Pro-Putin Rally: A Tale of Two (Types of) Protestors

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at the largest pro-Putin rally to date. You can read my report on it in Russia Profile, though it doesn’t quite touch on some of my personal thoughts.

It’s been widely reported – and indeed, almost common sense at this point – that many of the participants in these rallies have been heavily “encouraged” to attend, whether through open coercion from their managers or through attractive incentives, such as a bottle of hooch, a small wad of cash, or even a warm meal and a free ride. But as I spoke with a number of out-of-towners, their enthusiasm actually surprised me. Whether they had been flown in by their local administrations or employers, the group of schoolteachers from far eastern Yakutia, pictured above, were all smiles and cheers. Like many others who had come from afar, their trip had been organized “among their colleagues” but insisted they came to Moscow of their own free will. A small group of parliamentarians from Ingushetia I ran into similarly said they hopped in a car and made the two-day drive on their own dime. They, too, seemed brimming with enough enthusiasm to fill Luzhniki stadium by themselves.

Much has been made lately of this (not-so-new) phenomenon in post-Soviet Russia, mostly because of the growing protest trend here. Countless media reports have detailed pro-Putin demonstrators’ lack of enthusiasm or the explicit orders they received from their superiors to attend the rallies. No doubt, both are important factors that deserve attention (and I also touched upon “enforcing cooperation” in this report for RP). But there’s also something to be said for those, despite possible urging from above, who remain genuinely enthusiastic about supporting their regime. Yes, there’s a good chance that the Ingush parliamentarians, all of whom are members of the ruling United Russia party, were ordered to attend by the party apparatus in their home republic. But what about the schoolteachers from Yakutia? True, it’s hard to imagine their meager salaries could cover a trip across several time zones just for the rally, but then why the particular excitement? They could have showed up for an hour, made their point, and then left with the throngs of others who streamed out of the area even before Putin took the stage.

What I’m getting to is a conversation I had not long ago with the head of Transparency International’s Moscow office, Elena Panfilova, about this very topic. She wisely noted that it’s not quite so simple to paint this issue in such stark colors: that people are coerced by employers and threatened with dismissal or with suspended paychecks. Some public employees, she said, genuinely believe it’s their mission to support the powers that be. Especially in far-flung, underdeveloped regions, it simply hasn’t occurred to a generation of workers, in whom the ghost of Soviet past still lingers, that it’s even possible to contradict or reveal dissatisfaction with the authorities. It’s not necessarily thrust upon them, it’s just the “right thing to do.”

Of course, that’s not to say that there isn’t a great deal of administrative resources being leveraged here, as well. Rather, it’s just an attempt to balance out the now-popular and widespread rhetoric that such pro-Putin rallies are almost exclusively filled with paid protesters looking for an easy buck, unable to even answer why they came. As a fairly liberal Western journalist, I recognize my counterparts’ tendency to focus on the gross malfeasances often inherent to the Putin regime and anything it sponsors; this is often necessary, especially in a country largely devoid of a free press. I just think it’s worthwhile to play the devil’s advocate and shed some light on the particularly underreported idea that there are still many hundreds of thousands – and indeed millions – who still support Putin based on some degree of genuineness.

And, I guess, to prove my point that both sides of the spectrum were represented at the rally, here’s a photo I snapped of less-than-enthusiastic migrant workers passing time at the demonstration — none of whom were willing to speak with me.

Putin: The Golden Emperor

Since it’s Friday evening (Moscow time) and I’m drained of energy for the week, this’ll be a short post. But as you’ll see, there’s not much else to say.

A St. Petersburg jewelry company just announced its plans to construct and display a 36-pound bust of Vladimir Putin – in pure gold. But that’s not at all: after about a month, it reportedly plans to melt the gold down into little heart-shaped pendants, so that anyone get can a “piece of Putin,” the company spokeswoman told a local online news source. The profits from the necklaces will go toward treating children with cancer.

Of course, we all remember the last time the words “Putin” and “children’s charity” were used in the same sentence. After a 2011 charity event, in which the traditionally macho Putin shed his armor to croon a rendition of “Blueberry Hill” for the crowd of obscure celebrities, much of the money collected reportedly never even made it to the intended recipients: children dying from cancer.

But I guess I won’t go there; true, there’s very little connection between the two. Instead, let’s just quietly marvel at the idea of Putin’s ex-KGB mug immortalized – temporarily, anyway – in gold.

