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.