2011–2013 Russian protests

Previous protest rallies in 2000s In the 2000s, due to increased restrictions in the election legislation and the takeover of large media under state control, a non-system opposition emerged, which was barred from participation in elections. This time, it included both left and right organisations as well as nationalists. The largest protests and main opposition events include rallies to support the old NTV staff (2001), mass protests against Mikhail Zurabov's reforms (2005), Dissenters' March (2005–2008), Russian Marches, "I am free! I forgot what it means to fear" rallies for freedom of the press (2005–2006 and 2008), Vladivostok mass protests (2008–2010), Kaliningrad mass protests (2009–2010), Day of Wrath (Left Front actions) (2009–2011), Putin.Results and Putin.Corruption campaign, Putin must go campaign, Strategy-31 (for freedom of assembly) (2009–), etc. Committee 2008, wide coalition The Other Russia, Yabloko, Union of Right Forces, Vanguard of Red Youth, Left Front, Russian People's Democratic Union, United Civil Front, movement for Khimki forest, Solidarnost, TIGER, Society of Blue Buckets, Coalition "For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption", etc. were among the main opposition groups within disorganised 2000s protest movement. 2011 election According to RIA Novosti, there were more than 1,100 official reports of election irregularities across the country, including allegations of vote fraud, obstruction of observers and illegal campaigning. Members of the A Just Russia, Yabloko and Communist parties reported that voters were shuttled between multiple polling stations to cast several ballots. The Yabloko and LDPR parties reported that some of their observers had been banned from witnessing the sealing of the ballot boxes and from gathering video footage, and some were groundlessly expelled from polling stations. The ruling United Russia party alleged that the opposition parties had engaged in illegal campaigning by distributing leaflets and newspapers at polling stations and that at some polling stations the voters had been ordered to vote for the Communist party with threats of violence. There were several reports of almost undetectable vote fraud—swapping of final polling station protocols just before final accounting by station chairmen—that happened late at night when most observers were gone. The Central Electoral Commission issued a report on 3 February 2012, in which it said that it received the total of 1686 reports on irregularities, of which only 195 (11.5%) were upheld after investigation. A third (584) actually contained questions about the unclear points of electoral law, and only 60 complaints were claiming falsifications of the elections results. On 4 February 2012 the Investigation Committee of the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation announced that the majority of videos allegedly showing falsifications at polling stations were in fact falsified and originally distributed from a single server in California, and the investigation on that started. Despite the official findings, protests carried on up to and beyond 4 March presidential election. Demographic and economic basis According to The New York Times, the leading element has consisted of young urban professionals, the well-educated and successful working or middle-class people such as workers in social media. These groups had benefited from substantial growth in the Russian economy until the 2008 economic crisis but have been alienated by increasing political corruption as well as recent stagnation in their income. The number of such individuals is large and growing in urban centres and is thought to represent a challenge to continuation of authoritarian rule. According to Putin the legitimate grievances of this young and active element of Russian society are being exploited by opportunistic elements which seek to destabilise Russia. Nationalist elements play a significant role in the coalition which is organising and participating in the protests. ==Protests against government==

