On Sunday October 13th, the Moscow neighborhood of West Biryulevo became the site of a large anti-migrant riot. The riot ended with four hundred people detained by police, several over-turned and torched cars, and the looting and destruction of a small shopping center. It began as a meeting of residents with police to demand action in the murder investigation of Yegor Sherbakov. Sherbakov, a twenty-five year old local resident, was stabbed to death on Thursday night while walking home with his girlfriend.

People in the neighborhood speculated that the assailant might have worked at one of the many local outdoor fruit and vegetable stands or he might have been a taxi cab driver. The one thing that everyone is sure of is that the assailant was a foreigner, one of many migrant workers, or gastarbeiters, that are now living in Russia.

This riot is the most recent in a series of incidents evincing a growing tension surrounding migration from the “near abroad,” a term used in Russian to describe the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan. It comes two months after officials in Moscow set up pre-deportation detention camps for migrant workers detained en masse after a police officer was injured by the relatives of a migrant worker while trying to make an arrest at an outdoor market. Recent sweeps for migrant workers in Sochi prompted Human Rights Watch to demand that the International Olympic Committee make a statement condemning the detention and deportation of migrant workers in an Olympic host city.

It is difficult to ascertain the real number of migrants in Russia today, but estimates vary from between five and twelve million. Most migrants are employed as unskilled laborers on construction sites, as janitors, mini-bus drivers, or operate small commercial stands selling fruits and vegetables. They are extremely vulnerable to abuse by their employers, who withhold pay or confiscate passports, and by the police, who regularly conduct “document checks” and demand bribes.

While rising food prices, unemployment, or corruption are perceived to be the chief problems facing Russia, migration is steadily becoming an increasingly salient topic of public discussion. Research carried out by the Levada Center shows that there has been a considerable increase in the number of people that view migration as the paramount social problem: while only 7% of people cited ‘influx of migrants’ as the social problem that worried them most in 2007, by 2013 that figure had gone up to 27%. Politicians and the media fuel public animosity toward migrants. Television channels regularly devote attention, in the form of hour-long specials, to horrific incidents of violence allegedly perpetrated by migrant workers. Opposition and regime politicians, who usually agree on very little, are united in their negative opinion of migrant workers. In the recent Moscow mayoral election, both Sergei Sobyanin, the incumbent pro-Kremlin mayor and Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption blogger and opposition candidate, took an equally hard stance against migrants from the Caucasus and central Asia. Sobyanin campaigned on a promise to keep the Russian capital Russian and Navalny told people gathered at one of his neighborhood campaign rallies that migrant workers were responsible for the growing number of drug-users in Moscow.

With a rapidly aging working population and declining birth rates, Russia is facing a very serious demography crisis. As a result, migrant workers serve an increasingly important and increasingly visible role in the economy. In theory, the Russian government has recognized this. Last summer, President Putin endorsed the State Migration Policy Concept, a policy paper that described migration as a public good and recommended programs to help migrants more easily integrate into Russian society. In practice, however, Russian laws on the issue are complicated and indirectly discourage legal migration. Entry into the country for citizens of members of the Commonwealth of Independent States is relatively easy because of the visa-free regime. People from former Soviet republics can enter and leave Russia using their “internal passports,” a relic leftover from the Communist-era that controlled the internal movement of citizens. People entering the country this way have up to ninety days to register with local migration officials. Most do not register.

Since 2007, the government has generated a quota for the number of migrant workers that are allowed to be legally employed in Russia. While demand for labor is high, the quota is relatively low, and has been steadily reduced over the last four years , pushing more and more people into illegal employment and away from registration. Migrant workers are also subject to a higher income tax than Russian citizens, 30% instead of 13%, incentivizing them to agree to lower wages under the table rather than a higher taxable salary. The cumulative effect of this system is a large, undocumented, voiceless, and vulnerable population that has no access to social services or legal recourse to deal with employers. Rather than addressing these issues, the Russian government has focused on excluding migrants from working in certain sectors of the economy, like retail, and putting up further barriers to legal work in the form of exams on Russian language and history. In the meantime, the number of illegal migrant workers, as well as public discontent, is growing and tragic incidents like the murder of Sherbakov provide an opportunity for nationalistic groups to harness widespread casual racism into mass violent action.

