Supporters of opposition leader Alexei Navalny have called for half a million Russians to take to the streets. Observers say that's a tall order.
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After protests in the winter led to the arrest of thousands of people across Russia, supporters of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny have announced new events. There are to be street protests — but not of the spontaneous variety. The supporters say they will publish the date of the protests as soon as half a million people have signed up online.
Plans to stage the largest protest in post-Soviet Russia seem rather ambitious considering the recent numbers published by the Levada Center, an independent polling outfit, which found that Russians' desire to demonstrate has diminished considerably since the beginning of 2021.
In the spring of 2020, about 70% of Russians polled said they did not plan to attend protests in the next two to three months — that number has now climbed to 80%.
"That's mainly due to the end of the second wave of the coronavirus, emergence from quarantine and the return of a more or less normal life," said sociologist Denis Volkov, the deputy director of the Levada Center. "Different indicators point to people hoping things will get better."
Volkov said Navalny's key supporters were aged 25 to 35, and many were disheartened at the moment. "We met with focus groups over the past few months, and participants were at their wit's end," he said. "They had no idea what to do, especially after the harsh way in which authorities, backed by older generations, put down protests this winter."
Nikolai Petrov, a political scientist at the London think tank Chatham House, cited further issues. "Another reason for the waning appetite for protest happens to be the lack of a suitable occasion to exploit in the media, as well as a lack of organization on the part of the Navalny organization," he said.
Petrov said this year's parliamentary elections could provide reason enough for people to get out and protest. "That's how it was in 2019, for instance, when candidates were not allowed to stand for election to the Moscow City Duma," he said. "The conditions of Alexei Navalny's imprisonment and health could also prompt local protests."
In data compiled by the Levada Center, only 15% of respondents said they would participate in political protests if they were to place now. But only about 1% say they have actually already taken to the streets. "It's one thing to say I want to take to the streets and quite another to actually go out and face police truncheons," the Russian sociologist Alexei Titkov said.
'Local issues'
Though there does not seem to be as strong of a willingness to protest, the observers contacted by DW said there had nevertheless been a number of demonstrations in regions across Russia since 2017 — even in historically quieter cities. The map of protests since then also mirrors the geographic expansion of the Navalny foundation's network. Wherever the network had representatives, people took to the streets.
Volkov said those protests were not about Navalny, but rather about anger over Russia's 2018 retirement pay changes.
And there were other issues Plans to build a dump in the city of Shies sparked protests in the Archangelsk region, the arrest of Governor Sergei Furgal led to demonstrations in Khabarovsk, and plans to quarry limestone from Mount Kushtau — a natural monument — spurred people in the constituent republic of Bashkortostan into action. "There are local issues all over the place but they don't always lend themselves to a common agenda," Titkov said.
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Various protest groups
Sociologists said there was no way to unite all of Russia's demonstrators. They come from different income brackets and have divergent opinions about the trustworthiness of opposition figure Navalny. Those who protested in January sympathized with him even though they cannot be said to be supporters. Most were middle-class and those are the ones Navalny's team is now trying to win over for new protests, Volkov said.
"It isn't just Navalny supporters that are protesting: There are others who could start letting off steam. But no one is calling on them," Volkov said. He added that those people tend to be much poorer and are often communists, many of them elderly, who don't use social media and believe what state television tells them.
"Navalny can't reach them even though he tried with the debate over justice and social welfare," Volkov said. "For them, Navalny remains a 'fraud who stole wood and even went so far as to poison himself.'"
Who is Alexei Navalny?
Alexei Navalny is one of Russia's most prominent opposition leaders, having spearheaded protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has been imprisoned in Russia since 2021.
Image: Imago Images/Itar-Tass/S. Fadeichev
Face of Russia's opposition
The lawyer-turned-political campaigner has been among the most prominent figures of Russia's opposition to President Vladimir Putin. Navalny came to prominence in 2008, when his blog exposing malpractice in Russian politics and among the country's major state-owned companies came to public attention. Revelations published on his blog even led to resignations, a rarity in Russian politics.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/TASS/V. Sharifulin
Disputed parliamentary elections
In 2011 Navalny was arrested for the first time. He ended up spending 15 days in prison for his role at a rally outside the State Duma in Moscow. A recent parliamentary election victory for Putin's United Russia had been marred by instances of ballot stuffing, reported by demonstrators on social media. Upon his release, Navalny pledged to continue the protest movement.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Stenin
Second jail term
After being reelected president in 2012, Putin ordered Russia's Investigative Committee to launch a criminal inquiry into Navalny's past. The following year the campaigner was charged and sentenced again, this time for five years, for alleged embezzlement in the city of Kirov. However, he was released the following day pending affirmation from a higher court. The sentence was later suspended.
