbasna stockpile and small arms which it may be producing in its own factories. It has been said that the recent introduction of EUBAM border monitors conclusively proves that there is no longer any cross-border arms smuggling in the region; however, this film notes the existence of an airstrip in Tiraspol which may provide the opportunity for flying weapons out.

The tone of the film is fairly one-sided, but it is definitely worth watching. I've embedded a clip with the first 10 minutes below. Beneath the embedded clip are links to the other four ten-minute sections of the film.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Speechless

The text says:
"Vladimir Putin, let's continue to work together in the future!" and
"Chief Teddy-Bear, take care of the little children!"
[image source]

Speechlessness - or a brief, shocked (resigned?) obscenity - has been the response of many Russians and Russia-watchers to the latest brick in the pro-Kremlin wall.

The good news? "Restless Bears Have Found a Job for Putin," reports Moskovsky Komsomolets. The bad - or at least profoundly questionable - news? Those "bears" are children aged 8 to 15, who will now have the chance to be involved in a nationwide movement called "Teddy Bears" ("Mishki"). The new organization has been rolled out in the midst of a circus-like frenzy of pro-Putin demonstrations in Moscow. According to the Nashi website (all of the quoted texts in this post are my translations):

On the 6th of December over 35,ooo commissars and activists from the Nashi movement, the "Our Election" (Nashi Vybory) all-Russian youth program, the All-Russia youth education project "Cadres for modernizing the country," the interregional child-youth movement "Mishki," the "Shapovalova" designers' project, and the federal programs Our Army ("Nasha Armiia"), Friendship Lessons, Blood Group, Voluntary Youth Militia, Our New Education, and Hiking, came [to Moscow] to congratulate the President, and also to present their plans for the future.

Actually, it would seem that the powers-that-be initially positioned the busing of provincial youth to Moscow for several days and kitting them out in Putin ponchos at least in part as a way to have a bulwark against the "orange infection" - at least, that motivation is expressed in a Nashi flyer that came out just before the elections. Another funny thing about Nashi's version of events in the paragraph quoted above is that nearly all of these groups and "programs" are parts of or organized by Nashi. But I guess there is strength not only in numbers (and official sanction!) but also in lots of bombastic names.

One thing officials should remember - people care less and less about slogans and politics, but Muscovites always care about anything that will impede traffic. And apparently Nashi's antics throughout the city in recent days have caused lots of probki. Gazeta.ru's story about this was titled "Teddy Bears Lock up the Center" and was illustrated with a picture of a traffic jam and a map showing road closings. Kommersant had a story about the traffic-diverting meeting involving Mishki:

Yesterday on Bolotnaya Square the childrens' movement "Mishki" made itself known for the firs time. The movement is for children from 8 to 15 years old, and their counselors [вожатые - for which my dictionary actually gives "young pioneer leader," so strong is the association] are Nashi commissars. According to the organization's internal hierarchy, a counselor who is able to organize ten events with children is called a "Restless Bear" ["медведь-шатун" - a term for a bear which has woken up for hibernation], and one who unites children from ten apartment buildings is a "Polar Bear." The most senior counselors carry the title of "Brown Bear."

According to the movement's organizer, Yulia Zimova, "Mishki" have organized mainly in the regions [i.e., not in Moscow or SPB], and the parents of the children involved have nothing against their children's participation in public life. On Bolotnaya Square "Mishki" recorded a video message to Vladimir Putin. In it, they called on the president to head up their group, "since he is the most important Teddy Bear in Russia," and asked him to "assign the group a developmental vector."

"I would like to note that any forced participation of schoolchildren in political life is prohibited by law in this country. Especially considering that this took place during the school day," Moscow City Council Deputy Evgenii Bunimovich told Kommersant. "Russia always had enough good sense not to get children mixed up in politics. And today this is happening, and it is horrible."

Representatives of the parties and movements which, according to Nashi, had planned to foment an "orange revolution" in Moscow, told Kommersant that the actions of the pro-Kremlin youth was just bewildering. "The authorities have dishonestly won this election, and no children will make them any more legitimate. [...]" thinks SPS's Boris Nemtsov.

"I would be interested to talk to the city authorities, who swore that they would never permit mass events in Moscow that would cut off traffic downtown," added Denis Bilunov, executive director of Unified Civil Force and a co-organizer of the "Dissenters' March" that was dispersed on November 24.

