THE RESURRECTION OF THE RUSSIAN INTELLIGENTSIA AND THE RISE OF RUSSIA'S PROTEST MOVEMENT

COMMENTARY

By Gordon M. Hahn

Historically, the intelligentsia has held a special place in society, that of bearing the national conscience and democratic ideals.  Both in Russia and elsewhere, the rise of civil society and a protest movement usually is sparked, or at least prefaced, by the rise of a protest sensibility among its intelligentsia.  Of course, not all leaders of the intelligentsia have been, or are today, pro-democratic or pro-Western.  The great writer Fyodor Dostoyevskii, for instance, was a 19^th century Russian traditionalist.

Traditionally, the Russian intelligentsia has been defined as a politically active class of intellectuals, often liberal and opposed to Russia’s typically authoritarian order; the conscience of the nation and general population which is limited in its ability to express its aspirations and push the regime.  It usually includes those who use their minds rather than their hands, for their livelihoods––in particular writers and poets, literary critics, philosophers, musicians, actors, and journalists among others.

As early in the post-Soviet era as the mid-1990s, there was much lamenting about the death of the Russian intelligentsia, and this has continued into the 2010s.  Recently, Ivan Sterligov noted the intelligentsia’s “impotence and volutary capitulation to the Putin regime” (Ivan Sterligov, “Megascience, Megagrants, and Microsuccess,” Nauka i Tekhnologii Rossii, www.strf.ru, 29 December 2011.)

December’s pro-democracy ‘For Honest Elections’ demonstrations, which received overwhelming support from both the democratic, socialist, and nationalist members of the intelligentsia, proved this to be wrong.

In fact, Russia’s liberal intelligentsia never died.  In kitchens and salons across Russia, thinkers exchanged opinions, networked, and prepared for the next liberalization opening in Russian history. 

It reemerged in the open with President Dmitrii Medvedev’s liberalization policies, which I have dubbed ‘Perestroika 2.0’ and which culminated in Medvedev’s radical proposals for democratizing the political system which he made at his last annual presidential address to Russia’s Federal Assembly on December 15^th. 

As during Mikhail Gorbachev’s ‘Perestroika 1.0’, greater leeway for the media and a consequently less intimidated intelligentsia, increased the space for public protest this past year.

The first signs of overt engagement and challenge from the intelligentsia to the authorities, were in fact facilitated by Medvedev’s liberalization. 

On May 31^st , Article 31 marches were broken up roughly in Moscow and St. Petersburg with hundreds of brief arrests.  Prior to that there had been a public exchange between Russian rock artist Yurii Shevchuk and Premier and former president Vladimir Putin over the issue of democracy in Russia.  The latter expressed support for Russians’ right to demonstrate publicly as long as they do not violate the law but also said that if demonstrators took place without official permission or otherwise illegally demonstrators should expect to be hit over the head with billy clubs.  In the wake of the crackdown on the May 31^st demonstrations, Russian Human Rights Ombudsmen and former Russian ambassador to the U.S. Vladimir P. Lukin condemned the police’s rough handling of demonstrators during their arrest and detention, demanded the Moscow MVD apologize, and included the crackdown among a series of violations of the law committed by law enfocement organs in a report to President Medvedev.

In summer 2010 opposition forces organized protests against the building of a highway through Moscow’s ancient Khimki forest.  Again Shevchuk, other members of the Russian intelligentsia, and even American rock legend Bono played key roles.  Shevchuk headlined a 2,000-strong pro-Khimki rally concert held in central Moscow on August 26^th despite police efforts to enforce a concert ban imposed by the city administration.  Days earlier Bono invited Shevchuk to the stage during U2's first-ever concert in Russia held in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium to perform two songs with him, sending what environmentalists claimed was “a clear signal to the authorities” (Alexander Bratersky, “Medvedev Freezes Khimki Highway,” Moscow Times, 27 August 2010). 