4 December 2011 On 4 November 2011, during the annual Russian March event, representatives of "The Russians" movement declared a protest action planned for election day after polling districts closed. Kazan The same day demonstrations were being held in other cities throughout Russia such as St Petersburg, Kazan, Kaliningrad, Nizhni Novgorod, Penza and Yaroslavl. Also the Russian-speaking population of other countries organised rallies worldwide with similar demands: Germany, Israel, USA. The organisers of the third Moscow "For Fair Elections" protest had difficulties originally financing the protest because contributions from the public had waned by January 2012, so they financed the organisation of the protest with money collected earlier for other events. 26 February 2012 At least 3,500 people demonstrated against Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg, under heavy police presence, but no arrests were made. In Moscow on Sunday 26 February up to 30,000 people The activists from Moscow found it difficult to gain traction over the issue with local residents who, like most Russians, accept political corruption as a given that is useless to protest. The emissaries from Moscow persisted, buoyed by celebrities who support the reform movement, drawing 1,500 to a rally on 14 April. 6 and 7 May 2012 Protests involving about 20,000 people took place in Moscow the day before Putin's inauguration as President for his third term. Some called for the inauguration to be scrapped. About 400 protesters were arrested by the police, including Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Udaltsov and 80 were injured. On the day of the inauguration, at least 120 protesters were arrested in Moscow. Police also detained over 100 young men of conscription age (18–27), including 70 who had avoided the military draft. From the very beginning, the so-called "March of Millions" was a nervous event. Even before the march, many large liberal media sites: Echo Moscow radio station, Kommersant daily, and TV Rain channel, were subjected to DDoS-attacks. Ilya Ponomarev, an opposition leader and member of parliament, said the police had started the clashes. "The police started it. Bolotnaya square filled up and the police sealed it off. when they started to push demonstrators, and people reacted," he said. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov said he believed the police were being too soft on the protesters. Gazeta.ru reported "The efforts that the law enforcement are going to in order to provoke the protesters are so evident, it's impossible to remain blind to the plan of radicalization of peaceful protests behind their actions." Several hundreds meetings continued on 6/7 night, 7, 7/8 night and 8 May in different places in Moscow. Opposition leaders were arrested again. The arrests continued in the following months. The authorities' crackdown on the pro-democratic movement resulted in what has come to be known as the "Bolotnaya square case". Opposition Coordination Council Due to the fractured nature of the opposition, in June 2012 activists decided to create a 45-member Opposition Coordination Council (OCC), which would try to coordinate and direct dissent in Russia. Elections for the council were held on 20–22 October 2012. 170,000 people had registered on the site cvk2012.org, of whom nearly 98,000 were classed as "verified" and nearly 82,000 had cast their votes. Most votes were cast for Alexei Navalny. 12 June 2012 A peaceful protest rally by tens of thousands, protest organisers estimated their numbers at 50,000, while police put it at 15,000, originating at Pushkin Square was held in Moscow on 12 June 2012, Russia Day. The rally was preceded by soaking rain; there was a thunderstorm after a few hours. Protest activities fell within the conditions of the permit which had been issued by the authorities. A call by Sergei Udaltsov to march on the Investigative Committee of Russia which had raided organisers' homes on 11 June was rejected by other protest organisers. The protest rally defied an atmosphere of intimidation and repression fostered by the Putin administration: The previous day, police had raided the homes of various opposition leaders and called them in for interrogation an hour before the protest was due to start on 12 June: Alexei Navalny, Ilya Yashin and Ksenia Sobchak all attended the interrogations. The rally was also the first to follow a new law passed in June 2012 to punish protesters with larger fines. Participation in the protest was diverse, united only by opposition to Putin; in addition to the revolutionary anti-capitalist Left Front led by Sergei Udaltsov, black-clad Russian nationalists and liberals sporting white ribbons participated despite expressing mutual disdain. 15 December 2012 On Saturday afternoon about 2,000 protestors gathered in Lubyanka Square in Moscow, the location of the headquarters of the Federal Security Services, a successor to the KGB. A requested permit to lay flowers at the memorial stone in the square was denied. There were mass arrests including Alexei Navalny, Sergei Udaltsov of the Left Front, Kseniya Sobchak, and Ilya Yashin. Those arrested, if prosecuted and convicted, face heavy fines under recently enacted legislation which outlaws organising or participating in unauthorised demonstrations. 13 January 2013: March Against Scoundrels On 13 January 2013 a protest called the "March Against Scoundrels" was held in Moscow protesting passage of the Anti-Magnitsky law, a sanctions framework targeted at United States citizens that additionally bans adoption of Russian children by people in the United States. A permit was sought and issued. According to the police there were about 10,000 participants. According to oppositioners counting there were from 30 to 50 thousand people. According to bloggers' counting – 24,474 participants. 6 May 2013 On 6 May 2013 a mass rally took place in Moscow. Among featured speakers were Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny. Opposition leaders put the number of attendants at up to 50,000, though police stated 7,000 took part. 18 July 2013 On 18 July 2013 Alexei Navalny was sentenced to five years in prison for alleged embezzlement. After the verdict was read, thousands gathered in Moscow's Manezhnaya Square to protest it. ==Rallies in support of the government==