Kremlin-friendly (or so it seems to me, at least on the CIS issues that I follow) news portal RosBalt.ru had the following to say about Mishki:

Little Teddy Bears Ask Putin to Be Their Megasuperbear

The Mishki movement appeared in September and unites children from 8 to 15 years old. The counselors - high school students - have their own "positions"... the apex of the hierarchy is the "brown bear."

"That is a megasuperbear, who can with his skill and experience solve children's problems in a particular city - for example, someone who can organize the construction of a playground," said the organizer of "Mishki," who is also a Nashi commissar, Yulia Zimova, in an interview with Trud.

"We expect to succeed," said Zimova. "Even if the President doesn't become the leader of Mishki, we hope that he will still support us one way or another."

Mishki already participates fairly actively in pro-Kremlin demonstrations organized by Nashi. For example, they were present at the demonstration celebrating Putin's birthday [Mishki's LJ identifies this as the source of their first press mention] with posters reading "Thanks to Putin for our stable future."

One blog commenter responded to that last quote by recalling a phrase from the 20th century: "Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood!" At least one other commenter on a different internet forum had a similar thought:

"We've already been through this, and it was thanks to Comrade Stalin for our happy childhood. Except that then it was much more sincere, and now it's done to order and for money."

Another commenter questioned the age bracket involved:

I also remember that they used to accept people at age 14 into Komsomol, i.e., into a totally adult socio-political organization. And here it's "plush teddy bears" until age 15. This is some kind of retarded infantilism.

Yet another commenter on the same forum went off:

Can't you see where this is all headed? I support the right of any party to freely campaign. BUT NOT A MONOPOLY!!! What difference does it make - teddy bears, jerboas, or baby crocodiles? If you pound something into a child's unformed head from the age of eight, he'll accept it uncritically as the truth. This is straight-up zombification of children.

Others took a more humorous tack, and tried to come up with nicknames for this new organization (all based on puns that aren't really translatable) : "путинята" or "едросята," proposed one commenter at that same forum. At another forum, proposals for pejorative nicknames were "Putin's Hamsters," "HitlerJungend" (rather unoriginal, since Nashi has already been slapped with this somewhat over-the-top label), and "Медвебрята", "Медвеонеры" and "Медвемольцы" (puns using the word for "bear" with the words for "recruit," "pioneers," and "Komsomol"). On both forums, people lamented the fact that children so young are apparently the subject of a political "hearts-and-minds" campaign.

Would you trust this man with your children?

Most likely, Russian parents have new Minister of Youth Vasily Yakemenko (ex-Nashi head commissar) to thank for the expansion of Nashi's ambit to include the pre-teen set. A Radio Svoboda interviewer got one of the participants to say a few embarrassing things about the way they got kids involved (not-very-good Google translation), and that account suggested that the "Young Russia" group might also have been involved in organizing Mishki's Moscow meeting.

I decided to see whether this new "movement" has a website. Mishki.ru got a "server not found" message, but then I thought that maybe this group uses the same cringe-inducing top-level-domain as Nashi's website. Sure enough, punching in Mishki.su got me to the freshly-baked website of this teddy bear of a youth group, says it has been online since November 21. The website, though, looks like it's still in beta. The front page has impressive, appealing graphics of bears cavorting in red neckerchiefs (a la the Soviet-era Young Pioneers), but the "contact" page lists just some nonsense characters - here's a screenshot, since that's likely to change:


On the section of the site called "Media about us," the only link at the moment is to what appears to be Mishki's official LiveJournal blog, the profile page of which provides an abbreviated mission statement:

We are the All-Russian [sic - even though it's called "Interregional" elsewhere] Child-Youth Movement "MISHKI" [Nashi also likes to write its name in all-caps sometimes, not because it's an abbreviation, but just 'cause, I guess]. We invite you to connect with the future of your country, to touch the creation of the history of Russia - to not allow the loss of the young generation.

Every generation can make a contribution to the country's development. Today, practically a whole generation of Russian citizens has grown up not feeling responsible for the future of their Motherland. At best, they will leave behind graffiti in courtyards, at worst, nothing at all will be left after them. We are people who believe in the future generation and who think that their fate is in our hands. The fate of Russia is in our hands.

The LJ itself has an odd header with what looks like a cartoon version of the Sydney, Australia, skyline; and a couple of posts like this one with photos of children doing wholesome-looking things and not much text. And although that "mini-manifesto" is a bit bombastic and self-important, I certainly can't argue with the principle of raising kids to be conscious of their debt to their society and country. It's a different matter whether this type of consciousness-raising should be a task for a political party that already dominates the public discourse.