With the appointment of Sergei Sobyanin to replace Yurii Luzhkov as Moscow’s mayor one month later in September, democratic and nationalist opposition rallies, including the ‘Article 31’ marches began to be sanctioned more regularly by the authorities and crackdowns largely disappeared.  Exceptions to this softer policy were unsanctioned rallies and unlawful conduct by demonstrators, usually not the democrats but rather nationalists like Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party and ultra-nationalists such as the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, Slavic Union, and Russkii Obraz.

In November 2010, the well-known Russian television journalist Leonid Parfyonov took to the stage at a black-tie Russian television awards dinner and announced he would not make his prepared remarks on the the subject that had proposed to him.  Instead, he set off on a biting critique of Russian media.  While the bravest print journalists risked their lives reporting on corruption and are targeted with impunity for their efforts, he argued, reporters working for state-owned television worked no longer like real journalists, but rather like “state employees who worship submission and service."  This time no state television channel relayed his remarks, but they were reported widely through radio, the Internet, and print media.  Two months earlier Parfyonov had been invited back to state television for a brief appearance on the second broadcast of a new more outspoken light news program ‘Central Television’ on the NTV Mir channel, a sister channel to NTV from which Parfyonov was fired controversially back in 2004 (“Light-hearted Russian TV show tackles controversial issues,” BBC Monitoring, 5 September 2010 citing the Program “Tsentral’noe Televidenie,” NTV Mir, 5 September 2010).  Parfyonov’s critical political speech shook up Russia’s political scene no less than Shevchuk’s respectful verbal sparring with Putin.

The actors, writers, and producers of the Russian stage have also emerged to push for democracy in recent years.  Writing in June 2011, Moscow theater critic John Freedman noted that the Russian stage had abandoned its traditional apolitical stance and become an usually active participant in the intelligentsia’s ever more strident political criticism: “As the politicization of daily life continues to grow, and as the next presidential election on March 11, 2012 draws ever nearer, the notion of political neutrality is losing respect.” 

A case in point from last year was the play “Democracy.doc,” a reading of the 2008-2009 correspondence between jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and contemporary Russian novelist Lyudmilla Ulitskaya staged at central Moscow’s Joseph Beuys Theater in Moscow.  Another is actor Mikhail Yefremov’s and poet Dmitry Bykov’s extremely popular political satire “Citizen Poet” originally broadcvast on the intelligentsia-oriented ‘Dozhd TV’ or Rain television channel and now regularly performed around Moscow theater circuit.  In ‘Citizen Poet’ actor Yefremov plays various famous Russian writers and literary characters while leveling Bykov's biting lampoons of Putin, Medvedev, and Russia’s bureaucratic life (By John Freedman, “So, Do Theater and Politics Mix in Russia?,” Moscow Times, 19 June 2011).

The intelligentsia has moved to the forefront and proved rather creative in its efforts to combat Russia’s historically notorious official arbitrariness.  Novaya gazeta initiated an award of sorts to ‘honor’ the most outstanding examples of official privilege and bureaucratic arbitrariness.  In 2011 it gave an award to Russia’s “worst cop” of 2010 to a Moscow policeman who had helped cover up the details of accident in which the official limo of a high-ranking bureaucrat drove recklessly and caused an accident in which several civilians were killed on Moscow’s Leninskii Propspekt, a ten-lane highway-like central Moscow street.  Artem Troitskii, who handed out the wards at an event, and Novaya gazeta’s staff soon became the object of lawsuits from the policeman.  In June 2011 Shevchuk’s DDT and other rock groups held a series of concerts in support of Troitskii, who has already been ordered by a court to pay 130,000 rubles in damages to the officer (Andy Potts, “Shevchuk speaks up for embattled Troitsky,” Moscow News, 7 June 2011).

The intelligentsia has stepped up to support Medvedev, as opposed to Putin, and to push for full democratization of Russia’s political system.  In July 2011 a group of 19 leading intellectuals (journalists, literary scholars, and political scientists, including Dmitrii Oreshkin) issued an open letter criticizing Putin’s “personalist power” system and backing a second term for the liberal Medvedev (“Vybor est’,” Novaya Gazeta, No. 76, 15 July 2011).  It is no coincidence that December’s ‘For Honest Elections’ demonstrations saw constant criticism of Putin but virtually none of Medvedev.

