Yes, Navalny needs YOU!

It’s been too busy a time for me of late to post, but nonetheless something that has struck me has been the relatively low-key response to Navalny’s imminent trial on what seem thoroughly spurious embezzlement charges. Of course, it’s been reported, especially since his declaration that he wanted to stand for president. However, the contrast with the massive and at times thoroughly hysterical and hyperbolic coverage of the Pussy Riot case, even before their trial, has been evident. I find this slightly surprising and distinctly alarming and a cause for what I might call some “navalny-gazing.”

No wonder, I suppose, that the subtitle on Navalny’s blog is “The final battle between good and neutrality.”

After all, while the Pussy Riot defendants were undoubtedly the victims of a kangaroo court (the very notion that they could be found guilty under the technical terms of hooliganism rather than some lesser charge was ridiculous) and comported themselves with impressive dignity in court, nonetheless they were hardly important in and of themselves. The importance, I would suggest, lay in what the trial said about the wider processes at work: the lawfare of the courts in their use against expressions of opposition thought and sentiment, the heavy-handedness of Putin’s state, the role of a conservative and assertive Russian Orthodox Church. Let’s be honest, had the authorities simply patronized them as publicity-seeking little women, slapped them with a fine, and used this as an opportunity to present the opposition as being full of blasphemers and exhibitionists, it would have been a two-day wonder.

Whether or not Navalny is the potential savior of the nation or a nationalist opportunist who has spotted a potential chance to rise is irrelevant (and for the record, while I don’t believe him to be perfect, I certainly believe him closer to the former than the latter). He is undoubtedly at present the driving force behind the opposition, however inchoate and drifting it currently may be. He has brought the issue of the corruption elite into the center of Russian politics, and has done more than anyone else to connect that with the United Russia bloc, that bastion of the cynical, the careerist and the corrupt. At present, there is no one else who can assume his mantle, no one else who has a chance–no more than a chance–of being able to turn the middle-class metropolitan opposition into a credible political force.

Which is, of course, why the Kremlin wants him out of the way, whether in prison or, much more likely, smeared and given a suspended sentence which will preclude him from standing for political office. It also explains why attack-dog Bastrykin–a man also with a clear personal animosity against Navalny–has been given such a long leash. They fear him in a way that they don’t fear socialite-seditionist Kseniya Sobchak or leftist firebrand Sergei Udaltsov.

Less comprehensible is quite why the Russian opposition is not more active and why Western democrats who want to see Russia move away from authoritarianism are nowhere near as excited as they were during the Pussy Riot case. Sure, maybe things will be different once the court case starts, but at present there seems little real enthusiasm for Navalny’s cry for protests on the streets in Russia, and far less media attention, let alone op. ed. outrage in the West.

Is it that everyone is getting tired of protest that seems to get nowhere, and Kirov is a way away rather than just a couple of streets away in Moscow? (If so, welcome to the real world: regime change is a hard slog, not a New Year’s resolution.)

Is it that people dislike or mistrust Navalny? (Sure, there are some questions to be asked, from his nationalist politics to what he’s doing on the Aeroflot board, but to be honest it’s hard to see any such antagonism towards him from any but elements of the elite.)

When it comes to the Western media and Russia-watchers, can it really be as banal as that one guy who blogs about corruption is a less exciting topic to discuss that balaclava-ed punkettes? That “People got interested in Pussy Riot on a global scale because it included so many themes – feminism, gay rights, religion” but that the bedrock issues of power and freedom aren’t as widely appealing? (Sadly, there is probably more than a little truth here.)