At the moment, there's something wrong with the text spacing on the page describing the organization's "Manifesto," but it's nothing a quick edit by a good web designer couldn't fix. The Manifesto itself - or the document on the page labeled "Manifesto" - offers a lot of nice thoughts on values - volunteerism, physical fitness, etc. - and how to inculcate them, but toward the end it depicts something so involved that I can't imagine much of it ever being done in real life by volunteers. It also offers a lot of insight into what values are most important to the people who have set up this organization, and what kind of citizens and country they hope to create (strange numbering as in the original, though I have introduced line breaks for clarity in some places):

III. Once you have earned their trust - start building a state: the Courtyard Democratic Republic
1. The building of a state can start with having the children do what adults do in real life. Children always want to try themselves out at adult tasks.
The children can be actors and play in a theater, or anchors and cameramen and film the courtyard news [...]

1. When you start to build a democratic republic, it doesn't necessarily have to function as a state economically at first. It all depends on what the children want.

The economy should involve around 100 people. Every child should know that, for example, in stairwell 5 of building 7 between the first and second floors, every day between 19.00 and 20.30 the Courtyard Bank, Employment office, and Tax Inspectorate will be open. If he wants to earn Mishkarubles, he can go to the Employment office, where someone will give him a job. For example, if there's going to be a play the next day, then he can set up the chairs for 15 rubles, make the set for 40, or for 30 Mishkarubles take a role in the play. The child takes on the job, gets the money on the day after he works, pays a tax, for example, one Mishkaruble. At the end of the week or month the Leading Mishki conduct an auction, where the little Mishki can buy theater or movie tickets, flash-drives, picture frames, etc. - it depends on the interests and age of the children.

When the children get used to this system, you can build a real state - the President and government of the Courtyard will plan the budget for the month, based on which one or another ministry will conduct events in the courtyard, government employees will get a salary, and some will even be able to open their own companies, for example a firm that does homework assignments, or open their own private bank.

1. When the republic grows to include several courtyards, you can set up a big parliament, buy up land in the courtyard, found an inter-courtyard state television station, hold beauty contests, set up advertising companies, walls of honor for Mishki and Little Mishki.

Before the launch of any courtyard democratic republic, a seminar will be conducted with all organizers who are Leading Mishki in your city.

IV. The Unique thing: the city becomes a single united state of children, where they are the main citizens and are responsible for everything. Now your children have opened real companies, they defend in election campaigns their projects to improve life in the courtyard, they earn money and pay taxes. They are learning management, learning to think independently and make decisions. Now your task is to introduce their projects into the system of regional government. Teach them not to be afraid to live in the adult world, to achieve the goals they have set. [...]

Based on a successful small model, any child, and then teenager and adult, will build a larger model. The model of his city, his state. And even if in that model not everyone will be a government employee, the rest will one way or another be representatives of nationally oriented businesses, or socially responsible entrepreneurs. A country where the children are occupied and involved is assured to have great success. To be the best. To be beloved.

It struck me that a lot of these things - having a "government" and even sometimes a "TV station" are things that kids experience through their schools in the U.S. Strangely, this document says nothing about using the school as an organizing principle.

"Chief Teddy Bear - Take Care of the Children!"
[image source]

Confusingly, the section of the website titled "For Mishki" also has a document that is labeled a Manifesto. Maybe they just accidentally swapped the two texts when they put the site together. This document must be the actual manifesto, for it contains principles rather than a specific plan of action:

Why Now?

A country's prosperity, as a rule, is accompanied by a the mass development of a children's movement. The wise ruler ["Мудрый правитель" - I'm not making this up] wants to know into whose hands the country for which he is responsible will fall, and the residents want to be sure of what will happen tomorrow. Today, we have something to pass along to the next generation - the ability to cope with difficulties, achievements, experience, knowledge, faith in Russia. We can instill much in the generation that will follow us: tolerance, collegiality, the ability to empathize and survive, independence and responsibility. And most important: the ability to be a human being and a patriot. This is not simple, as we know. But it is necessary. After all, this will allow us to create the Russia of our dreams.