Presaging the events of this past December, a group of fourteen prominent writers, actors, actresses, film producers, human rights activists, political scientists, and other prominent leaders of Russian culture, issued a ‘Statement of the 14’ in June 2011 demanding the registration of democratic opposition parties and an end to the arbitrary rule before what turned out to be rather controversial Duma elections.  The signatories were Lyudmilla Alekseyeva, Liya Akhedjakova, Oleg Basilashvili, Vladimir Voinovich, Dmitrii Zimin, Sergei Kovalev, Yurii Norstein, Yurii Ryzhov, Eldar Ryazanov, Georgy Satarov, Aleksei Simonov, Nataliya Fateyeva, Yuri Schmidt, and Yevgenii Yasin  (“Snyat’ zapret na registratsiyu partii i obespechit dostup k vyboram vsekh politicheskikh sil,” Novaya gazeta, No 58, 1 June 2011).

The December 2011 Duma election campaign proceeded in a slightly more free and fair way than the previous December 2007, but remained nonetheless unfree and unfair overall. After this unsatisfactory situation was aggravated by suspicions over voter fraud and falsification of the count, the intelligentsia moved quickly to take charge of anger that burst onto the streets on December 4^th, organizing and leading the some 40,000-strong December 10^th Bolotnaya Square demonstration and the 80,000-strong December 24^th Sahkarov Prospekt demonstration. 

Although outsider politicians played important roles, intellectuals played perhaps the leading role.  Some 200 actors, producers, journalists, painters, musicians, film-makers, writers, photographers and TV presenters signed an appeal urging “all viewers, listeners and readers” to take part in the December 24^th demonstration (“Izvestnyie lyudi rasskazali, pochemu oni poidut na miting 24 dekabrya,” Novyie izvesitiya, 20 December 2011.)

Novelist Boris Akunin gave the first speech at both the Bolotnaya and Sakharov Prospekt demonstrations.  Democracy.doc author, poet Dmitrii Bykov, gave key speeches at both.  An opinion poll that asked demonstrators to rate the speakers at the Sakharov Prospekt protest found that five of the top six places were taken by five members of the artistic intelligentsia: Boris Akunin, Leonid Parfenov, Yurii Shevchuk, Dmitrii Bykov, and Mikhail Yefremov (Aleksei Makarkin, “Vlast’ i oppozitsiya: vozvrashchenie politiki,” Politkom.ru, 26 December 2011).  Anti-corruption bloogger Aleksandr Navalnyi was the other top speaker.  After the demonstrations, Akunin and Navalnyi were featured on the state-funded pro-democracy opposition radio station ‘Ekho Moskvy’ in a series of conversations on the way forward.

So for now, a bit of history and politics has returned to Russia.  The intelligentsia is at the forefront of the Russian people’s efforts to rein in the bureaucracy and subject their rulers to democratic controls.  The way forward is still to be written, and much of the final product will depend on the intelligentsia’s ability to function as bridge between the state and society and between various opposition groups.

Comments

[Andor]

You call THIS trash --- "intelligentsia"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImCmN3jhqT0&feature=related
In a first video this so-called intelligentsia refuses to answer the journalists' questions, and after visiting with Dr.Mcfaul come out with the prepared "comment", chanting, "You are the Surkov's propaganda".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcfEXFMn0t0&feature=related
The second video shows what happened when the journalists are trying to follow Mrs. Chirikova to the subway. She is attacking them. In her twits later she mentioned that the confrontation made her feel younger and prettier. She only regretted that the journalists left too soon, since she would be delighted to "spit in their ugly faces".
Another point to make... Dr.McFaul in reply to the complains that he met with the opposition before meeting Mr. Medvedev and Mr.Putin insisted that the opposition came to meet with the Under Secretary of State William Burns. Of course he is trying to right the faux pas, but in the first video one clearly hears Mr. Nemtsov answering to the journalists that he came to meet the Ambassador. Poor excuse, Mr.Mcfaul...