This whole story with the "March for the Federalization of Siberia" being held in Novosibirsk is simply astonishing.
It’s hard even to know what to link to in order to explain what this march is to people who haven’t heard of it yet (which is almost everyone). Because of a local event organized by local activists, Roskomnadzor (Russia’s federal media and communications watchdog) went into full hysterics and issued warnings to 14 (!!!) media outlets that publishing information about the march was impermissible.
Any link to it looks like this:
An interview with the march’s organizer, Artyom Loskutov, was removed from the Slon website at the demand of the Prosecutor General’s Office. It was a completely normal interview, and it’s hard not to agree with many of the things said there. I still have a fragment of it left on Twitter:
The march’s VKontakte group was blocked:
Roskomnadzor is sending out letters with some hellish and completely unlawful wording:
And this is happening at the same time as the head of RKN is giving interviews saying that they themselves do not ban or assess anything, they merely carry out orders from the prosecutor’s office (watch from 2:15):
Looking at all this madness, you might think Siberia is actually holding a march for secession. But no: in a country called the "Russian Federation," these guys are holding a march for federalization — for more money and more powers to remain in the region.
But that’s what everyone is demanding. Paradoxical as it may seem (since one of the slogans is "Stop feeding Moscow"), Moscow as a city would absolutely support that slogan, because Moscow as the federal center has already driven everyone up the wall. A whole crowd of idlers with enormous salaries. In terms of the real powers of local self-government, Moscow is the most deprived city in the country, and Muscovites are the most powerless.
In short, it’s complete schizophrenia, and the most accurate explanation seems to be this:
P.S. This turned out to be very timely. Over the past two weeks, ACF’s sociological service has been conducting a large nationwide survey specifically on the balance of powers between the federal center and the regions. They’re now finishing the data analysis, and at the beginning of the week we’ll show you the results.