#OccupyMoscow

Protesters crying foul, armoured vehicles in the streets -- is this what an election victory looks like in Putin's Russia?

BY JULIA IOFFE | DECEMBER 6, 2011

On Monday night, 24 hours after the polls closed in Russia's parliamentary elections and United Russia claimed victory with 49 percent of the vote, some 6,000 young Russians stood out in the cold rain in the park at Chistye Prudy voicing their dissatisfaction. "Putin is a thief!" and "Russia without United Russia!" they shouted, teasing the once-and-future president by calling him Mr. Botox.

When they started to march and the riot police attacked, they didn't budge. They yelled "This is our city!" and "Shame on you!" and appealed to the police as fellow citizens. "Are you ashamed when you go home and take off that uniform?" one protester asked a helmeted cop. It was an exceptional sight in a city that rarely sees more than a few hundred elderly protestors at opposition rallies. Today, despite the controversy over the elections and rumors swirling about those detained last night and more protests later in the evening, the feeling of euphoria in Moscow is unmistakable, uplifting, and addictive.

But, even if this is the beginning of something big and civic and beautiful -- a "Russian Tahrir" as one of the speakers at last night's rally predicted -- it's still very much the beginning, and still very much a big "if." The opposition -- a disorganized group of small organizations and unaffiliated well-wishers -- will have an uphill battle to fight its way to power, or to get United Russia to concede an inch of ground. And this despite a rather embarrassing showing at the polls.

As the parliamentary vote approached, United Russia was slipping in public opinion polls and was being booed at public events. In May, one third of Russians polled agreed with the Internet meme created by blogger and anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny that it was "the party of crooks and thieves." By Sunday, election day, the figure had to be still higher. The Kremlin began to lash out, attacking the one independent election monitor in Russia, shuttering media sites popular with the young liberal intelligentsia, as well as LiveJournal, Russia's main blogging platform with 13 million users.

On Sunday, when Russians went to the polls, reports of widespread fraud abounded. Lenta.ru's Ilya Azar reported on how he participated in a "carousel," a Russian electoral innovation wherein voters are bused around to various polling stations, voting for United Russia at each stop. I observed the ballot count in Yasenevo, in Moscow's southwest, where suspiciously neat stacks of ballots -- all for United Russia -- appeared whenever a ballot box was cracked open and its contents counted. Of the voters I spoke to, many had come out for the first time in a decade just to cast a ballot in protest against United Russia's monopoly on the political process. Of those that voted for them (and, to be fair, there were quite a few genuine, staunch supporters of Putin and United Russia) I met one young man who had asked the officials registering him to vote if they had any suggestions. "They told me, ‘If you vote for United Russia, you'll have a surprise waiting for you,'" he explained outside the polling station near my apartment. When he got into the booth, there was a black plastic bag waiting for him. Inside was a bottle of vodka and some plastic cups.

And yet, despite all this, despite the impossible numbers in places like Chechnya -- 99.5 percent voter turnout, 99.48 percent of whom voted for United Russia -- the ruling party couldn't even get 50 percent of the vote. By Monday morning, with most of the votes counted, United Russia's share of the Duma stood at 49.5 percent. (Last time there was a parliamentary election, in 2007, United Russia got 64.3 percent.) The percentages of the so-called systemic opposition -- the Communists, the nationalist LDPR, and the left-leaning Just Russia -- for whom people were voting mostly in protest, doubled. In many regions, United Russia's share of the vote hovered around one-third.

OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP/Getty Images

 SUBJECTS: RUSSIA, EASTERN EUROPE
 

Julia Ioffe is Foreign Policy's Moscow correspondent.

MR900USA

3:22 AM ET

December 7, 2011

This is global revolution

I don't see how our corrupt governments plan to stop this madness. One thing for sure, they don't like bunch of civilians waking up at the same time