The manifesto document talks about developing creative talents, promoting a healthy way of life and charitable work, patriotism and professional preparation, and other worthy things for a youth organization to do. And then it ends with a bang (my translation, italics in original):

A child-youth courtyard movement is something that has never been done before. Perhaps a children's courtyard movement is the very path which will lead us to the development and consolidation of not just new traditions, but also an interesting, kind mass culture. It's possible, that we will raise the sort of citizens, who will be able to take to the streets nationwide and demand that TV shows which degrade the personalities and minds of their children be taken off the air. The Little Mishki who grow up and become Mishki, will preserve the country, the people, history, and culture.

We will raise the sort of citizens who will be a source of pride not only to us, but also to other countries.

Fascinating indeed. But for a post titled "Speechless" I've gone on at great length about this embryonic children's organization - who knows if it will go anywhere? I'll end the post with a bit more info from the MK article I mentioned above:

One of the "Restless Bears" is 18-year-old Masha from Sochi. But she spoke in a way not entirely appropriate for her age: "Sood Uncle Putin will resign, he won't have anything to do, and he'll accept our offer!"

The counselors plan to politically enlighten the children in their charge: "At eight years old it's pointless, but we'll tell the older ones about the 'orange' threat."

As far as Mishki's funding, people in the organization say that the counselors are volunteers and that parents help out with the supplies. But it's doubtful that transporting a thousand citizens to Moscow was within the parents' means. We have heard that the "Restless Bears" are sponsored by large banks and regional businesses.

Can the pro-Kremlin enthusiasts at least leave children alone? If things keep going in this direction, soon the members of "Teensy Bears" [“Медвежулечки”] will be rolled out onto the street in strollers, and after them we'll have pregnant women as members of "Clumsy Embryos" [“Косолапые эмбриончики”]...

An Echo of Moscow

Tverskaya, Feb. 23, 2005 - from this set

Shortly after the Duma elections last December, I saw this article and wanted to translate it. I didn't have time then, and in truth it's a fairly challenging text to translate, since it is all about mood and atmosphere. The furor around Putin's Luzhniki speech has faded, but Nizhny Novgorod, where part of the article is set, is still in the news as the location of Medvedev's one official day speaking as a candidate and (perhaps less significantly) as the region singled out by the New York Times in a controversial article about the Kremlin's (ab)use of "administrative resources," so this seems like a suitable item to post as we await the inevitable result on March 2.

By way of background, this piece was supposed to appear in the Moscow weekly Bolshoi Gorod, but the head of the publishing house that prints BG decided not to print it as written, and BG's editor chose to publish it on his ZheZhe rather than edit it. The comments on the blog where it was posted suggest a range of assessments of that decision - mostly praise for the article, but also some averring that it was proper not to publish it, because it's not "journalism" and is more suitable for a ZheZhe post, or that it's an "empty" tale describing a political reality that has existed for years but is just now being noticed by the creative intelligentsia (it is indeed something one could see hints of a few years ago).

Comments elsewhere (and there were many, at the time) speculated about censorship or self-censorship and led in some cases to soul-searching online discussions among old friends divided by their opinions of Russia's path... but I should let the piece speak for itself.

An Echo of Moscow
by Roman Gruzov
c. December 3, 2007

The city before the elections

In late November it was cold in Nizhny Novgorod, and the people handing out United Russia fliers on the streets were bundled up in scarves against the chill. Nizhny covered in snow feels oppressive to a person unused to the Russian provinces. The industrial areas which die out towards the evening and the touching wooden downtown, restored in some places and lop-sided and half-abandoned in others, seemed like some sort of different, unknown, incomprehensible and thus not entirely safe country. There were campaign banners on every corner, so the word "Putin" was always visible from several angles at once.

I stopped a car on the banks of the Oka and thought about those banners and about why they seemed different in Nizhny than at home. To be honest, I always paid attention only to the most odious images. For instance, on the corner of Liteiny and Nevsky, on the building where the editorial offices of Afisha used to be, there's a gigantic group photo that covers up the entire facade, with the caption "Putin's Petersburg." The second lady from the left has such a ghoulish smirk that it looks like she's promoting the next of the "Dozor" vampire movies and not the Presidential line. Not far away, a poster on a pillar reads, "You are in Putin's plan," and my gaze has been stopping on that pillar for a month, too, but only because it's odd - he's not in my plans, but I am in his. In Nizhny the quantity of these pictures is something qualitatively different, perhaps because based on the way the locals look, it's hard to understand what they have to do with these banners.

