History Forum / General / General Topics / February 2005

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Mounting Discontent in Russia Spills Into Streets
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Published: February 12, 2005

MOSCOW, Feb. 11 - A month ago a small crowd of elderly men and women
briefly blocked the highway to Moscow's main international airport to
protest changes in pension benefits. It seemed insignificant then, but
in retrospect it seems to have been the first stirrings of something
long considered dead, or at least dormant, in Russia: the public
protest.

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In Beslan, relatives of those killed in the siege of Middle School No.
1 last September blocked the main highway across the North Caucasus for
three days in late January to protest the pace of the government's
official investigation into the terrorist attack. On the island of
Sakhalin in the Far East, ecologists joined local villagers in blocking
roads leading to new oil and gas projects to protest their effect on
the environment and local tribal cultures.

In the last week alone, people representing liberal parties assembled
near the Kremlin in Moscow to denounce the end of direct elections for
governor and in St. Petersburg to protest the exclusion of political
opponents from the city's official television station. On Thursday,
transportation workers took to the streets in those cities, and a dozen
others, to rail against the rising cost of gasoline, among other
issues.

"There is calm before the storm, and it is the beginning of the storm,"
said Anatoly Zykov, 55, a bus driver from the Moscow region who joined
some 200 others outside the government headquarters known as the White
House. "God forbid there should be bloodshed, but everyone is sick and
tired."

An axiom here holds that Russians are politically passive, but the
protests unfolding in cities across 11 time zones is challenging that,
while raising questions about public support for the country's course
under President Vladimir V. Putin.

The largest of the demonstrations have included no more than a few
thousand protesters. But taken together, they are the largest by far of
Mr. Putin's presidency and appear to signal a broadly felt, if
ill-defined, discontent.

The public anger has dented Mr. Putin's ratings and rattled his
government ministers, who responded slowly and confusedly to the first
wave of protests over pensions before retreating in part on changes
that the Kremlin had pushed through a pliant Parliament last summer.

Mr. Putin's appointees have attributed the demonstrations to a
disgruntled few, incited by agitators, but the protests show little
sign of dissipating. A coalition of political, social, environmental
and labor organizations has called new rallies across the country for
Saturday, including two in Moscow.

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