It’s very interesting to compare. We recently held our rally in Novosibirsk. We weren’t given a site in the city center; instead, they approved pickets by all sorts of deranged freaks right around the perimeter of the rally, standing there with signs saying, “Navalny — get out of Novosibirsk.” And there were plenty of other petty dirty tricks too.
Even so, quite a lot of people showed up.
Now let’s look at yesterday’s heavily hyped “Anti-Maidan”. They opened their first regional branch in Novosibirsk and held a rally for the occasion too.
A venue in the city center. Free food. Free juice. Free cotton candy. A pile of money from murky sources and full administrative backing.
Eighty people who came for a free meal—that’s your entire “Anti-Maidan.” With all its Ramzans (a reference to Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader), Surgeons (a reference to Alexander “The Surgeon” Zaldostanov, the pro-Kremlin biker leader), TV airtime, and dubious brothers-in-arms.
I’ll say it again, because this is the most important point. Our political agenda—redistributing money and powers to the regions, fighting corruption, direct elections for mayors and governors—is the agenda of the majority. And all these “Anti-Maidans” are an insignificant minority inflated by the TV propaganda machine, with barely three years of schooling; a minority that supports corruption because it gets fed for free in return.
And it’s exactly the same with the “Putin majority.” Pull out the fake little stool propping it up—in the form of state employees bused in to rallies—and on that vast square you’ll be left with seven people looking around for free cotton candy.