Bolotnaya Eight: Putin is scared of Moscow Maidan

Published on February 28, 2014

Politics

As Yanukovych fled in fear, Vladimir Putin put his foot down. On Mon­day the ‘Bolot­naya Eight’ were sen­tenced to a com­bined total of 20 years in prison for par­tic­i­pat­ing in an anti-gov­ern­ment protest on 6 May 2012, the eve of Putin’s third in­au­gu­ra­tion. The charges of vi­o­lence are du­bi­ous and were never proved be­yond the in­con­sis­tent tes­ti­monies of a hand­ful of riot po­lice. One pro­tes­tor, Yaroslav Be­lousov, 22, was sen­tenced to 2 and a half years for throw­ing a lemon, which po­lice re­ported as an ‘uniden­ti­fied hard yel­low ob­ject’ which caused an of­fi­cer ‘ex­cru­ti­at­ing pain’.

But why is the Bolot­naya case so im­por­tant, when so many other Rus­sians have al­ready been im­pris­oned on trumped-up charges? The case has a pow­er­ful sym­bol­ism, since Bolot­naya Square is where the protest move­ment first took off in De­cem­ber 2011.

I was sit­ting in a café with a Russ­ian friend in Moscow on 5 De­cem­ber 2011, the day after the brazenly fraud­u­lent state Duma elec­tions. We dis­cussed how some re­gions had re­ported im­pos­si­ble re­sults of 99.5% sup­port for Putin’s United Rus­sia party. We joked about how pro-gov­ern­ment vot­ers had been bussed from polling sta­tion to polling sta­tion, vot­ing for United Rus­sia over and over again through­out the day, cheer­ful lit­tle carousels of fraud. It wasn’t funny, but the only thing you could do was laugh for we knew noth­ing would change.

But this time was dif­fer­ent

My friend sud­denly lost in­ter­est in me and stared at her phone in dis­be­lief be­fore be­gin­ning to text fu­ri­ously. This cycle was re­peated, her dis­be­lief and her tap­ping in­ten­si­fy­ing each time. Fi­nally she looked up, her face con­torted in a cu­ri­ous cock­tail of dis­be­lief, fear and ex­cite­ment. “They're protest­ing!” she shouted, “Thou­sands of peo­ple are protest­ing at Chistye Prudy! My sis­ter's friend was just ar­rested!”

Win­ter snow was falling out­side. Putin's party had just 'won' an­other re­sound­ing vic­tory. It should have been busi­ness as usual in Rus­sia, but for once civil so­ci­ety was not about to hi­ber­nate. This time was dif­fer­ent.

Five days later on Sat­ur­day 10 De­cem­ber, Bolot­naya Square hosted the biggest street protest Rus­sia had seen in 20 years since the col­lapse of the So­viet Union. 50, 000 peo­ple gath­ered in the snow. Rus­sia was awak­en­ing. It felt like some­thing was hap­pen­ing. “Bolot­naya” be­came syn­ony­mous with free­dom and change. “Bolot­naya” was a magic word.

Fast for­ward two years and things are dif­fer­ent. In­stead of a totem of re­sis­tance and mass sol­i­dar­ity, “Bolot­naya” has be­come syn­ony­mous with a cruel, scripted trial. By mak­ing an ex­am­ple of these young, non-rad­i­cal pro­tes­tors, stu­dents with hopes and dreams for the fu­ture, the gov­ern­ment sought to reap­pro­pri­ate the sym­bol­ism of Bolot­naya Square. The au­thor­i­ties have poi­soned that magic word.

But the gov­ern­ment has gone fur­ther than just neu­tral­is­ing sym­bols. Dur­ing his third term, Putin has rav­aged Rus­sia’s in­cip­i­ent civil so­ci­ety with a blitz of leg­is­la­tion. Fines for par­tic­i­pants of ‘un­sanc­tioned’ protests have in­creased 150-fold to £6000. The legal de­f­i­n­i­tion of trea­son has been ex­panded to in­clude al­most any­one who deals with for­eign­ers. In No­vem­ber 2012 he clob­bered NGOs with the ‘for­eign agents law’.

As the “Bolot­naya Eight” were sen­tenced on Mon­day, pro­tes­tors out­side the court­room chanted “Maidan! Maidan!” in­vok­ing the as­ton­ish­ing achieve­ment of Ukrain­ian pro­tes­tors who had de­posed their Pres­i­dent over the week­end. But as the po­lice rounded up 200 pro­tes­tors and bun­dled them into vans, there was a sense that the Ukrain­ian rev­o­lu­tion would ren­der change all the more un­at­tain­able for the Russ­ian op­po­si­tion. A scared au­to­crat is a cruel au­to­crat and there was no doubt Putin was quak­ing.

Fear is Putin’s dri­ving force

I spoke to Alexis Prokopiev, the Pres­i­dent of Russie Lib­ertés, a Paris-based civil rights or­gan­i­sa­tion that fo­cuses on democ­racy in Rus­sia. He tells me that fear has been Putin’s pri­mary dri­ving force dur­ing his third pres­i­den­tial term. On the eve of his third in­au­gau­ra­tion, “Putin didn’t ex­pect 200, 000 peo­ple to take to the streets,” says Prokopiev, “He was afraid, and that’s why he pur­sued all these laws against lib­erty.”

Prokopiev says this fear was in­ten­si­fied ex­po­nen­tially by events in Ukraine, “Putin knows that his regime is just as cor­rupt and au­thor­i­tar­ian and he is afraid that he’ll end up like Yanukovych. The heavy pun­ish­ments [for the Bolot­naya Eight] are Putin’s way of send­ing a mes­sage to any­body think­ing about tak­ing part in protests.”

Doesn’t all this paint a bleak pic­ture of Rus­sia’s fu­ture? Prokopiev does not think so. “In re­al­ity, pro­tes­tors and civil so­ci­ety in Rus­sia have be­come so used to this type of op­pres­sion, it doesn’t dis­cour­age them from tak­ing civil ac­tions,” he says, “He can’t sup­press Russ­ian civil so­ci­ety be­cause civil so­ci­ety has woken up.” In­deed the en­dur­ing image from Mon­day 24 Feb­ru­ary is not the Bolot­naya Eight being led away in chains and packed off to penal colonies in Siberia. Nei­ther is it the ar­rest of 200 peo­ple out­side the court room, amongst them Alexei Navalny and Pussy Riot Mem­bers Nadezhda Tolokon­nikova and Maria Alyokhina.

No, Mon­day will be re­mem­bered for the day's sec­ond demon­stra­tion, which was led by peo­ple who were ar­rested ear­lier, re­leased in the evening and im­me­di­ately re­turned to the streets to protest. Russ­ian civil so­ci­ety is like a bal­loon- when Putin squeezes one part it bulges out else­where. Every Putin re­pres­sion seems to en­hance Rus­sians’ re­silience, every blow in­creases their courage and bravado. It seems Putin’s fear is not only well-founded - his para­noia is a self-ful­fill­ing proph­esy.