Crackdown or Negotiation? Russian Protests Pose a Dilemma for Putin

Russians stage a protest against alleged vote rigging in parliamentary elections, holding signs including one that reads "Putin Must Go Away," on Dec. 10, 2011 in Moscow (Konstantin Zavrazhin / Getty Images)

A protester stands during a rally in downtown St. Petersburg, Russia, Dec. 10, 2011. The sign reads "No vote." (Dmitry Lovetsky / AP)

Sunday, Dec. 11, 2011
By Simon Shuster / Moscow
Times Magazine (USA)

Mercenaries, goateed liberals, jackals who scavenge for money at foreign embassies in Moscow — those are some of the things Vladimir Putin has called Russia's opposition. But he's never before had to reckon with them as a significant threat to his rule. That may now have to change. On Saturday, in the biggest act of popular resistance ever to Putin's government, tens of thousands of protesters rallied across the country to challenge the results of parliamentary elections held a week ago. This time, the once and future President can't ignore his challengers or simply dismiss them with colorful epithets.

"We realize these aren't Chinese people sent here to protest," an official from Putin's United Russia party told TIME after the demonstrations. "These are regular citizens, and we have to respond to their demands." (The official asked to remain anonymous because these are "nervous times" and "no one wants to talk out of turn.") Since the wave of protests began last Monday, party officials and Putin's circle of advisers have held emergency meetings to try to hammer out a response, the official added, but have so far come up with little.

For the first time, even Putin's loquacious spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was speechless when asked about the Saturday demonstration in Moscow, which was by far the largest since Putin rose to power 12 years ago. "The government of Russia has not yet formulated its position," Peskov said. In the upper ranks of the party, two opposing camps have emerged, according to the United Russia official. The largest group is calling for a quick and decisive crackdown, banning any further demonstrations and using force if necessary to break them up. The minority view, however, holds that the protests will fizzle out on their own if people are allowed a chance to vent their frustrations. "So far the arguments of the reasonable minority are winning out," the official added.

That much has been clear in the government's response so far. After Monday's postelection rally, which drew up to 7,000 people in the center of Moscow, authorities granted permission for a protest of up to 30,000 people on Saturday on an island in the Moskva River, a short walk from the Kremlin. Around 40,000 people showed up despite freezing temperatures and heavy snow, many of them carrying white flowers and wearing white ribbons, the symbols of what the organizers are calling the "snowy revolution." In a striking departure from tradition, all the state television channels showed footage of the rally, while the police presence was remarkably unobtrusive. No arrests were made even when thousands disobeyed orders from the city government and gathered, beforehand, near the walls of the Kremlin to march to the rally site. "Friends, you are acting like the police force of a democratic country!" one of the main organizers, Vladimir Ryzhkov, told the troops from the stage. The massive crowd responded by chanting, "The police are with the people!"

But the police were, of course, simply obeying orders, which could change quickly if the standoff is not resolved. And, considering the demands of the opposition, it is hard to imagine any quick resolution. Their first demand is for the parliamentary-election results to be annulled, as well as for a new nationwide poll to be staged. "This is completely and utterly out of the question," the United Russia official said. Such a vote would likely cost the party its majority in the parliament, which it barely managed to hold despite massive vote rigging. Without a parliamentary majority, Putin's government could face constant pressure from the registered opposition parties. Although they have only posed token resistance to Putin's rule so far — one of the parties, Fair Russia, is in fact a Kremlin creation — they could start investigating corruption in Putin's circle, block passage of the budget and break the tradition of rubber-stamping laws. Putin's legitimacy would also be deeply eroded if last weekend's vote is annulled, a risk he cannot take ahead of presidential election next March in which he hopes to win a new six-year term.

The brightest response to the crisis from the government side is typical of Putin's system of managed democracy. The ruling party wants to engineer a liberal party to channel the energy of the young, educated and middle-class voters attending the latest demonstrations. "This is a gaping hole in the system," the United Russia official said. "We have no party that can absorb this part of society." Last summer, the Kremlin already attempted to create such a party, Pravoe Delo (Right Cause), by tapping the billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets, Mikhail Prokhorov, to run it. But he did not prove sufficiently loyal. As that party's list of candidates for the parliamentary vote was being formed, Prokhorov began pushing through his own men instead of accepting orders handed down from above. The reaction was swift, and revealed the Kremlin's almost pathological fear of competition. In September, Prokhorov was unseated as the leader of the party, a coup he blamed on the Kremlin's "puppet master," Vladislav Surkov, who has overseen the media and national politics throughout Putin's rule. Most of the protest votes in the elections then ended up going to the Communist Party, which got 19%, even though Russia's urban middle-class youth hardly wants to see it returned to power. Both the Communist speakers at Saturday's rally got a cold reception from the crowd; one was booed off stage.

It is far from clear, however, that another Kremlin puppet party, no matter how liberal and democratic its rhetoric, would satisfy demands for real democratic reform. The organizers of the protests, most of whom belong to unregistered opposition parties, demanded that they be allowed to take part in elections for the first time — a risk that United Russia might consider taking, the official told TIME. "At first we'd like to have them take part in some discussion club. They send their men, we send ours. And maybe later, in time for the next elections, they might get registration," which would allow them to field candidates.

But these half measures have so far inspired only anger among Russia's disaffected voters. On Sunday, President Dmitri Medvedev offered another minor concession via his Facebook page, saying he had ordered all claims of voter fraud to be investigated. Within hours, the post had more than 7,000 comments, many of them deriding Medvedev as a "pathetic" President or repeating the opposition's insistence on new elections.

If the demand for a new election is not met within two weeks, the opposition says, it will hold another mass demonstration in Moscow and other cities in the hope of forcing the government to negotiate. "They thought we couldn't even get 10,000 people to rally, and now we've showed them," Ilya Ponomaryov, the parliamentary deputy who led the Saturday rally alongside Ryzhkov, told TIME afterward. "We have enormous momentum. The people are fed up. The authorities spit in their face with these elections, and they are spitting back. So I think, yes, Putin will have to negotiate."

But for a man who has only ever shown contempt for Russia's banned opposition groups and who has ruled unchallenged for a decade, it would be painful and humiliating in the extreme to sit down and discuss their demands. It would seem easier, and more in line with his character, to side with the faction inside his party that is clambering for a crackdown. And that is when Russia's snowy revolution could suddenly turn into a bloody one.