The “Bolotnaya case” is something we cannot stop thinking about for even a second. Random people have been seized as hostages, so that through them revenge can be taken on all of us. They and their families are being tormented. Everyone understands perfectly well what this is about, so I won’t elaborate. That naturally raises the question: what exactly can I do to help them? Unfortunately, the set of available tools is fairly limited. There are two direct methods: a) a million people storm the prisons, free the detainees, and hang those who tortured them. That, apparently, is not going to happen anytime soon. b) through sustained and wide-ranging political work, this regime falls, its representatives are removed, new (and honest) elections are held, and political prisoners are freed. Working to make that scenario happen is the duty of every decent person, but we should not expect a quick or easy victory there either. Indirect help for political prisoners, and for the “Bolotnaya prisoners” in particular: Raising money for lawyers and support for families (for example, through RosUznik). Taking part in mass actions in support of political prisoners (maybe one day we really will gather a million people and... see above). Personal moral support: attend the trial or write a letter. Information support. It’s this last point I want to talk about. The Kremlin riffraff imprisons not whoever it wants, but whoever public opinion allows it to imprison. In the “Bolotnaya case,” people are being jailed en masse, while in “Biryulyovo” (a Moscow district associated with the 2013 riots) they are not—at least not yet, thankfully. Public opinion right now (in Biryulyovo, in Moscow, and in Russia generally) is such that this would deal an enormous blow to “stability” and to the approval rating of Toad_on_the_Pipeline. And Toad_on_the_Pipeline cares very much about that rating. That is why it always waits for the moment “when no one is paying attention.” People will forget, the rallies will end, and then it becomes possible to jail people. My own situation illustrates this point quite well. I am able to write this post only because on 1July 18, public opinion became alarmed and made itself visible in the form of people taking to the streets. If you hadn’t come out, what I’d be writing now would mostly be letters, and mostly on paper. If public opinion changes, of course, everything will be rearranged. Now let’s look at the “Bolotnaya case” itself:
http://www.levada.ru/04-10-2013/bolotnoe-delo This is not enough. Only 28% know about the case, and just 55% correctly understand what caused it. What’s more, the situation may get worse. Right now, for example, the hearings have been moved from the Moscow City Court to the Nikulinsky District Court, which has had a negative effect both on attendance and on media coverage. At first people were saying that the amnesty had been devised specifically for the “Bolotnaya defendants”, and now there is talk that the amnesty should be designed so that the “Bolotnaya defendants” are excluded from it. We all need to take part in a very real information war around the “Bolotnaya case.” Our “Anti-Corruption Foundation” has made a small contribution to the common cause by creating this site: http://6may.fbk.info/ The idea is very simple. It came to me a long time ago, and meetings with voters during the campaign fully confirmed the hypothesis. The key is not to tell people, but to compare. You can simply tell elderly women about the “Farber case”—they’ll just shrug. But you can, as I did at meetings, compare the “Farber case” with the “Reykhanov case.” A schoolteacher was accused of embezzling 150,000 rubles and given seven years in a maximum-security penal colony, while a deputy prefect stole 376 million rubles and got a five-year suspended sentence, without even a fine. A disgruntled murmur, shouts demanding executions, canes, crutches, and sticks raised threateningly in the air—that is exactly the effect we need. Our site simply generates a leaflet comparing a “Bolotnaya prisoner” with some high-profile state or police crook who got off without punishment.
Want to compare Lutskevich and Prosecutor Ignatenko? Here you go.
Want to compare Baronova and Vasilyeva? Here you go.
Top student Belousov and rapist Provkin—here:
And then we print one pair and distribute it. Then we print another one and distribute that too. And we keep going until every elderly person in your building can recite by heart: “The Bolotnaya case is when crooked, thieving officials jail our sons and grandsons for no reason, so they can go on stealing with impunity.” I understand that people are tired of leaflets, and I appreciate the jokes on this subject:
But I don’t have a magic television set to offer you. Leaflets that anyone can print are the simplest, cheapest, and most accessible way of campaigning among those “who aren’t on the internet.” When we first started distributing homemade leaflets saying “United Russia is the party of Crooks and Thieves,” very few people believed such a campaign could work. It did. I urge everyone to take part in this action. I’ll be putting leaflets around my own apartment building myself (until I’ve gone through all the pairs). It would be great if we made this a longer-term effort, instead of the usual routine: play with it for one day and then drop it. As you can see, the site needs further work and improvement; it doesn’t have photos of all the villains. There are almost certainly mistakes in some of the biographies. New—and even better—villains keep coming to mind, ones that ought to be added to the site. We would be very glad if you helped us keep improving it (contacts below). Naturally, it is very important to spread http://6may.fbk.info/ all over the internet and push it hard on social media—not just today, but afterward as well. Persistence matters. Someone who sees this site for the tenth time on your Facebook/VKontakte may think: all right then, if things really are this outrageous, I’ll put up a couple of leaflets too. These figures need to change to: “Know about the ‘Bolotnaya case’ — 80%,” “The ‘Bolotnaya case’ is the punishment of innocent people in order to intimidate everyone else — 70%.” http://6may.fbk.info/ P.S. Thanks to all the staff at the Foundation, who took part in preparing this site.