Opposition member Boris Nemtsov issuing demands on behalf of the crowd at Bolotnaya, 6 May 2013. Video by Oleg Kozyrev

When I first listened to Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny's speech on Bolotnaya Square this week, when he said, speaking from an impromptu stage, that he realized "our voices can't be heard beyond 30 meters," I thought he was referencing Mandelstam's famous poem about the intelligentsia oppressed under Stalin:

We live without feeling the country beneath our feet,
our words are inaudible from ten steps away.

But upon a second listen, I concluded that he was merely speaking of the practical matter of speaking from a speaker's platform rigged on a truck.

Well, at least their voices are heard at 30 meters now — which is progresss over the 10 paces they were heard in the Stalin era! 

"Foreign Agents" or the People's Judean Front?

The stage was hastily put together in place of a constructed platform after a worker tragically died putting it up before the big rally on May 6. The organizers of the demonstration decided to go ahead with the meeting — a decision probably some of their detractors found added to their list of reasons to dislike them.

It's typical of the cynicism and sheer spleen about the Russian opposition that so saturate the mindshare in foreign policy publications and Twitter debates that in a piece appallingly titled "Foreigners in Their Own Land" (just when there is a crackdown on "foreign agents"), Julia Ioffe, now back from her long sojourn in Russia, decided that the moment of silence was for the defeated opposition movement itself, ostensibly crushed in the year since the last big Bolotnaya Square march of May 2012.

She writes:

This was reflected in the tired, usual-suspects line-up of speakers, and
their staid, regurgitated speechifying. It was made all the more
pathetic by the weak sound system: A mishap earlier in the day had
killed a volunteer setting up the equipment, and speeches had to be
delivered from the side of a truck rigged up as a stage. Sometimes, it
reverted into farce, as when opposition journalist Oleg Kashin went dada and sang, a capella,
a song called “It’s All Going According to Plan.” Some invoked the
Stalinist purges of 1937—a common, if slightly inappropriate trope of
late. Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister under Yeltsin and an
opposition veteran, declared, “No more resolutions! This time, we have
demands!” It was a cringeworthy, unwittingly Monty Python-esque moment,
and it reflected the impotence of the large, angry crowd. It was the
age-old Russian dilemma, incarnate: What is to be done?

Yet if you go and listen to the speeches of Navalny, Akunin and Gudkov and read some of the independent press, you realize that what Ioffe is writing is a terrible, jaundiced distortion. Far from being impotent and angry, or tired of the usual speakers, the crowd seems engaged and supportive, actually listening to every paragraph of the speeches and calling out answers. Kashin's tone-deaf song doesn't matter, it wasn't the most important. References to 1937 aren't so outlandish when they come in a call to *prevent* such periods of lawleness. Nemtsov's demands in fact only made sense and far from being "Monty Python" are more like Jon Stewart in his serious moments. They included:

o solidarity with the prisoners of last year's demonstration; release of all political prisoners and an end to such political cases

o condemnation of Putin's usurpation and falsification of elections and amendment of the Constitution so that no leader can serve more than two terms; new parliamentary and presidential elections

o increase of public oversight over government spending and investigation of the billions spent on the Olympics in Sochi, and bringing to account those guilty of pocketing funds from the construction

o an end to TV censorship

Now honestly, what the hell is wrong with that? Shouldn't good liberals and "progressives" and sturdy upholders of the right concerned about "reality" be conceding at least this much, like the Russian opposition, braver than they, do?

Would the reason you couldn't sign a petition with these same very, very basic human rights demands be due to Oleg singing off key? Why would anybody be pretending Russians are still asking "what is to be done" when they've called out the obvious, glaring debacle of the Olympics spending? There is an obvious thing to be done, and that's not send the president of the United States or even the Secretary of State to such a Monty Python show.

Endless Mockery

And although Ioffe was wrong about the moment of silence — it was indeed for the worker who died — she nonetheless had great sport with the vicious anti-opposition campaigner Kevin Rothrock for endless rounds on Twitter. Rothrock's incessant and intricate demolition of the opposition is a thing to behold on Twitter — there's the cherry-picking nationalist trash-talk so that the entire opposition can be tarred with this brush and then the thoughtful thumb-sucking to ponder just how much daylight there might be between Bastrykin and Putin and thus suggest that he's not uncritical of Putin.

Rothrocks steady stream of mockery about the opposition begins to beg the question — how can such bile be sustained for so long? How can anyone care that much to keep up the hate and amplify it daily in various contrived works on Global Voices? Then there's the conundrum: if these people are so insignifcant and pathetic and such losers, why do they deserve months of conniving demolition?

Perhaps Rothrock is simply too close to his subject — he has obsessively, aggressively followed every twist and turn of the complicated Russian opposition politics on his own blog and Global Voices for years and at this point probably knows more about these beleaguered figures than they know about themselves. It's for this reason that people who should know better like Miriam Elder seem so chummy with him on Twitter.