Simultaneously with the anti-government protests, the government and United Russia were supported by rallies of the government funded youth organisations. 4 December 2011 On 4 December, Nashi took to the Moscow streets with 15,000 young people that had been brought to Moscow from more than 20 regions and held meetings and concerts on the Revolution Square and Manezhnaya Square to express their support of president Medvedev and prime minister Putin. 6 December 2011 On 6 December, about 5,000 activists from Nashi and other pro-Kremlin youth groups held pro-government rallies on Manezhnaya Square and Triumfalnaya Square. To a New York Times reporter, it seemed that many of the participants in the rally were forced to attend. 12 December 2011 On 12 December, the 18th anniversary of the Constitution of Russia, thousands of United Russia sympathisers demonstrated in Moscow in support of Putin. 23 February 2012 On 23 February, Russia's Defender of the Fatherland Day, a massive pro-Putin march took place in Moscow. The march ended in Luzhniki Stadium, where a crowd of 130,000 (according to police estimates) was addressed by Vladimir Putin. The BBC reported, however, that some attendees claimed they had been made to take part or paid. Some said they had been told they were attending a "folk festival". After Putin spoke, popular folk band Lubeh took to the stage. Putin's speech in Luzhniki was his single speech before such a large audience during 2012 presidential campaign. In the speech he called not to betray the Motherland, but to love her, to unite around Russia and to work together for the good, to overcome the existing problems. He said that the foreign interference into Russian affairs should not be allowed, that Russia has its own free will. He compared the political situation at the moment with the First Fatherland War of 1812, reminding that its 200th anniversary and the anniversary of the Battle of Borodino would be celebrated in 2012.Putin cited Lermontov's poem Borodino and ended the speech with Vyacheslav Molotov's famous Great Patriotic War slogan "The Victory Shall Be Ours!" ("Победа будет за нами!"). 4 March 2012 On the post-election rally of his supporters at Manezhnaya Square, while making an acceptance speech, Putin was for the first time ever seen with tears in his eyes (later he explained that "it was windy"). ==Anti-Orange protests==

24 December 2011 On 2 December on Sparrow Hills, Sergey Kurginyan and his movement "Sut' Vremeni" (Essence of Time) organised the first protest against what was viewed as "orange" protesters in Moscow. The protest also supported the slogan "For Fair Elections". 4 February 2012 Alongside smaller rallies that gathered 50,000 people throughout the rest of the country, the large "Антиоранжевый митинг" ("Anti-Orange protest") was held on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow, near the World War II memorial complex, the largest protest action of all the protests so far according to the police. It was organised by a number of public organisations: Patriots of Russia party, Kurginyan's "Sut' Vremeni", "Congress of Russian communities", "Regional public fund in support of the Heroes of the Soviet Union and Heroes of Russia" "Trade Union of Russian citizens", "Pensioner Union of Russia", "Russian Union of Afghanistan veterans", "Assistance to realisation of constitutional rights of citizens 'Human rights'" group and others. According to the Moscow police, 138,000–150,000 people participated at the protest at the peak of attendance, while more people could have passed through the site. Opposition groups disputed these figures "as grossly inflated", and some journalists, including one of the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti, said the real number was "much lower". The infographics from Ria Novosti shows that the Poklonnaya Hill site can provide room for a maximum of 193,000 people at a density of 35 people per 10 sq m, or for 117,000 people at a smaller and more realistic density distribution. Some demonstrators, many of whom were state employees, said they attended under threat of dismissal. Some such claims made in the course of the protest organisation were later refuted as falsifications by the opposition activists and many other demonstrators said they came on their own free will according to a pro-government news site politonline.ru. Vladimir Putin acknowledged that some attendees could have been coerced, but said that it was impossible to gather so many people by administrative pressure alone. The participants were mostly middle age, but there were many young and old persons. Some of the participants were bused from other regions and cities with the transport provided by organisations participating in the action. At a temperature of −21 °C, a number of heat guns were set up, as well as tents with free hot tea and confectionery. The resulting large attendance at the protest was not expected, and resulted in a traffic jam in a nearby Kutozovsky Avenue. The organisers of the protests applied to the Moscow authorities to gather 15,000 people, but since the number was exceeded, they were faced with paying a fine. Vladimir Putin, who earlier in the evening claimed to share the ideals of those who would go to Poklonnaya Hill, offered to pay part of the fine with his own money. The "anti-Orange protest" name alludes to the (November 2004 – January 2005) Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the most ill-known to Russians colour revolution. The term "orange" in Russian political discourse has highly negative connotations. The speakers declared to be against "orangeism", "collapse of the country", "perestroika" and "revolution", reminding the public of such historical events as Gorbachev's Perestroika and the 1917 Russian Revolution and urging never to repeat them. The call for fair elections was supported, but the leaders of protesters on Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Avenue were condemned as "successors to those who destroyed the country in 1991 and 1917" and who allegedly want "to remove not Putin, but the Russian state". The visit of anti-government protest leaders to the U.S. embassy was condemned, as well as the alleged American interference. Pop-rock singer and composer Denis Maydanov performed on the scene, and pop-rock group Diskoteka Avariya sang their popular song "The Evil Approaches". The symbol of the "anti-Orange protest" was an orange snake strangled in a fist. The motto of the protest was "Нам есть, что терять!" (We have things to lose). The top slogan chosen by online vote was "Не дадим развалить страну!" (''Won't allow collapse of the country!) and among those frequently used were "Мы за стабильность" (We are for stability) and "Когда мы едины и мы непобедимы!" (When we are united we are invincible!''). Speakers on Poklonnaya Hill • Sergey Kurginyan, politologist, theatre director, TV host • Maksim Shevchenko, journalist, TV and radio host • Tatiana Tarasova, coach to more world and Olympic champions than any other coach in figure skating history • Anatoly Wasserman, political pundit, a frequent winner of intellectual TV games • Nikolay Starikov, writer, opinion journalist • Mikhail Leontyev, journalist and politologist • Valentin Lebedev, journalist, leader of the "Union of Orthodox citizens" • Natalya Narochnitskaya, historian, politologist • Eduard Bagirov, writer, scenarist • Johan Bäckman, Finnish, political author, legal sociologist and criminologist • Pavel Popovsky, leader of the "Union of airtroopers of Russia" • Aleksandr Dugin, philosopher, politologist, nationalist publicist • Alexander Prokhanov, writer, publicist • Yegor Kholmogorov, nationalist publicist • Vladimir Dolgikh, World War II veteran, two times Hero of Socialist Labor, member of the State Duma ==Media coverage==