Prisoners and suspects

Two years have passed since the unexpected appearance of a protest movement in Russia. Today the movement has declined. White ribbons, a symbol of the democratic movement, are out of fashion. And most of 28 participants of the peaceful oppositional meeting of the 6th of May 2012 that were arrested during the authorized demonstration in Moscow are still in prison. Ordinary people and activists have been accused in riots and violence against police during anti-Putin meeting. The meeting was much more peaceful in comparison with protests in Greece or Turkey. Experts from the President’s Council in Human Rights have even declare the guilt of officials in several cases of violence at the demonstration. But the prisoners remain in jail and a mechanism of repressions is turning around. “The Investigative Committee—a structure accountable only to president Putin—has constructed the case as a wide-ranging conspiracy stretching from rank-and-file street protestors to established politicians.”

In May 2012, many provincial activists have organized discussion camps for all interested in politics. Well-known politicians with rank-and-file activists participated. Homes of ordinary provincial activists were checked a year after. Police was searching proofs of preparation for overthrow of the state regime during the 6^th May demonstration in Moscow. However many of the pursued activists were far away from Moscow on the 6^th of May 2012. Nevertheless, even interest in politics was criminalized. It would be frightening, if it weren’t so absurd. Most of those activists are young, moderate and not very experienced. Police came to their homes in early morning, frightened them and their parents, took some agitation materials from authorized demonstrations and… did nothing after this. Activists just have got their taste of fear, and the Investigative Committee continued to search for clues of anti-Russian global conspiracy among trade-union activists in Yekaterinburg, and participants of political discussion camps in Chelyabinsk and Perm. Provincial activists witnessed this, but were not arrested. However 28 ‘prisoners of the 6th May’ are still absurdly accused of rioting, and many are in prison. Activists insist the prisoners could be free if people came out to streets and challenged government. The fact that the most popular oppositional leader, Alexey Navalny, was unexpectedly (and as experts suggested, temporary) released from custody after demonstrations in his support, verifies this wide-spread opinion. But people still haven’t free “prisoners of the 6^th of May,” possibly because the uprising needs wider aims for action.

Can we call all this repression? Even if we can, it’s very strange.

Strange protests

Strange repression came after strange protests. The first post-election demonstration on 5 December in Moscow 2011 began unexpectedly, both for authorities and opposition. Most oppositional leaders called on the democratic public to boycott the unfair and uncontested election. But among the democratically-oriented public, there was a demand for political activity. The word “citizen” had new connotations: ordinary urban residents without any activist experience considered agitation and coming to demonstrations for fair elections their civic duty. It was the most significant outburst of political activity since Perestroika. Public interest in politics was inspired after years of de-politicization and apathy. The first days of demonstrations even authorities were confused by unforeseen protests. Television reports from demonstrations were without comments, quite a-typical for dependent Russian television. However, after a few days, the authorities had formed an official opinion and strategy on the demonstrations.

Later demonstrations were authorized and passed without clashes with police. In Moscow, the demonstrations were localized in Bolotnaya square (“Bolotnaya” is a Russian word for “swampy”), which became a symbol of political loss among radical politicians and activists. The later demonstrations looked like a holiday or carnival. In interviews of the protestors, the most wide-spread expectation was “they (authorities) will know we (protesting people) are numerous.” This expectation resembles slogan from Occupy movement: “We are 99%.” Although demands for new fair elections of the president and parliament were concrete, it was obviously impracticable for authorities. Oppositional leaders were criticized for their hesitancy and uncertain strategy, but doubtfulness characterized even people’s demands and expectations. The protest movement has now declined, and even new activists, who took part in protests, say that the demonstrations were irrational. Actually, demands and argumentation of protesters were rational, but their belief in changes appears to have been irrational today.

Real protests; Real Results

However the processes of politicization have begun. It can be described as a wide and amorphous popular demand to influence to policy and politics. In different places, it takes different forms. Together with democratic protest movement, that are visible for media, different forms of local self-organization have arisen. Most of them are not well-known, but very significant for overcoming soviet practices of authoritarian policy and for forming viable communities. One of the most successful cases of self-organization is ecological movement against copper-nickel mining in agricultural region near river Khoper. This successful movement manifested not only in mass demonstrations, with sophisticated democratic system of coordination, but also in effective direct action. The incapacity for direct action was one of the significant features of the all-Russian protest movement in Moscow and many other Russian cities. Nevertheless, after anti-nickel demonstration on 22^nd June in small town Novokhopersk, people have destroyed drilling equipment that was set up illegally (video). The protesters’ anger led to an official investigation of legitimacy installation of drilling equipment. Activists caught by police, charged for rioting, were released in 3 days.

