MOSCOW – With a week to go until Russia's parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took the stage on Sunday, Nov. 27, in front of 11,000 hooting, flag-waving United Russia delegates. He delivered a vigorous, nebulous speech about how long he has served his country (his whole life) and led a few cheers (when I say "Russia," you say "Hoorah!"). Then he formally accepted the party's nomination to represent it in the March presidential elections, which he will win in a landslide. It was both a formality and a preemptory victory lap, as well as a strange repetition of the September party congress, at which he and still-president Dmitry Medvedev agreed, essentially, to swap places. But if September's convention -- held at the same Moscow sports arena as the one yesterday -- was a curve ball, yesterday's festival of triumphalism was both expected and bizarre.

COMMENTS (8) SHARE:

Twitter

 

Reddit

 

 

More...

"This optimistic tone does not correspond to the depressive, anxious mood of many in the country right now, and it was unclear who it was aimed at," says political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky, who helped Putin win his first presidential election, in 2000. Pavlosvky  pointed out that Sunday's fanfare smacked of the "pre-crisis" era -- that is, the end of Putin's first, petroleum-fueled run as president. That chest-thumping tone was fine then, says Pavlovsky, but "today, it just looks anachronistic."

Much has changed in the years since Putin formally stepped down from the presidency. With Medvedev's arrival came talk of modernization, a détente with the United States, a bit more oxygen in the system. But in the two months since the Medvedev-Putin swap -- which seemed to dismiss all of that goodwill as formalities -- something else has changed, too: What was once easily classifiable as public apathy has quickly fermented into a very palpable dissatisfaction, and it is one that is increasingly breaking through the surface, even in places where it is not expected.

The most notable -- and most symbolic -- of these bubbles has been the "booing revolution." It started earlier this month with a concert by a legendary Soviet rock group Mashina Vremeni ("Time Machine") in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, which was going well until an emcee announced that the concert had been sponsored by the ruling United Russia party. He couldn't finish his speech because the sudden wave of booing was so loud. Later, the local authorities threw the emcee under the bus -- they were not sponsoring the concert, and he was just a provocateur -- but Kemerovo started a trend. A couple of weeks later, at a Cheliabinsk hockey game, the captain of the local team ("Tractor") skated onto the ice and read a speech praising United Russia and the Cheliabinsk governor. The crowd didn't stop booing until the player had skated back to the bench. Afterwards, Tractor's fanclub clarified that "we were booing not Antipov [the team captain] who read that speech with a sour face, but the situation itself, the governor of Cheliabinsk, and United Russia with its inappropriate attempt to promote itself."

The main event, however, came on Nov. 20, when Putin showed up at a Moscow stadium for a mixed martial arts fight between Russian Fedor Emilianenko and American Jeff Monson. Emilianenko won, and Putin decided to congratulate his compatriot by climbing into the ring and praising him as "a real Russian knight." The problem was that few people could hear him over the sound of 20,000 people booing and shouting "go away!"

123NEXT