Kremlin Vodka: A Presidential Taste for an Alcoholic Country

For hundreds of years, the sauce has been both a cornerstone and the scourge of Russian civilization. Nearly every Russian leader since Peter the Great has attempted to deal with it – from producing it and taxing it, to limiting it and outright banning it.

More recently, Tsar Nicholas II, the last Russian emperor, outlawed it in 1914, resulting only in an influx of homemade, super-potent moonshine and a major loss of tax revenue. Then, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, attempted a similar trick in the mid-1980s by severely restricting its sale, a stunt that not only boosted the bootleg liquor industry, but drove particularly impartial Russians to consume all kinds of whacky alcoholic substances.

Today, however, the Kremlin is embracing vodka – by releasing its own brand.

Named “Kremlin Award,” the new drink was unveiled at this week’s ProdExpo 2012 in Moscow, and will be served within the presidential administration for related events. However, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reports the vodka is apparently available online for about $26. According to a presidential spokesperson, the vodka will be cooked up with only the best grains and highest quality ethanol.

Funny thing is, neither President Dmitry Medvedev nor Prime Minister (and soon to be President) Vladimir Putin are known to be vodka drinkers. Even funnier, depending on your definition of the word, is Medvedev’s statement earlier in his presidency that alcoholism has become Russia’s “national disaster” – and he’s right, as only about 40 percent of Russian school graduates live to pension age, or around 55-60 years old. He did do something about it in 2010, though, when he put a price floor on the sauce: now the cheapest vodka you can find costs about $3 per half-liter. Or slightly more than a pack of decent toilet paper.

So what’s this latest move about? Actually, your guess might be as good as mine. My only hunch is that it’s a hell of a way to ring in Putin’s third, comeback term as president. Mostly, though, it’s a relatively sad indicator of the level of cynicism and doublespeak in today’s Russia. Or at least another case of brilliantly unsubtle government ignorance – though that, admittedly, isn’t quite unique to Russia. Anyway, in a country whose citizens consume, on average, about 32 pints of pure alcohol per person per year, it simply seems like a bad joke.

But hey, cheers to The New York Post for a stupidly appropriate headline on the subject.

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Here, by the way, you can find an interesting rundown of vodka’s place in Russian history.

Ramzan Kadyrov: Corrupt, Flower-loving Pervert?

Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has never been good at avoiding controversy. From his widespread repression of domestic challengers to the suspiciously astronomic pro-United Russia voter rates in his republic (he claims his patron, Vladimir Putin, was sent from God), it seems the nasty headlines follow him everywhere he goes. And the past week or so has been no exception.

First, on February 8, came famous anti-corruption blogger and Russian opposition darling Alexei Navalny’s investigation into corruption within the upper echelons of Chechnya’s police force. Navalny’s findings, obtained through complaints filed to various regional law enforcement agencies, suggest the interior ministry misappropriated budgetary funds by lavishly spending millions of rubles on brand new luxury cars for its fleet. And because this is Chechnya, where a power vertical perhaps even more rigid than Putin’s own exists under Kadyrov’s total control, the simple excuse of “I didn’t know” simply doesn’t do. And, actually, knowing Kadyrov’s proclivity for jarringly inappropriate public commentary, I’m not so sure he’d even flatly deny it.

Then, the next day, Russian online news portal Marker published a fascinating investigation of its own – this time, into Kadyrov’s own lavish spending. According to the news source, Kadyrov is in the process of polishing off a brand new residence – estimated near the beginning of its construction in 2008 at about $10 billion – near central Grozny, the Chechen capital, where the insurgent-turned-Putin loyalist is ordering up a storm of amenities, presumably on the Russian taxpayers’ dime. Among the new features: satellite TV (including an adult channel, “Night”), an overhaul of his automobile fleet, and an elaborate garden featuring 36 hectares of lawn, more than 2,000 trees of varying species, and – my favorite part – 16,000 rose bushes. The outdoor maintenance alone, the portal estimated, would cost $1.5 million.

But none of this seems like it would phase Kadyrov – like any semi-delusional sycophant, he’s convinced he has the full backing of his people and that the growing public protest movement in Moscow could never reach Chechnya. “Even if the mayor of Grozny would allow [a public protest] and just one person came out,” he told the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid on February 15 in garbled, messy Russian, “the population itself wouldn’t allow it.” True, his stranglehold on the republic is so severe and complete that even a single soul probably wouldn’t dare publicly protest against his rule. But if he takes all his cues from Putin – which he surely does – what will happen to Kadyrov when the prime minister-cum-likely future president sees his own regime drastically erode in the coming months, as countless analysts have predicted?

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