Apparently real mass popular protests yield real results, disarming the authorities.

The performance of Pussy Riot and its repression represent the deep political challenge of post communist authoritarianism and its progressive – transgressive alternatives. This is the first of two posts by Kitlinski that have great significance for Eastern Europe and beyond. -Jeff

Don’t let Putin fool you. Banishing Pussy Riot to a penal colony allowed the Russian leader to reassert his rule. Democracy be damned. Civil rights, religious freedom, and gender equality from herein would be subject to his purview. The ex-KGB officer’s message wasn’t just aimed at Russia. It was directed at all of Eastern Europe, too.

For anyone familiar with the history of regional politics, Putin’s positioning was thick with signifiers. Pussy Riot’s sentencing would please fellow reactionaries, obviously, as well as help serve as a salve for social distress. It also confirmed that the post-Communist period was formally over. Authoritarian capitalism is the rule of the day. There’s no alternative.

The political transition in post-Communist countries has turned majoritarian, as ex-Soviet bloc states start to formalize discrimination against pro-democracy forces.  Curiously, this reaction, of what can only be described as the ancien regime, both Stalinist, and its antecedents, focuses on sexual dissidence, to broadcast its worldview.  In the Ukraine, it’s Femen. In my own home, Poland, it’s Dorota Nieznalska, an artist who was convicted of blasphemy.

It’s a familiar story, one that Pussy Riot’s Nadia Tolokonnikova was quick to point out, when, in her closing statement, she compared her band’s fate to the trial of Socrates, and the kenosis of Christ. Jesus was “raving mad,” she reminded her religiously observant tormentors. “If the authorities, tsars, presidents, prime ministers, the people and judges understood what ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ meant, they would not put the innocent on trial.” Tolokonnikov also cited the prophet Hosea, in the Hebrew Bible: “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice.” Surely, the authorities were not thrilled.

Pussy Riot’s choice of Jewish scripture is of course telling, as well as calculated. The prophets argue for forgiveness (Hosea forgave his unfaithful wife) and for social justice. Tolstoy, ultrademocratic, anarchist and religious, was also in conflict with the same Orthodox Church (and excommunicated by it) that now condemns Pussy Riot. Dostoevsky similarly emphasized the importance of forgiveness in Crime and Punishment, when Raskolnikov receives it from a prostitute. Pussy Riot are obviously traditionalists.

The forces that have condemned Pussy Riot are not religious. They are secular, despite their Orthodox pretense. Pussy Riot, ironically, respond as Christians. They protest the emptiness of consumer culture, and the lack of forgiveness on the part of their persecutors. Thus, they appropriate the figure of the Virgin Mother, to criticize authoritarianism. “Mary is with us in protest! Mary, become a feminist!” the band screamed during its infamous cathedral performance.

As a Pole, I find the entire affair reminiscent of an attack on the previously mentioned Dorota Nieznalska, at a Gdansk gallery, where her seminal Passion installation was being exhibited in 2002. The work, an exploration of masculinity and suffering, shows a cross on which the photograph of a fragment of a naked male body, including the genitalia, has been placed.

Staged by members of the reactionary League of Polish Families, the political party sued the artist over the exhibit.  In July 2003, a court found Nieznalska guilty “offending religious feelings” and sentenced to half a year of “restricted freedom” (she was banned from leaving the country.) When the judge read her sentence, members of the League packed the courtroom and applauded ecstatically. It took six years, but Nieznalska’s conviction was eventually overturned in July 2009, on the grounds that her freedom of speech had been violated.

Nonetheless, Nieznalska  suffered inestimable damage as  consequence of her successful prosecution. For years, Polish galleries refused to show her work. It took curator Pawel Leszkowicz to rehabilitate her reputation, by featuring her sadomasochist works in the exhibitions Love and Democracy and the GK Collection, claiming she was working in the S&M tradition of renown Polish writer Bruno Schulz.

I could go on. My point is that misogyny is the biggest threat to Eastern Europe’s incomplete democracies, and that it’s been a problem across the region for a good while now, not just in Russia. Abortion, for example, is banned, and a number of cultural and economic constraints on women and queers alike exist. Female artists who deal with sexuality have been especially hard hit by censorship. Pussy Riot is just the best-known example.

