Russia, The Good
'No Voice'--well of course not, fool, you have tape over your mouth.
I’ve always been a cynic about Russia. I often chalk up stories about the Russian opposition and discontent with the Putin era to Western media painting a picture of what they hope exists rather than what really is. I’ll admit, up until a couple days ago, I was poo-pooing the current protests on parliamentary elections.
But something has changed. Up until very recently, any protest of this nature would have been stamped out before it could’ve gathered momentum. The police wagons would’ve outnumbered the protestors by day’s end, and the names of arrested dissenters like Aleksei Navalny and Ilya Yashin would’ve been hushed. But now, much to my surprise, there are at least 20,000 people braving the cold in Moscow–and they’re not scared, as the video below shows:
So what’s changed? Perhaps, after four years of Medvedev the mannequin spouting liberal values, people started listening. It was all a masquerade; Medvedev talked about democracy, while Putin and his lackeys ran around and did the opposite, muffling any voice of dissent, from Yuri Luzhkov to now Aleksei Navalny, while stealing more and more from the state and creating an ever-more inept system of subordinate ministries competing for their favor at the expense of ordinary Russians. But maybe, just maybe, while Medvedev dangled democratic ideas before the noses of the perpetually disappointed Russians, people liked the sound of some of the ideas they heard.
Russians are too well-educated, and for the first time, too wealthy to treat them like absolute fools (though the bulk of Russians suffer in poverty). Yet that’s precisely what Putin did with the sham of having Medvedev assume the Presidency and play his part while Putin the strongman cavorted only to return and ‘save the day’ after a global recession. But the Kremlin doesn’t have the money it had when Putin left the Presidency. The budget continued to swell every year, but an economy that’s overly dependent on oil prices failed to find any alternative sources of revenue before prices started falling.
It’s easy to treat people like idiots when you can stuff money down their throat. But when you run out of things to stuff down, they’re bound to clear their throats and say something.
Tags: aleksei navalny, dmitri medvedev, Moscow, protests, vladimir putin, yuri luzhkov
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