Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A
ROUND THE TIME
of my first train trip, in late 2011, the largest antigovernment protests
since the Soviet collapse were taking place in Moscow. Thousands of Russians filled the
streets, expressing their fury over a flawed election and demanding an end to Vladimir
Putin's rule. Putin, a tough-talking leader beloved by many for his bravado—a man who
happily went shirtless to show off his muscles on Russian television—long enjoyed broad
support in his country. But in Moscow, Russians were on the streets, voicing opposition to
his anticipated return as the nation's president.
I remember the enthusiasm well. I boarded a creaky Soviet-era trolleybus and traveled to
one protest with Russians of all ages—students carrying protest banners, pensioners chat-
ting with one another about how big the crowd might be. Yet for all the anger and passion,
no one in the crowd could explain what they actually wanted. Putin gone? Sure. Then again
there was no viable opposition leader, no one proven to replace him. Stay on the streets
and fight until the government is gone, as in Egypt and Libya? No, people said they feared
chaos like that. The protests allowed Russians to use muscles they were rarely allowed to
flex during Soviet times and in the period since, and it felt good. And yet Russians there
had trouble communicating what they were fighting for. Translating anger and frustration
into action, and a message, was unfamiliar territory. And the lack of a message was one
reason the fight never really caught on elsewhere in Russia. I recall heading off to the east
on that first train trip, finding many Russians perplexed by what was unfolding in Moscow
and feeling little desire to become part of it.
In reality the December 2011 protests were a political statement by Russia's urban
elite, Moscow dwellers with white-collar jobs who largely benefited from Putin's economic
policies but who grew tired of his political heavy-handedness and war on civil liberties.
“The demonstrators were the relatively privileged in economic and social status, not the
economically disaffected and disadvantaged,” wrote Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy in their
2013 book
Mr. Putin
. It would be foolish to dismiss what happened on the streets of Mo-
scow. Two of the most respected economists who follow Russia, Sergei Guriev and Aleh
Tsyvinski, have written that “sufficient prosperity has arrived, calling forth a middle class
solid enough to demand government accountability, the rule of law and a genuine fight
against corruption.” They believe that in Russia “the political mobilization of the middle
class will eventually lead to democratization.” And yet there was an inherent contradic-
tion in the fact that the very people enjoying the most economic success under Putin were
those taking to the streets. That made this movement in 2011 incomparable to revolu-
tions elsewhere in the world, driven by economic hardship. What about the
other
Rus-
sia—“popular Russia,” as Tucker at Princeton called it—the people, the masses elsewhere
in the country? Without an investment from them, it's hard to imagine a revolution bringing
fundamental, long-lasting change. And they have never been part of a political movement.
The novelist Mikhail Shishkin also holds a view of “two Russias.” In the nineteenth cen-
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