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NADIYAMANCHESTER

4:15 AM ET

December 7, 2011

No This is not happening in

No This is not happening in America. America is doing all this. America is doing all this in all countries and they want to capture the whole world..!!
Look at this statement.
"a longtime Guatemalan human rights activist who has held his U.N. post for three years, said it's clear to him that the protesters have a right to occupy public spaces "as long as that doesn't severely affect the rights of others."
In moments of crisis, governments often default to a forceful response instead of a dialogue, he said -- but that's a mistake.
"Citizens have the right to dissent with the authorities, and there's no need to use public force to silence that dissension," he said.
"One of the principles is proportionality," La Rue said. "The use of police force is legitimate to maintain public order -- but there has to be a danger of real harm, a clear and present danger. And second, there has to be a proportionality of the force employed to prevent a real danger."
And history suggests that harsh tactics against social movements don't work anyway, he said. In Occupy's case, he said, "disbanding them by force won't change that attitude of indignation."
Occupy encampments across the country have been forcibly removed by police in full riot gear, and some protesters have been badly injured as a result of aggressive police tactics."
"The demonstrations are treated as if they're presumptively criminal," she said. "Instead of looking at free speech activity as an honored and cherished right that should be supported and facilitated, the reaction of local authorities and police is very frequently to look at it as a crime scene."
What they should do, Verheyden-Hilliard said, is make it their mission to allow the activity to continue.
Using the same lens placed on the Occupy movement to look at, say, the protest in Egypt, Verheyden-Hilliard said, observers would have focused on such issues as "Did the people in Tahrir Square have a permit?"
La Rue said the protesters are raising and addressing a fundamental issue. "There is legitimate reason to be indignant and angry about a crisis that was originated by greed and the personal interests of certain sectors," he said. That's especially the case when the bankers "still earn very hefty salaries and common folks are losing their homes."
"In this case, the demonstrations are going to the center of the issue," he said. "These demonstrations are exactly challenging the basis of the debate."

"The demonstrations are treated as if they're presumptively criminal," she said. "Instead of looking at free speech activity as an honored and cherished right that should be supported and facilitated, the reaction of local authorities and police is very frequently to look at it as a crime scene."
What they should do, Verheyden-Hilliard said, is make it their mission to allow the activity to continue.
Using the same lens placed on the Occupy movement to look at, say, the protest in Egypt, Verheyden-Hilliard said, observers would have focused on such issues as "Did the people in Tahrir Square have a permit?"
La Rue said the protesters are raising and addressing a fundamental issue. "There is legitimate reason to be indignant and angry about a crisis that was originated by greed and the personal interests of certain sectors," he said. That's especially the case when the bankers "still earn very hefty salaries and common folks are losing their homes."
"In this case, the demonstrations are going to the center of the issue," he said. "These demonstrations are exactly challenging the basis of the debate."

La Rue said he sees parallels between Occupy and the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests. In both cases, for instance, "you have high level of education for young people, but no opportunities."
La Rue said he is in the process of writing what he called "an official communication" to the U.S. government "to ask what exactly is the position of the federal government in regards to understanding the human rights and constitutional rights vis-a-vis the use of local police and local authorities to disband peaceful demonstrations."
Although the letter will not carry any legal authority, it reflects how the violent suppression of dissent threatens to damage the U.S.'s international reputation.
"I think it's a dangerous spot in the sense of a precedent," La Rue said, expressing concern that the United States risks losing its credibility as a model democracy, particularly if the excessive use of force against peaceful protests continues.
New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman welcomed the international scrutiny.
"We live in a much smaller, connected world than we ever did before, and just as Americans watch what goes on in Tahrir Square and in Syria, the whole world is watching us, too -- and that's a good thing," Lieberman said.
"We're kind of confident that we're living in the greatest democracy in the world, but when the international human rights world criticizes an American police officer for pepper spraying students who are sitting down, it rightly give us pause."

This is totally against all the skills and countries. :(

Thanks

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MASON SHARPE

10:01 AM ET

December 7, 2011

legit voting??

It's truly amazing how governments try to legitimize themselves by allowing elections. If the outcomes are fixed, it forces the citizens to speak out against their county by using #OccupyMoscow as a way to bring needed attention to the problems. retail properties

 

ALEX244

9:03 PM ET

December 7, 2011

road to hell

While this Russian election topic is one of those rare occasions when you, Julia, are not writing something you should not, still I want you to ask yourself this question: how would your coverage of Russia change, if the Communists won in a democratic and honest elections?

And I repeat - I am with you on the current "election" topic, but I would like to hear your (honest) answer to the question above.

 

MASSAGENS TANTRICAS

8:39 AM ET

December 8, 2011

United Russia

yea, he explained outside the polling station near my apartment. When he got into the booth, there was a black plastic bag waiting for him. Inside was a bottle of vodka and some plastic cups.christmas camera deals

 

QUADROPLAY

12:46 PM ET

December 8, 2011

I'm not sure that all those

I'm not sure that all those people in Moscow hate Putin. This revolution has some foreign financial sources. I'm just remember some words of John Mccain about arab spring...Looks like that this things are tied

 

YARINSIZ

6:25 PM ET

December 31, 2011

And history suggests that

And history suggests that harsh tactics against social movements don't work anyway, he said. In Occupy's case, he said, "disbanding them by force won't change that attitude of indignation."
Occupy seslichat encampments across the country have been forcibly removed by police in full riot gear, and some protesters have been badly injured as a result of aggressive police tactics