MOSCOW — Tens of thousands of Russians walked purposefully to a square in the center of Moscow on Saturday, speaking up against their authoritarian government after years of silence and marking a dividing point in the rule of Vladimir Putin.Read the rest here.
People raised their voices in cities and towns across the country, an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 in Moscow, another 10,000 in St. Petersburg. In a buoyant mood, they celebrated a widespread feeling that something had changed as they gathered in the largest opposition protests Putin has ever encountered.
While no one was calling it a revolution — bloggers dubbed it The Great December Evolution — protesters demanded free elections and called for their leaders to listen to them. Organizers promised to hold an even bigger rally on Dec. 24.
Putin no doubt will win the presidency in March, putting him in position to rule for another 12 years. But by the end of the demonstration, change had already begun. Heavily armored police stood silently and respectfully and made no arrests here, unlike earlier in the week. Two government-owned television stations, Channel One and NTV, broadcast straightforward reports of the demonstration after ignoring the others over the last week. And in a message from his jail cell, blogger Alexei Navalny told Russians they had brought about the most important transformation simply by standing in the square.
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3 comments:
For those who have any real experience of contemporary Russia, this is a real problem without a good solution - Putin offers stasis and no change to the tiring corruption that is eating the country alive, but the political alternative is essentially a red-brown alliance. Is that better or severely regressive?
Counterpunch recently ran what is probably the best analysis - Russia is russifying and these elections represent a move toward nationalism not democracy.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/07/what-really-happened-in-the-russian-elections/
Whether that is good or bad is hard to say (it may be actually be good for the Orthodox Church in many respects) - but what it clearly is not is the dreamy utopia of pro-western liberal democracy on the rise.
M
It is good for Russia, who many saints have said will save Greece from the coming wrath.
Yes well look where our western liberal democracy has got us! Think things have been bad so far? Wait until the dollar collapses like the euro. Another 5 years until the final stomp down. Without divine intervention (or aliens) we are done - stick a fork in us and turn us over.
Doom of Gloom
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