If Pussy Riot is what it takes to wake the West up to this situation, and help us complete our transition to democracy, so be it. Until then, as it has been said, we are all Pussy Riot. I’m sure the ‘band’, as it were, would agree with me.

The post was originally published in ‘Souciant’ (August 23^rd, 2012) under the title “Pussy Riot in Polish.” Tomasz Kitlinski acknowledges the help of Joel Schalit, editorial director of Souciant, for his assistance in preparing the English text version.

An interview recently published in the Polish online journal, Kultura Liberalna, posted here, provides an interesting insider’s view of how the political situation there is understood from the point of view of Putin’s opposition. Lukasz Pawlowski, a Ph.D. Candidate at the Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw and a contributing editor to Kultura Liberalna, interviews Lilia Shevtsova, a political scientist and expert on Russian politics. She served as director of the Center for Political Studies in Moscow and as deputy director of the Moscow Institute of International Economic and Political Studies. Currently she is a senior associate at the Moscow office of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is the author of numerous publications including her latest book Change or Decay: Russia’s Dilemma and the West’s Response (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011).

This interview raises a number of significant issues, concerning the problems of democratization and the problems of Russia. Most fundamental is that the democratization of Russia requires Russian action. Outsiders, “the West,” and specifically the United States, cannot do much about this. This is a theme we have been observing in many parts of the world. Consider, for example, how Elzbieta Matynia reflects on the issue as it applies to Egypt, Poland and South Africa.

And then the interview gets into the particulars: critically appraising the strengths and weaknesses of the democratic opposition Russia, reflecting on the Medvedev – Putin relationship, and how each of these figures challenge the democratic project, judging the short and long term prospects of democratic movement in Russia, and the necessity of change from the bottom up. One of Shevtsova’s more provocative claims is that Russia is better off with Putin than Medvedev as President.

To read the interview of Lilia Shevtsova “Do Not Democratize Russia: We Will Do It Ourselves,” click here.

Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate at the Moscow Carnegie Center and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on Russian politics, democratic opposition and on why Putin may be better than Medvedev

_________

Lukasz Pawlowski: Why haven’t the mass protests prevented Mr. Putin from winning the presidential election for the third time?

Lilia Shevtsova: Because the protest tide was weak, it wasn’t a real tsunami. The December movement had no structured leadership and no concrete agenda. It wasn’t strong enough to force political leaders in the Kremlin even to think about some serious change at the moment. Nonetheless, it shocked them and proved the society has awakened although luckily for the Kremlin it is not that frightening yet.

In Russia there are numerous parties and non-governmental organizations working against the regime for democratization. There have been there for many years and now when they got a marvelous opportunity to achieve at least some of their goals they missed it. They have been working long to get Russian society out in the streets and when they finally managed to do that they seemed completely surprised.

Everybody was surprised, maybe with exception of some people, who – just like myself – have been telling themselves every year, every month: “it will come, it will come, the bubble will burst”. But even we were not sure, when it will happen. The number of people that took to the streets was some kind of revelation. Even sociological instruments failed to reveal, what was happening beneath the surface of the society. The most respectable survey institution, Levada Center – the best in Russia, and maybe even in Europe – before the parliamentary elections in December estimated that the Kremlin party, United Russia, will get about 55% of the votes, while in the end it got officially only 45% and in reality less than 35% of the vote. So yes, for many people in the society, even in the opposition the events that followed parliamentary elections were unexpected.

But why has the opposition failed in their hour of trial, despite the fact, that we have so many movements, groups and parties? Why have they failed to get together, to find a common platform and deliver some message to the society?

There are several reasons. Firstly, the opposition is incredibly fragmented and the fragmentation has been much supported by the authorities, because it works to their advantage. Secondly too many oppositionists come from the 1990’s and therefore lack credibility in Russian society. The Russians are tired of that period and do not want it to come back. Thirdly, it was not that the political movements were not prepared for any kind of breakthrough. They were prepared for a long period of legal struggle, but they were not ready for people taking to the streets. This latter situation calls for totally different tactics, political ones.

Are you saying that the Russian opposition is not a political movement?