I was picked up by a green Moskvich with a driver of indeterminate age wearing yellow wraparound shades and a shabby sheepskin coat. The radio was bellowing frightfully, and I thought the speaker's voice sounded familiar. But as we drove alongside the still unfrozen river, I had a moment of doubt - the rhetoric of the person shouting from the ragged car speakers about jackals and foreign embassies was just too coarse. I thought, "Could it be Zhirik?"

The driver turned the volume up louder - louder than was proper, so much louder that it became unpleasant to be in the car. After a couple of minutes I was sure that it really was the President speaking - the radio was picking up the TV broadcast from Channel One. I felt uneasy - at any other time I would have asked the driver to turn it down, but I kept quiet. The voice coming from the radio was too insistent, the city too incomprehensible, and the driver's murky gaze from behind his yellow glasses too unpredictable. I had absolutely no desire to argue with him about politics - practically for the first time in the last seventeen years I decided that it would be better to hold my tongue. It was unpleasant, strange and somehow radically new, all at the same time - to be driven around a dark, cold city, listening to the stadium responding to the speechmaker, and to feel that you are living an a new, different time, a time when if you don't know your interlocutor's mindset it's better to stay silent. And we did stay silent - we drove along and listened as various not-so-picky people made speeches at the stadium. Then the driver drew his hand out of his tattered cuff and sharply turned off the radio. It got quiet. Then he said:

"Those assholes!"

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, opened the window and spat angrily into the frosty evening.

In Moscow the next day I learned that many of my friends had been through something similar during the past few days, and that for almost all of them the feeling of a qualitative shift was surprisingly connected with something trivial - not with the Luzhniki rally, but with some silly story. One friend's kid got sick from paint fumes, because they were painting the school starting first thing in the morning, rushing to beautify it in time for the elections. Another got into a fight with drunken teenagers on the street, and at the police station noticed they had "I'm for Putin" scarves around their necks. And in response I told everyone how to my own surprise I had been afraid to ask the driver to turn down the radio.

When I returned to St. Petersburg a day later, there were heavy trucks with barred windows parked by the train station. There were more police on Nevsky than there were pedestrians, and the farther I went the more men in uniform surrounded me. Closer to Palace Square, when the police turned into riot troops, I realized that it was because of the dissenters. There was no march whatsoever - a dozen or so pensioners stood by watching the hundreds of soldiers who had secured the square. Then they came up to me, looked at my press card, and put me in a police bus.

"You have a laptop in your bag," said a calm, mustachioed officer, "and today only journalists accredited by the Main Internal Affairs Directorate [ГУВД] are allowed to be here. Let's take a ride to the precinct, and we'll take a look at what you've got in your computer."

In the new era this was normal, and I climbed into the dark freight box of the truck without a fight. Inside were about six dejected Tajiks, a gray-haired old man with a hearing aid and teary eyes, and a radical who looked like a sad demon with horns of hairsprayed dreads. They drove us around the city for a long time, and tears flowed down the old man's cheeks from the wind blowing through the cracks in the truck. It was unpleasant to see, so we looked out through the cracks - at the police, roaming about on Nevsky among billboards showing "Putin's Petersburg," and at the people avoiding the billboards and the policemen. Everyone was silent, but this time I knew for sure what everyone else was thinking. And after three more hours or so they photographed us and let us go - all but the radical, who didn't want to hold a number up to his chest for the camera. My number was 809.

"Assholes," said the Tajiks, stepping out into the fresh air.
"Assholes," I agreed.
The old man said nothing.

That was the winter; let's hope the spring will be different. Some observers seem hopeful.

By the way, the imprecation that is repeated in the middle and at the end of the article is "суки" in the original (literally, "bitches," which somehow didn't seem to fit in English), so I took a bit of license with it - though not much license, actually. According to my trusty Русско-английский словарь ненормативной лексики (М: Астрель, 2002):

Сука ж. [...] 3. груб.-прост. Употр. как бранное слово Cf. bastard, shit, asshole (used as a term of abuse).

[Update 3/5] According to many election-day reports, Medvedev likes the metaphor of a change of seasons as well:

"Mood is good, spring is here," Medvedev said. "Though it is raining, it's a different season. It's pleasant!"

Or maybe he just didn't want to talk about anything more substantive than the weather; that, at least, was the conclusion of the NYT's Clifford Levy, who suggested that talking about the weather on election day - as opposed to, I guess, the election - was "a reflection of the tenor of the campaign." The optimist in me wants to believe he missed the subtlety of Dima's metaphor.