Крупные акции протеста против коррупции / Major Protests Against Corruption


Schoolboy at protest in Tomsk

      Photo: Марат Хамматов, Tomsk.ru

Audio content: Voices from the March 26 anti-corruption protests in cities across Russia.
Video content: Images of the protests, chanting crowds, speakers, police detainment of protestors.

I’ve finally found time to put together a great selection of voices and images from the anti-corruption protests that occurred in cities across Russia on March 26, 2017. The protests, which drew more participants than any similar event in the last several years, were organized by Aleksei Navalny’s Фонд борьбы с коррупцией (ФБК, Anti-Corruption Fund). In particular, demonstrators were reacting to the recently released video Он вам не Димон (He’s Not “Dimon” to You — a reference to a very casual nickname for Medvedev, which his press secretary famously rejected), in which Navalny methodically — and with quite a bit of PR skill — presents evidence that Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev has profited from numerous corrupt arrangements that give him access to magnificent vacation properties and luxury goods. The video is part of Navalny’s quixotic campaign to be elected president in the 2018 elections, an endeavor that is unlikely to end in his actual electoral victory but that nevertheless threatens to significantly undermine the political security of Putin and his circle.

Navalny’s video, together with details turned up by his foundation’s earlier investigations, is a pop culture phenomenon. The video seems to have appealed to young people in particular: many observers commented on the large number of high school students and college-age people at the protest events. Numerous “memes” related to Medvedev are visible in the videos below. They include ducks (a reference to a house for ducks located in a pond at Medvedev’s alleged secret dacha), athletic shoes (the first “thread” in Navalny’s investigation is a pair of colorful athletic shoes visible in Medvedev’s Instagram, which Navalny links to an Amazon order sent to an anonymous email account supposedly linked to Medvedev) and the phrase “сами вы держитесь!” (“hang in there yourself!!” — referring to Medvedev’s ham-handed response to a group of elderly people complaining about their meager pensions in 2016 — he told them to just “hang in there”).

Any group political protest in Russia is supposed to be pre-approved and assigned to a particular site by the authorities. Several of the March 26 protests were officially approved, but most were not. In Moscow, participants claimed they were just out for a “walk” (прогулка) near the Pushkin statue on Tverskaia street in the center. Although the vast majority of protesters attended the events without experiencing immediate repercussions, significant numbers were arrested, including about 700 in Moscow, according to the video from Телеканал Дождь below. Police also visited the offices of the Anti-Corruption Fund, initially claiming there were concerns about a fire, and took all employees into custody. Navalny was given a fifteen-day prison sentence. Authorities blamed him for leading the youth astray by encouraging them to engage in dangerous activities.

Four videos are linked or embedded below. They include images and participant comments from the Moscow protest (video one), speeches in Novosibirsk that give a taste of the protesters’ rhetoric (video two), an overview of events in multiple cities with chanting crowds and comments from individual participants (video three), and a viral video of a school-age boy’s short speech in Tomsk (video four). Also, Meduza compiled a photo gallery of events in numerous cities.

To learn more about Navalny, see this earlier post on his speech to an opposition rally.

Заметки о языке: Useful words include “вор” (“thief”), “воровать” (“to steal”), “митинг” (“demonstration”), “акция” (“rally”), “позор” (“shame,” commonly chanted at police who are detaining protesters), “коррупция” (“corruption”), “власть” (“power,” “the authorities”), “задержать” (“to take into custody, detain”), “молодёжь” (“young people”), “терпеть” (“to be patient, to put up with”).

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Russian Transcript

Video One

0:00-0:20

Ведущая: Я напомню, что в нескольких десятках городов России сегодня, двадцать шестого марта, проходят акции против коррупции, поводом для которых стало расследование Фонда борьбы с коррупцией Алексей Навального о премьер-министре Дмитрии Медведеве.

Read more…

Weekly Round-Up: Syria, Petersburg, Evtushenko, ФБК

A full-fledged new post will come in a few days, but for now I thought I’d post links to some notable reports I saw during my weekend perusal of the Russian TV news. Time being finite, I generally look at two sources, Первый канал (Channel One) and Телеканал Дождь (TV Rain), to get the “official” and the “opposition” perspectives. I’ve been posting some of these links on the site’s Facebook page and thought it would be good to also include some of this content in the blog itself. There are many more interesting videos out there than I can possibly write up with an entire introduction, transcript and translation, but that doesn’t stop me from at least pointing some of them out in between the more comprehensive blog posts!

 

1. Russia’s response to the US attack on the Syrian airbase

Link: По прямому приказу президента США десятки ракет выпущены по территории Сирии. Погибли военные и мирные жители

Here’s how Первый канал / Channel One is spinning the Syria attack: The airbase that was attacked was being used by the Syrian government to fight “terrorists” and ISIS (Russian media consistently presents all enemies of Assad as “terrorists”); civilians, including children, perished in the attack; most of the American missiles didn’t even hit their targets due to incompetence or malfunction; last week’s chemical attack on Syrian civilians was probably caused by an explosion at a chemical weapons warehouse controlled by the “terrorists”; Trump’s action has no legal basis and he refuses to answer any questions on this topic; Russia is concerned about last week’s chemical attacks and would like to investigate them.

 

2. Citizens respond to the St. Petersburg Metro bomb

Link (Первый канал): В Санкт-Петербурге в память о жертвах теракта в небо выпустили 13 белых голубей

Link (Дождь): Уроки человечности от Петербурга: как люди помогали друг другу после теракта (TV Rain)

Первый канал has some interviews with people who attended anti-terror rallies in support of Petersburg. And TV Rain has a great feature (behind their paywall, I think) on all the wonderful ways people came together to help each other. Near the site of the blast, cafes gave out free food, local residents took in those who couldn’t make it home after the metro was closed, cell phone companies reimbursed charges for calls from the area. Also, apparently there’s an online game called “Ingress” that involves driving around the city to virtually “capture” territory — well, participants in this game came together to give people free rides home. Petersburgers are rightfully proud of their civic spirit!

 

3. Remembering the poet Evgeny Evtushenko

Link: Во всем мире люди вспоминают Евгения Евтушенко, который был больше, чем поэтом

Первый канал has a nice feature on Evgeny Evtushenko, the poet who passed away about a week ago.  You can hear his declamatory style, and see what he looked like when he was younger, reading to packed stadiums of poetry fans, and when he was older, and still wearing his trademark colorful jackets.

 

4. People arrested in the anti-corruption protests are released from jail

Link: «Отоспался, чувствую себя бодрым»: как сотрудники ФБК провели время в СИЗО

Телеканал Дождь / TV Rain put together a nice selection of comments from people who were just released from detention. I believe most of them are employees of Navalny’s ФВК (Anti-Corruption Foundation). They say they were treated reasonably well! The food was OK, prison officials followed the proper procedures, they could take showers, reading material was passed through to them, they got along OK with the other prisoners. As they note, they were in a temporary detention center, not an actual prison. (This video is probably also behind the paywall.)

 

5. Changing views of Trump in Russia

Link: От любви до ненависти: что говорили о Трампе в России до и после ударов по Сирии

Mikhail Fishman reports that the “honeymoon” period in Russia’s relationship to Trump is over. The opening parts of this video are a bit less interesting — it shows Duma members and United Russia officials criticizing the attack on Syria — but in the end Fishman offers a good compilation of excited, pro-Trump statements from just after the election. (This video is probably also behind the paywall.)