Few Russians really care about criticism of the Putin-Medvedev ruling ‘tandem’
IT WAS an unusually pleasant day for supporters of Russia’s beleaguered opposition movement. A warm autumn sun shone on their rally, their fractious leaders were vowing to unite under one banner, and the attendant riot police showed no inclination to haul them off to jail.
Multicoloured flags caught the breeze beside the Moscow river and passionate speeches drifted out on the mild afternoon air, mingling with the cheers and applause of the crowd.
It must have made for a pretty scene to anyone looking down from the glinting towers of the nearby Kremlin.
Viewed from up there, the 1,000 or so people gathered below would have been dwarfed by their surroundings – the heavy churn of the broad river, six-lane streets seething with traffic and the massive red walls of the Kremlin itself. But the political task they have taken on is even more daunting.
“The Russian authorities under V Putin and D Medvedev are leading the country on a path of authoritarianism and corruption, of lawlessness and the abuse of the rights and freedoms of citizens, monopolisation of power and social injustice,” read a resolution handed out at the rally.
“It is essential to change this destructive political and economic course. With this aim, we support the creation of the democratic opposition party For Russia Without Lawlessness and Corruption, and express our firm resolve to together ensure the strict observance of the constitution, principles of freedom and fairness, people-power and the supremacy of the law.”
Regular attendees of such rallies could have collected scores of similar resolutions in the last decade, since Vladimir Putin replaced president Boris Yeltsin and then moved to the prime minister’s office, after ushering his protege Dmitry Medvedev into the Kremlin.
Putin and his allies have flattened liberal opponents like skittles in the last 10 years.
The state-controlled media starve them of the oxygen of publicity, election officials tie them up in red tape and exclude their candidates from ballots, and police pounce on any unauthorised protests, sending marchers running for cover and their leaders for a short stay in jail.
Perhaps more painful than the thud of the truncheon or the bite of the handcuffs, however, is the fact that few Russians really care about their criticism of the Putin-Medvedev ruling “tandem”.
Putin presided over eight years of soaring oil values that fuelled an economic boom, raising living standards in Russia and restoring some of the pride lost during the 1990s, when the Soviet collapse plunged the country into a nightmare of poverty, rampant corruption and political chaos.
The last two years have exposed deep flaws in Putin’s handling of the economy, but surveys do not lie when they show him to be easily Russia’s most popular and trusted politician, followed by Medvedev.
This popularity is bolstered by fawningly loyal state-run media. Their coverage casts Putin in the traditional role of the “good tsar”, tirelessly working for the benefit of his people. If things go wrong – as they often do in Russia – it is due to the incompetence or treachery of the tsar’s underlings, never his own failings.
On stage at the rally, the usual opposition suspects are there, including ex-prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and former deputy premier Boris Nemtsov. Chess grandmaster turned Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov is nowhere to be seen, however, suggesting the new liberal party is not as united as it might claim.
The speakers are adamant, though, that this time there will be no infighting: they will stand as a united opposition force in next year’s parliamentary elections, and propose one candidate in a presidential election in 2012.
Is their time really coming?
Certainly, millions of Russians now find that life is getting harder again after several years of modest improvement, and Mikhail Gorbachev this week warned that “when people realise that their opinion doesn’t matter and nothing depends on them, they will take to the streets”.
It is hard to imagine today’s Russia – which Gorbachev called “a swamp of stagnation, indifference and corruption” – rising up to oust the ruling elite.
More feasible is change from within and, in Medvedev’s recent criticism of Putin’s government and his sacking of powerful Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, some see cracks appearing in the monolith of Russian power.
But in a country where the masses are apathetic, and fear or self-interest silences the rich and the influential, the most likely scenario is no change at all.
That’s how it feels at the Moscow rally, where the crowd waves its flags, the riot police look bored and a wedding party poses for photographs nearby, paying no heed to the supposed stars of the opposition movement. From the Kremlin towers across the river, this protest must look very small indeed.