team covering protests in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on 10 December 2011 According to the BBC on 7 December, "State TV channels have generally ignored the protests, covering only pro-government rallies" In contrast, newspapers have mentioned the protests in more depth. The only federal TV station to mention the protests at length before 10's December was the independent, but not broadcast widely, Ren TV. By 10 December, however, breaking with practice in recent years, all the main state-controlled channels were covering the protests, and in a professional and objective manner. According to one Russian media Alexey Pivovarov, NTV-channel host (now tightly run state media), refused to broadcast if the protests are not covered. Later, in 2013 Pivovarov have left the NTV. Western media covered the protests extensively starting on 5 December. Initial coverage by Fox News used footage of the 2011 Athens riots, showing palm trees, people throwing Molotov cocktails at police, and signs in Greek which Fox later claimed was an error and subsequently removed the report from its site. Internet Twitter users in Russia have reported being overwhelmed by pro-government tweets timed to Bolotnaya Square protest-related tweets. Many tweets seem to have been sent by hijacked computers, though the perpetrator(s) are not yet known. According to a report made by The Wall Street Journal the Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) have made a formal request to the social media site VKontakte to block opposition groups who 'encourage people to "trash the streets, to organize a revolution". The request was declined as only a few users behaved violently and it was unjust to ban a whole generally peaceful group. ==Sites and naming of protests==

The two largest protest actions in December 2011 took place on Bolotnaya Square (10 December) and Academician Sakharov Avenue (24 December), and another major protest action is planned on Bolotnaya on 4 February 2012. This resulted in the campaigners being dubbed the "Bolotnaya-Sakharov opposition", or taking into account the root meanings, the "swampy-sugar opposition." Former Speaker of Russia's State Duma and a leader of the United Russia party Boris Gryzlov advised Russians to "keep away of all those swamps", alluding to the phrase from the Russian film adaptation of Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles ("As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor" in the original book). ==Symbols==

The white ribbon emerged in as a symbol of opposition and since the elections has picked up momentum. Some Russians have been tying it to their clothing, cars, and other objects, and the motif has appeared on runet and on Twitter. By 10 December, the TV Rain channel was showing a white ribbon by its on-screen logo. The station's owner, Natalya Sindeyeva, explained this as being a sign of "sincerity", rather than "propaganda", and an attempt to be "mediators" instead of simply journalists. NTV described 10 December as the day of "white ribbons". Vladimir Putin contemptuously referred to the white ribbons used by Russian protesters, comparing them to condoms being used as a symbol of the fight against AIDS. ==Reactions==