A lot of demands made by Russian December movement are still moral and ethical. They are calls for human dignity, for mutual respect. This is in fact chiefly a normative agenda not a profound political agenda. So, this movement has to be politicized and the people who organize and work for it, need to understand that politization requires constant and often mundane work. The opposition cannot succeed just by organizing carnivals or happenings. It cannot be a hipster movement or a flashmob. It also cannot have too much faith in the Internet and social media. These are only tools, they can bring people out to the streets but they can also atomize them. Invited through Facebook or Twitter many people came, but then when standing on the Sacharov Prospect they saw many different people around them and began to ask themselves “What really unites us?” Some of them were there solely against Putin and if he left the Kremlin they would be satisfied, some of them would like to raise their status within the system, without changing it and making revolutions, finally some of them would like to change the system itself. It is the role of the political opposition to find a platform for unification and consolidation of those various groups. In my view the movement cannot be based solely on the rejection of the previous regime but needs a constructive element in it, a project of constitutional and political reform. We need to realize that we are not fighting Putin personally. The major problem is not the particular personality at the Kremlin, but the rules of the game – the personalized power and its close connections with big industry.

Will the opposition eventually succeed?

I’m pretty sure that this movement will continue. The first tide has subsided, but there will be second, third, fourth tide, although I’m not certain what will be the result of those tides. What will be the intervals between them? Will they succeed in Moscow and St. Petersburg in uniting people on the basis of broad liberal and democratic values, not only dignity, but rule of law and political competition?

A lot depends on whether the opposition succeeds to reach people living outside the two major cities, in provincial Russia. There are up to 45-48 million people living in the former Soviet industrial cities. They are also dissatisfied with the regime, but their protests may be provoked by another set of reasons. People who took to the streets in Moscow were moved by moral, ethical and to some extent political demands. The people in the post-soviet industrial Russia can be moved by social and economical woes. The problem though is that they might long to solve their problems by looking for a new “savior,” i.e. the leader who will promise that he can deal with all their miseries in the same way as Yeltsin and Putin had promised before. Such person would only take Putin’s place while keeping all the pathologies of the Russian political matrix. The major question is therefore how to combine all those social tides, how to find some common denominator and how, at the same time, to reach people with ethical, political and socio-economic demands, how not to leave the “second “ Russia behind.

Would it be easier for the protesters if Dmitri Medvedev continued as a president? His attitude towards the opposition seemed to have been a little more open than Putin’s.

Somehow paradoxically I believe that the return of Putin is better for the opposition. Medvedev’s second term would prolong hopes that he could make a difference, that he could finally become a reformer and modernizer we long for. The return of Putin gives us much clearer picture and it is better to have certainty than delude oneself that change may come from the Kremlin. During the last four years Medvedev has proved that he’s “Mr. Nobody.” He never delivered anything he promised, and he already looks in retrospective like Brezhnev who also increased the disparity between declarations on the one hand and deeds on the other. In this way Brezhnev in fact helped the society to understand the rotten nature of the Soviet system. So maybe the fact that Medvedev had promised too much and never delivered will eventually be his only positive legacy that will push the educated Russians to believe that no change can come from the top.

And what will happen to Medvedev now?

Who cares! Apparently because he was promised the post of the prime minister, he will become the prime minister but nobody will ever take any notice of him, because nobody respects him.

But he has been the president for four years. You cannot forget about this. How will the authorities officially refer to his time in power? You have to explain to the people why Putin has come back. Is it because Medvedev was such a bad president that Putin had to intervene?

They are not going to talk about that this way. The period will enter the Russian history as a period of a Putin-Medvedev tandem, which in fact has achieved some goals. Firstly it created a possibility for Putin’s return to the Kremlin. Secondly it has achieved another goal, very important, of seducing the West, chiefly the United States, which believed a reset in relations with Russia is possible. You know there were many people who thought that Medvedev was a new page in Russian history. So from this point of view that tandem has fulfilled some positive goals for the regime. It helped it to survive. But now, when we are approaching the end of this tandem regime, we see that it also had some drawbacks. It undermined the presidential power and started to desacralize it. Medvedev contributed a lot to desacralization of the Russian Presidency.

Especially after the overheard conversation with Barack Obama when Medvedev said he would repeat everything to Putin, we all realized he is simply a kind of liaison officer with no decisive powers. Looking from this perspective, how do you think the return of the old/new president is going to affect Russian foreign policy?

