Here are the most fitting words that Constitutional Council member Filipp Dzyadko said after Saturday’s protest. He simply sent all the Council members an email: I suggest we circulate this simple poster today and tomorrow.
I’m sharing this simple poster too, and I want to say on my own behalf as well: thank you very much. As expected, everything was quite chaotic and confused, but it was also sincere and honest. And Bykov was also right when he said yesterday at the Council: a protest movement needs not only flesh, but a skeleton too. That skeleton is built at unauthorized rallies. Several thousand people were willing to come out to an unauthorized protest in freezing weather, with a high likelihood of being detained or ending up in some unpleasant situation—and that is a good thing. I was glad to be among those people and to be part of them. A lot or a little? Well, clearly not enough to achieve what we are trying to achieve. If 100,000 people had come out to an unauthorized protest, the innocent "Bolotnaya prisoners" (people prosecuted over the 2012 Bolotnaya Square protest in Moscow) would not be in jail now, and Akimenkov, denied medical care, would not be going blind in his cell. His cellmates would not be reading aloud to him that, for humanitarian reasons, Vasilyeva, a defendant in the Oboronservis corruption case, had been allowed while under house arrest to get internet access and use the services of a cook and a housekeeper. If 200,000 had come out, they would have stopped selling oil from our land through Gunvor, and they would have started investigating theft at Transneft and Gazprom. 500,000—and we would have won new elections. But for now, all 11 of Moscow’s prefects are members of United Russia. I understand all the objections about the subjunctive mood and speculation.
(that’s me being carried on people’s shoulders) Of course, I don’t mean to say that the people who stayed home on Saturday are personally blinding Akimenkov or installing internet for Vasilyeva. But indifference is doing that, yes. I can only repeat the well-known saying: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. Putin does not need help stealing. You can just sit quietly at home, and he will steal everything on his own. Sooner or later, of course, it will all happen. A million people will come out, and more. There are plenty of factors beyond our control that could bring that about. Maybe oil prices will fall, maybe aliens will land. But we need to work better and be less cowardly and less whiny. After all, serfdom was abolished in Russia. That could have happened 35 years earlier, but it happened anyway.