Image: Reuters
Anti-Kremlin platform grows
Despite being embroiled in legal troubles, Navalny was allowed to run in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election. A second-place finish behind Putin ally Sergei Sobyanin was seen as an overwhelming success and galvanized the Russian opposition movement.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Navalny takes to social media
His anti-Kremlin rhetoric led Navalny to be banned from appearing on Russian state-owned television. That forced him to deliver his political message over social media and his blog. His talent for public speaking, punchy use of language and humorous mockery of Putin and his loyalists mobilized a legion of young followers.
Image: Alexei Navalny/Youtube
Presidential ambitions
In December 2016, the opposition leader announced the formal start of his campaign to run for the Russian presidency in March 2018. However, repeated accusations of corruption, which his supporters say are politically motivated, ultimately barred him from running for public office.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/K. Kudryavtsev
Moscow's biggest protests in 6 years
In February 2017, anti-corruption rallies across dozens of Russian cities led to the arrests of over 1,000 demonstrators, including Navalny. The protests, believed to have been the largest in the Russian capital since 2012, were spurred by a report published by Navalny linking Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to a property empire valued at billions of euros. Navalny was released 15 days later.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Evgeny Feldman for Alexey Navalny's campaign
Physically assaulted
Navalny was assaulted and hospitalized in April 2017 after being hit in the eye with a chemical green dye. The attack permanently damaged his right cornea. Navalny accused Russian authorities of stopping him from seeking medical treatment abroad due to the embezzlement conviction against him. He was eventually permitted by the Kremlin human rights council to travel to Spain for eye surgery.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/E. Feldman
Repeated arrests
In 2018, Navalny was jailed for 30 days. After his release in September, he faced another 20-day stint. In April 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Russia had violated Navalny's rights by holding him under house arrest for most of 2014 during the Kirov embezzlement case.
Image: Reuters/M. Shemetov
Alleged poisoning
In July 2019, only weeks after being released from a 10-day jail sentence, Navalny was again jailed for 30 days for violating Russia's strict protest laws. The opposition leader accused Russia of poisoning him with an allergic agent while in jail.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/navalny.com
Raids and frozen assets
Using YouTube and social media, Navalny had amassed a following of millions by late December 2019. Then police raided his Anti-Corruption Foundation headquarters (pictured), detaining him in the process. His staff said officials wanted to confiscate their tech equipment. Just a few months later, in March, Navalny reported that his bank accounts and those of his family members had been frozen.
Image: Reuters/FBK Handout
A plane — and a coma
On August 20, Navalny's spokesperson announced the activist became violently ill during a flight from Siberia to Moscow. The plane made an emergency landing, and Navalny was rushed to a hospital in Russia's Omsk and later evacuated to Berlin's Charite clinic (pictured). Doctors said he was in a coma. Navalny's associates claimed he had been poisoned and pointed to previous attacks on the activist.
Image: Reuters/C. Mang
Back from the brink
Navalny was taken out of the coma less than three weeks later and was said to be responsive. Not long afterwards, he was posting on Instagram, saying he was slowly regaining strength following weeks of only being "technically alive." The German government said labs in France and Sweden both confirmed that Navalny had been poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok.
Navalny had promised to return to Russia and he did so, despite warnings that he would be arrested. He was taken into police custody shortly after arriving in Moscow. The dissident had said he was "not afraid of anything." He was ordered to spend two years and eight months in a penal colony for violating terms of his probation while recovering in Germany from his poisoning.
Image: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images
Further charges and years behind bars
Since being imprisoned in 2021, Navalny has faced even more charges and trials: in 2022, he was sentenced to an additional nine-year term for embezzlement and contempt of court, charges his supporters say are fabricated. Appearing via video from prison during a court hearing this spring, Navalny said he was now being charged with new alleged crimes that would further extend his time in prison.
Image: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo/picture alliance
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Dissatisfaction motivates protesters
As diverse as the protest camps may be, sociologists said they had one thing in common: dissatisfaction. "People are tired of their lot," Volkov said. "They are tormented by fears of what the future may bring and the belief that everything is moving in the wrong direction — it's a feeling that unites them."
Andrei Kolesnikov, of the Carnegie Moscow Center, doesn't think that demonstrators are inspired by illusions and euphoria like they were in 2011-12. "People know full well that there is repression and that dialogue and compromise with the state are out of the question," he said.
Much was written about the politicization of Russian students in reports on the protests in January. But sociologists say they have yet to see real protest participation from young Russians — neither in 2017 nor today. "There are significantly more people between the ages of 20 and 40," as Alexei Titkov points out.
The image of TikTok schoolkids who call for people to protest and take part in demonstrations themselves was created by authorities as a way to discredit protests. "A large slice of the population, especially elderly generations, really believed they were student protests, badmouthing Navalny for getting kids involved," Volkov said, "so the propaganda seems to have worked."
This article has been translated from German by Jon Shelton