The paradigm of Russian foreign policy will not change because the system remains the same. The foreign policy is determined by the domestic agenda. So if the leader is the same, if the system is the same, if the regime is the same, how could the foreign policy become radically different? Thus Putin will continue with the same foreign policy paradigm, which is based on two pillars. The first is pragmatism. Putin understands that Russia depends on its exports to the West and the well-being of the Russian ‘rentier class’ depends on the oil prices and gas production. What is more the elite is personally integrated into the West. Their kids are in schools in London. They have accounts in western banks. They live in the West and would like to have free access to it. Therefore, Russia cannot become a totally closed country. On the other hand, we need to remember that the Russian society has moved, and Putin needs some means to control it. He will be trying to get them by launching anti-western campaigns, by constantly searching for an external-internal enemy and by being anti-American. Thus in the end, he will have to walk a very thin line, proving at the international level that he is a pragmatist who can be dealt with, while at the same time provoking anti-Western feelings inside the country. Until recently, he has been pretty successful in riding two horses in opposite directions, but my hunch is that in the nearest future it will become too complicated for him. There will be much more anti-Americanism, anti-Western feelings, and much more aggressiveness and assertiveness in the Russian foreign policy because – having no means to solve domestic problems with domestic resources – Putin will be accusing the alleged enemies to distract the attention of the public from other issues. So the foreign policy will be much more, I would say, assertive than before.

Is there anything the West can do to prevent this turn? Do you think that increasing the international support for democratization in Russia would be a good idea? On the one hand, it might help a lot of democratic and non-governmental organizations, on the other, however, it might provoke a fierce reaction of the authorities and help them present Russia as a besieged fortress.

It’s a very complicated question, and there is no unanimously accepted answer to it. I’m not sure that my opinion on that is popular even among other Russian liberals. I would say that the old model of democracy promotion that has been successful during the third tide of democratization is now outdated and has lost its effectiveness. At that time, the western foundations and governments were trying to help to promote democratic norms and rules of the game in transitional societies and in authoritarian societies as well. For instance, they tried to help those societies to build parties, to understand the importance of the parliament, democratic elections, free media etc. In my view, Russian society does not need this kind of assistance. Western money coming to Russia to support different initiatives and to support democratic cells within the society could be counter-productive, because – as you said – the authorities can always present the recipients of such assistance as a kind of fifth column and thus discredit domestic routes to democracy. True, we have different groups and organizations that have no financial means and survive using foreign funds. They are good people doing good job. They defend citizens against the authorities. They address the West when they notice human right abuses etc. If the West cuts its financial help, those groups will cease to exists, so some external support is definitely needed. Western governments should not do anything more though. It seems to me that Russian society already understands what democracy is, what party building is, what independent parliament is, what free media is. Thus we really need to rely upon our own sources and create our own movement.

In that case is there anything the West can do?

Certainly, it can do at least three things. First, it would help us if the West practices what it preaches. Hypocrisy diminishes the West a systemic alternative for Russia. Second, the western leaders when communicating with their Russian counterparts should remind them that Russia belongs to the Council of Europe, that it signed various declarations and promised to follow the rules of the game that are written in the declaration on human rights. Being a member of the Council of Europe means that Russian domestic decisions are not entirely up to Russian politicians, that the West can criticize Russia. Third, the West can significantly influence what is going on in Russia by influencing the Russian elite abroad. If western governments tried to persuade the representatives of the Russian political and business elite living and working in western countries that their possibilities in those countries depend on how they behave in Russia, it would be a great asset and assistance to democratization movements. Regretfully, western governments are ready to send money to the Russian society to support human rights activists, but they are not willing to do anything to influence members of the Russian political elite who live within their borders.

But you yourself are an analyst at a multinational foreign policy think-tank, independent, yet as it says on its official website “promoting active international engagement by the United States.” Does this affiliation somehow influence your work?

Yes, I work for the Carnegie Moscow center that is affiliated with the Carnegie Endowment, but I work with many other institutions: I am an associate of the Chatham House, member of the Davos World Economic Forum Global Councils Network (and the founding chair of the Global Council for Future of Russia), and even a key researcher for the Institute of Economy (the Russian Academy of Sciences). I expect all these institutions to give me total freedom of expression. My colleagues at Carnegie may have different views on Russia and the rest of the world. Some of them are defenders of the US-Russian reset. I am its tough critic. I’ve never experienced any pressure from those institutions, including Carnegie Endowment. The Moscow Carnegie Center has its own status and its own agenda. It is funded by many Western foundations (not only Carnegie), and it accepts funds only on the basis of having total independence in using these funds for the democratic agenda. The fact that our autonomy is respected allows us to be part of this network. It allows me to be critical of Obama administration (I was critical of Bush too) and its policy toward Russia. My personal agenda is the Russian transformation. This goal sometimes coincides with the western agenda and sometimes not.

