Well then, this strategy has now fully taken shape: if you want to run in elections, do it only where it’s hardest. If you want to hold a rally, do it only where it’s hardest to gather people.
Let me report on the results of our talks with City Hall. These smug bureaucrats are banning marches altogether, in any form.
Any locations convenient for rallies and marches have been banned for the most absurd reasons. For example, Kosygin Street and Sparrow Hills are off limits because they are supposedly the city's "calling card."
Academician Sakharov Avenue is banned because of the Moscow Marathon (even though it will already be over by then, and last year it did not prevent events from being held at the same time).
Bolotnaya Square and streets that have absolutely nothing to do with the marathon are also off limits—because they just are.
In fact, City Hall is not even hiding that Putin wants to see whether large protest actions in Moscow can continue if they are completely banned from the city center and pushed out into the residential outskirts.
On top of that, the authorities are delighted by the argument that breaks out among us every single time: - Let it be on the outskirts, as long as it’s officially approved. - No, we must insist on the center and nothing else. - And if they refuse to give us the center? - Then we will go on demanding the center. We cannot agree to such humiliation. A protest rally outside the center is worse than war and election fraud.
In fact, the only result of this argument is that the reasons for protest are still there—very much so—but there have been no rallies for a year and a half. The last time a march was allowed in the center, it was for such a reason that we might as well have gone all the way out to New Moscow (the expanded outer districts of the capital) to hold the protest.
We have decided to put safety first, because that is also what makes mass participation possible.
I deeply appreciate all those brave and courageous people—I'm saying this without irony—who are ready to go out to unauthorized protests in defense of the "right to the center," but let’s admit it: in light of the new changes to criminal law, such actions will not be very large.
Besides, I suggest we drastically narrow the circle of people discussing such matters. We will gladly listen to any radical commentator—but only if they have at least one administrative arrest on their record. And if they do not, then perhaps their radicalism is not entirely sincere.
In the new political reality, where they crush geese with a tractor and release the organizers of murders from pretrial detention in full public view, the alternative to a protest rally in Maryino is not a rally in the center, but no rally at all.
Personally, I can only repeat what I have said before: if we really do have political and economic demands to make of this government, then we will voice them in Maryino. And in Degunino too, if necessary. It’s fine—we can step out of our comfort zone. People used to travel 5–10 kilometers (3–6 miles) outside the city for May Day outings.
We also need to explain to the Kremlin riffraff that the demand for rotation of power does not disappear just because the venue is five metro stops away.
September 20. 5:00 p.m. Maryino metro station. General rally for rotation of power.
The weather will be great—come yourself and bring your friends.