Response from Russian officials President Dmitry Medvedev ordered an investigation into allegations of vote-rigging, though this received a cynical response from many opponents on his Facebook page. He also defended the right of people to express their views, while denouncing the street protests. On 22 December 2011, he called for a number of reform steps, including reintroducing the direct election of governors and reducing the required signatures for registering a political party or running in the presidential election. A bill reintroducing direct election of governors was introduced in the Duma on 16 January 2012. answers Alexey Venediktov's question: "I'm glad that people appear who actively voice their position. I repeat, that if that is the result of 'Putin's regime', I'm glad that such people appear." Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Hillary Clinton "set the tone for some opposition activists" to act "in accordance with a well-known scenario and in their own mercenary political interests our people do not want the situation in Russia to develop like it was in Kyrgyzstan or not so long ago in Ukraine." Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on 12 December that, "Even if you add up all this so-called evidence, it accounts for just over 0.5 percent of the total number of votes. So even if hypothetically you recognise that they are being contested in court, then in any case, this can in no way affect the question of the vote's legitimacy or the overall results." On 15 December 2011, Putin claimed that the organisers of the protests were former (Russian) advisors to former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko during his presidency who were transferring the Orange Revolution to Russia; he also claimed some organisers were paid by "foreign powers". On 27 December 2011, Putin reassigned Vladislav Surkov to the task of advancing Russia's modernisation and development efforts; he remains a deputy prime minister but will no longer oversee Russia's political processes. Putin suggested that a dialogue with the protestors on the internet might be productive, but while upholding the right of the protestors to protest, criticised them for lack of direction and lack of a program relevant to Russia's development, comparing them to "Brownian motion, going every which way." Vladislav Surkov, political adviser to the Kremlin and Chief of Russian Presidential Administration, who had been developing strategies for Russia to cope with an uprising such as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine has recognised the vital nature of the demonstrators but hopes to head off development of a potentially revolutionary movement by instituting reforms such as those announced by Russian president Dmitri A. Medvedev in his state of the nation address made 21 December 2011. According to Surkov, "The system has already changed". The rights of at least three Western television news channels (the BBC, CNN and Bloomberg) were suspended in Moscow by major provider Akado Telecom on 12 July 2012. While the move was not officially linked to the protests, but rather to outdated licences, Alexei Navalny noted that it came just three days after comments by President Putin that "Russia's policies often suffer from a one-sided portrayal these days". Response from the Obama Administration Jay Carney, President Barack Obama's second White House Press Secretary, said that anti-government protests in Russia are a "positive sign" for democracy in the country. Other reactions Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union and general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, has called on the authorities to hold a new election, citing electoral irregularities and ballot box stuffing. He criticised Vladimir Putin and the United Russia political party for violating peoples human rights and for not ruling the country in a proper Democratic fashion. During the next major round of demonstrations that occurred on 24 December, he called on Putin to resign. ==Interpretation of protests==

The 2011 protests were the biggest in Russia since the 1990s, and surprised many with their scale. According to Victor Shenderovich, an opposition political commentator for radio station Ekho Moskvy, "This is political, not economic. The coal miners came out because they were not paid. The people coming onto the streets of Moscow are very well off. These are people protesting because they were humiliated. They were not asked. They were just told, 'Putin is coming back.'" According to Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times columnist this humiliation of the rising middle class is the common ground the Russian movement shares with the Arab Spring. According to The New York Times, another "explanation is the high level of public corruption [in Russia], which threatens new personal wealth. A second is a phenomenon seen in Gen. Augusto Pinochet's Chile, that economic growth can inadvertently undermine autocratic rule by creating an urban professional class that clamors for new political rights." An additional explanation is that "Putin's unilateral announcement in September that he would run again for the presidency, in effect swapping places with Mr. Medvedev" contributed greatly, something some "Russians now snidely refer to [...] as "rokirovka" – the Russian word for castling in chess". Imprisoned oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky has claimed that the protests were inspired, at least in part, by the example of the Arab Spring. He told The Guardian, "We have only to reflect on the events in countries swept up in the Arab Spring to recognise the transformation taking place in the compact between the rulers and the ruled. While there are certainly many differences between those countries and Russia, there are some fundamental similarities." In March 2012 Sergei Mironov, running for the presidency of Russia, also compared the situation to the Arab Spring, saying that: "Whoever wins the presidency, if he does not immediately begin deep political and social reforms [...] Russia will be shaken by a kind of Arab Spring within two years." The Telegraph pointed out that since Mironov is a former ally of Vladimir Putin, he could have been trying to scaremonger "as a subtle way of endorsing a crackdown on street demonstrations that are expected in the days after the vote". ==Repression==

Vyacheslav Volodin, who was Deputy Prime Minister at the time and later became First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia, was responsible for domestic policy and was tasked with countering the revolution and began to rein in the internet using Prisma (Russian: «Призма») which "actively tracks the social media activities that result in increased social tension, disorderly conduct, protest sentiments and extremist" by monitoring in real time the protesters discussions on blogs and social networks and performs social media tracking which later led to the establishment of the Internet Research Agency. 8 June 2012 in response to increased militancy by a segment of the protest movement a law was enacted imposing severe penalties on protesters who engage in unauthorised demonstrations or who exceed the boundaries of authorised ones. Maximum penalties were fines of several thousand rubles or imposed labour of up to 200 hours. == In popular culture ==

''All the Kremlin's Men'', 2015 book by Mikhail Zygar. Winter Go Away!, 2012 documentary/ drama film directed by Dmitriy Kubasov. ''Dressed Up for a Riot: Misadventures in Putin's Moscow'', a 2018 nonfiction book by Michael Idov == See also ==