Can a radical change in Russian political system come about only by a pressure exercised by a bottom-up movement or is at least a tacit consent of the elites needed as well? If so, which elites are likely to become tired of Putin – military, economic, political, maybe religious?

The last nearly 20 years have proven that real transformation of the Russian system can come only under pressure from the society, that is from the broad social and political movement. Just like the transformation of the communist systems that took place in the Eastern and Central Europe. Any top down changes within the Russian matrix can only either prolong its life or (ironically) start to undermine it. However, even in this latter case, we cannot guarantee a civilized and peaceful transformation, but rather a sudden collapse. That is why the organized social movement and some pressure from the bottom are needed.

Nonetheless a peaceful transformation will depend on whether the ruling elite gets fragmented, and pragmatic grouping emerge that will be interested in a pact with the anti-systemic opposition. Hopefully, this will happen. From my observations, the majority of experts working for the Kremlin understand that the system is not sustainable in the longer run. They are simply not ready to become heroes yet… They are not kamikaze. Despite that I hope such cooperation sooner or later will be established. Who will join the opposition? It is difficult to say – it depends on the degree of courage, understanding and… conformism too. Much depends also on when we will have the next tide of wrath and whether it will trigger some serious work on the political and ideological alternative. Because, you know, the worst scenario will be if the Russian system starts to unravel before the alternative is built.

This interview originally appeared in Kultura Liberalna no. 172 (17/2012), April 24, 2012, Olga Byrska, Jakub Dadlez and Konrad Kamiński providing assistance.

A couple of days before the election, thousands of independent ballot observers waited in long lines to receive their training and instructions. The observers – unpaid volunteers – had arrived from Moscow, from other cities and from the countryside. Russian newspaper editor Dmitri Surnin wrote that the atmosphere among the waiting crowds resembled the mood during a citizens’ mobilization on the eve of war. “And your political preferences don’t matter, if you’re a leftist, or right, green, liberal, monarchist or communist – when the Fatherland is in danger, everybody needs to stand together.”

The war to which Surnin refers is one between the people who want to play it by the rules and those who want to falsify the elections and obstruct Russia’s democratic course. He cynically observes that the first group will be convinced of their moral victory, with the law and the truth on their side, but the second group will steal the real triumph, with the courts, the police, and Vladimir Putin on theirs.

Indeed, Putin won. Now let’s talk about the moral victors. A number of originally internet-based groups managed to organize a citizens’ army of more than 80,000 volunteers, who enlisted to visit polling stations to be on the lookout for election fraud. As reporter Anna Nemtsova remarked, “They are bound to turn up convincing evidence of fraud, made more vivid by cell phone-camera footage that could bear on the post-election politics, including the size of protests.”

As I have written earlier, the leaders of Russia’s managed democracy have not shown any interest in letting citizens participate in a meaningful way. The strong executive branch together with the weak judicial and legislative branches deny Russians the possibility of acting in an open civil society with easily accessible institutions, where they can exercise their democratic rights and responsibilities, as is the tradition in US and European societies. However, this presumes that a democratic system operates with one, integrated political space. In Russia, by focusing on the federal level and the power struggles in the Kremlin, it is easy to overlook regional and local developments. And, as I am learning, the analysis of non-traditional forms of political deliberation, such as discussions that take place on the Internet on online forums and blogs, reveal significant democratic developments.

The existence of a real opposition, in addition to the loyal opposition parties and presidential candidates who are manufactured by and in cahoots with the current rulers, has been noted. Especially the massive demonstrations in Moscow, and some 60 other Russian cities against the election fraud during last December’s parliamentary elections, have forced observers to take account of an increasingly visible citizens’ movement. But overall, their initiatives have been judged to be powerless and their mostly suburban (upper) middle class members to be isolated.