Whatever the reason, I cannot help but feel there is a potential opportunity here that risks being squandered. When Brian Whitmore and I were discussing the case in a Power Vertical podcast (you don’t subscribe to it? You should!) we agreed that the trial could represent a turning point for the opposition, a chance to get its act together after over a year of drift, a chance to cohere around a high-profile case, a chance to use it as a platform to seek to reach out to the disgruntled elements in the wider population (and we know they are there) and seek to build a common cause. Of course, that means they have to do it. And outsiders who want to encourage them–though ultimately this must be a domestic phenomenon, there certainly is no scope for the kind of “revolution plotted from abroad” beloved of pro-Kremlin conspiracy theorists–at the very least need to keep up the pressure and the attention, because that will help make this case significant, signal to the authorities that they cannot just pick off whomever they want with impunity.

This is unlikely to be the final battle, but it is an extremely important one. Given that “neutrality” is often a synonym in such cases for apathy or despair, perhaps this is time for action…

Larger than life, but half as substantial

At a mere 4 hours and 32 minutes, today’s press conference with 1,200 miscellaneous journalists may not have hit the record, but nonetheless it was one of those classic Putin events, in which endurance seems to matter more than content and the president almost seems to want to be able to talk away any thought of dissent or discontent. The transcript is available on the Kremlin website and a number of journalists admirably live-tweeted it with a mix of interest, surprise and bladder-clenched and back-aching despair (particular kudos to Shaun Walker, Miriam Elder and Nickolaus von Twickel). Nonetheless, here are a few initial thoughts of mine.

1. No new ideas, again. After the surprisingly anodyne state of the union address earlier this month, there was some speculation — to be fair, I indulged too — that this, Putin’s first big set-piece press conference since his return to the presidency might presage something big. Were Kudrin’s unusually vehement criticisms of the Medvedev cabinet a hint that a reshuffle was in the offing? Was the anti-corruption campaign about to kick into a higher gear? Well, no. Instead we had the usual spectacle of a tough and collected VVP fielding a handful of searching questions and a lot of fluff (Will you congratulate my child on her birthday, Mr President? Can we have a special day to celebrate the work of accountants? and so on). He gave stern answers to questions on the usual neuralgic topics such as Magnitsky and Syria and generally exalted Russia’s progress. Stability was, needless to say, his watchword, as without that there can be nothing else. So far, so usual. But I did feel that there was…

2. Something different: context. His past exercises in monarchical press conferences worked, I think, because they were not so much ways of establishing authority so much as of expressing and demonstrating it. He seemed confident, we knew, because he was confident, because he could be confident. However, after a year of drift and protest, while it is not as if the Putin regime is in danger of imminent collapse, claims that he didn’t think he had made any serious errors in the past 12 years (how about the castling, how about the Kursk, etc…?) ring hollow and, more to the point, offer nothing. I don’t think his performance was any different from in the past; I think the lens through which it is viewed certainly is.

3. Signs of life in the Russian media. Part of that change is a new mood within the media, even those in the past hardly defined by their radicalism. Amidst the embarrassing displays of fawning submission (I especially enjoyed the journalist from Magadan who felt the need to tell VVP he was so “energetic and beautiful” although the proposal to name the Kuril Islands after him also gets points), there were also sharp, pointed and serious questions on issues ranging from the adoption row to the authoritarian tendencies of the political system. I can’t say I’ve gone and trawled the old transcripts, but on a subjective level these felt much more critical and incisive than I remember in the past.

4. Personalia: messing with Medvedev. Medvedev didn’t get much of a boost here; indeed, if anything Putin was sticking pins into his little Dima voodoo doll. Serdyukov, whom DAM had praised recently, was touched on and Putin made a point of defending his dismissal, still making a mockery of any sense of innocence until being proven guilty and implicitly slapping the PM down. (For the record, it’s not that I necessarily believe Serdyukov is innocent, I just think this is something for the courts and not the Investigations Committee to decide.) Furthermore Kudrin, who had after all just laid into Medvedev and his cabinet, got a positive shout-out, with Putin reaffirming that he still listens to him.

It was interesting that the goodie bag distributed to the attendees was redolent of tsarist splendor, down to the provision of postcards of the tsars. But without divine right and the support of the elite, a tsar is just a man with a fancy chair.