I question this judgment of their powerlessness and isolation. Long before the biggest protests in 20 years, there have been signs of democratic practices. Both offline and online, citizens have been involved in political and social issues, and have achieved results. The political activities ranged from street protests, to local referenda, to the posting of privately produced, critical videos on YouTube. This also included many postings of recordings of earlier and ongoing election fraud. It is this kind of political energy that has gone largely unnoticed, but laid the groundwork for the recent large-scale political protests. The new social relationships that have been formed with the aid of new technologies indicate new ways of citizen participation in a transforming democracy. Also activities such as posting political comments and sharing news stories, indicate involvement with the political and attest to new social habits and routines with political consequences. In the long term, this broad public engagement will be consequential on the central political stage.

Although communication between government and citizens is limited, very recently, the activities in virtual space in the form of political deliberations in online media outlets, and online manifests have proven to be meaningful. Those people who discussed their ideas about political, economic, social and cultural issues were the same ones who attended the massive demonstrations. The volunteer observers who initially met online, came face to face with each other in countless polling stations, showing community democracy in action. Their actions show their interest in a peaceful process towards a more equal and robust form of democracy.

The pressing issue, then, is not about Russian authoritarian political culture, but whether society’s democratic values will become institutionalized into the political system. I think in the long run this is likely. The authoritarian system has not quashed the citizens’ developing democratic values. It has not been able to suppress the free exchange of democratic ideas, and it has not prevented democratic practices. Yes, many Russians have voted for Putin out of fear that a vote against him can lead to a return to the uncertainties of the 1990s. And many voted for him, because there wasn’t a real alternative. But as journalist Surnin wrote, “The uncommon numbers of people volunteering as election observers was the most surprising and happy phenomenon in today’s political life.” And on the first day after the elections, Russia is seeing again massive protests against the election fraud. To be continued.

A reasonably deliberate reader of the New York Times might have been flummoxed by an article that appeared last month on the front page.  The article, titled, Using Microsoft, Russia Suppresses Dissent, tells many moral tales simultaneously – none of them thoroughly, none of them systematically.

Beginning with the story of a raid by plainclothes Russian police on the environmental group, Baikal Environmental Wave’s headquarters (confiscating the group’s computers to search for pirated Microsoft software), the article presents no fewer than five topics and themes for the reader to consider.  Among these are political corruption and abuse of power in contemporary Russia, capitalism’s dilemmas dealing with piracy, Microsoft’s complicity with authoritarian governments in trumped-up “crackdowns” on software piracy, problems of unemployment in Siberia and the re-opening of a paper factory in Irkutsk, and the pollution of Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake, by just such factories.

A long article, continuing on an inside page and including three photographs (one of dead fish on the banks of the lake) and one chart, the article promises an in-depth report of a significant story.  But what is the story?

Normally, newspapers neatly divide the world of news into pre-ordained categories of experience – International News, National News, Sports, Business, Health and Science, Home, Arts and Leisure.  These divisions give us readers an illusion of clarity and coherence when absorbing information about real-world events.  But events are complicated and don’t come in pre-packaged categories.  So on the one hand, kudos to the New York Times for short-circuiting the readers’ expectations.

But on the other hand, the story also short-circuits the reader’s ability to make critical connections among the issues inelegantly tumbled together (capitalism, authoritarianism, unemployment, and environmentalism), or the ability to move upward to a higher level of analysis, and to critique the assumptions of a world-view that, in spite of its acknowledgment of political dissent, is never troubled by the imperatives of capitalism itself.

Here, David Harvey’s book, Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference is a useful interlocutor.  Harvey aims to do precisely what the article avoids – to ask questions that connect Siberian workers’ need for industrial jobs with the dangers of pollution of Lake Baikal, with the global dominance of Microsoft, with capitalism’s contingent complicity with political authoritarianism.  Through an analysis of the philosophical and political roots of both socialist thought and environmentalist thought, Harvey sets out to answer the question: “how did we arrive at this seeming impasse in which the struggle for emancipation from class oppressions appears so antagonistic to the struggle to emancipate human beings from a purely instrumental relation to nature?”

Of course, Harvey’s question allows us to make sense of the “Using Microsoft, Russia Suppresses Dissent” article in one way only.  There are other angles of vision, to be sure, including that exploring ongoing challenges for “post-authoritarian” societies to be truly post-authoritarian.  The point is that deliberate readings of confusing media reports take effort and time and a willingness to engage in a reconfiguring reading.  They require, in other words, theoretically informed deliberation.