But it must chafe his butt terribly that despite all this beautiful wickedness when it comes to artfully denouncing the opponents of the Kremlin every day, in one fell swoop, Bill Keller can come along and pour water on it with one column in the New York Times and get zillions more eyeballs and impressions… Keller in fact writes the sort of piece an old Moscow hand would be expected to publish with a certain admiration of Navalny for doing what he does: "A Blogger on Trial" is exactly the issue, because even Rothrock surely can't believe that the flimsy story about the lumber purchase in Kirov has any merit.

Yes, Navalny's a Nationalist

Yeah, we get it, we're supposed to curl our lip and turn up our noses at Navalny. Indeed, even before I pronounced the current opposition movement doomed long before anyone else did, I was paying attention to Novodvorskaya who was explaining vigorously in her Youtubes that there was an odour about Navalny…he was allied with right-wingers who marched with Nashisty…he was associated with people who thought the Caucasus shouldn't be "fed"…he was demogogic…etc. I took her at her word. Keller thinks it's shrewd to use "mild nationalism" to persuade ordinary Russians that he's not one of those foreign-funded misfits, but I think in the long run in this multi-national country it will fail.

I didn't see anything particularly attractive about Navalny but recognized that Russians did — he is a lawyer, which counts less as a credential in their society but still counts as something; he was willing to stand up to corruption, which is something ordinary Russians care about more than the exoticisms of international standards for free speech or against torture; and he seemed to be a good organizer, getting people together enough to ensure that large numbers turned out on the square.

Long ago I said to myself — hey, it's their country, they are going to do what they want and I'm not required here except to show solidarity as appropriate to what is appropriate. I think the frenzy that people like Rothrock get into over the Russian opposition is in part driven by the notion that if only they can incite enough indignation and even hatred, they will actually shame or compel people into changing — either the opposition themselves, or their default supporters. They likely truly believe that Putin needs protection.

So hey, I get it about the opposition.  They're no angels; they have some iffy pasts; they are not effective; they fight among themselves; blah blah blah. But you know something? So do people in the State Department, about what to do about Russia — which strategy to use. And so do people in the European Union — there are huge splits over the issue of whether you coddle or curb Russia, or whether you foster capitalism or socialism, and how, and the role of religion or the secular state. So it's not as if the rest of the world is in fact any better about the central problem at hand here, the figure of Putin, which is a construct of "the Kremlin," as in "that fortified place".

Out of Place Morally

My own conviction, however, is that the animosity and malice toward the Russian opposition — not even always part and parcel of an uncritical or even supportive attitude toward Putin — is really out of place. Out of place morally, and even just out of place in terms of covering real news.

That's why I am glad to be part of the project The Interpreter, which is bringing translations and commentary from the independent media in Russia, and analysis of the pro-government media, which really are voices missing in the entire debate about Russia. When I think of how casually and easily Ambassador Michael McFaul was able to misrepresent what the opposition, in the person of Navalny, Boris Nemtsov and others, were really saying about the Magnitsky List (they supported it and he claimed they didn't), back when he was craftily looking for ways to sink it by referencing activists in Russia — I really began to see the importance of trying to help get these voices heard more. This is all the more true given the serious filtration and skewing of the news that happens now at Global Voices, The New Republic, Forbes, Center for American Progress, the National Interest and scores of other homes for either "progressives" or conservatives with a pro-Putin tilt. It's really shocking to me to see how this empire has been built up in the last twenty years when you think of how such pro-Kremlin sentiment in the 1980s was unthinkable except for all but a small group of sectarians and hard leftists and a handful of right-wing Real-Politickers. There used to be this basic consensus in the American intelligentsia, such as it is:  whatever your differences with people like Solzhenitsyn, and they may be significant, you don't break faith with people being sent to the GULAG. You just don't.

Yet now, the sustained sneer that Rothrock and others on his wavelength can bring to Twitter, or the casual condemnation that Ioffe can bring to the brave marchers on Bolotnaya Square — which she has left behind — get all the mindshare. It's really time to challenge that.

Basic Truths Spoken By Opposition

Once you get past the fake claims that somehow Navalny hasn't cared about the political prisoners because he didn't mention them (others did, no need to repeat, everybody gets it); or that Akunin was "boring" (he wasn't, he made an eloquent plea to his fellow intellectuals in the arts who had not taken positions of conscience yet — which really ought to include some of the journalists I'm referencing here); or Nemtsov as reading not slogans but demands (you know, like not having political show trials) — well you realize that in fact the opposition, whatever its problems, is really saying the basic stuff that needs to be said to this regime.

Gudkov may come across as a Partorg when he talks about "ideological warfare" and chasing people down even in their smoking rooms to give them the gospel of Bolotnaya — yeah, I get it.

But he also simply speaks the basic truths that need to be said — for example, that there isn't an opposition in the parliament because no independent political parties have been allowed to get on the ballot. The manipulations around the party registrations — the sort of exhaustive trees Rothrock would cover without seeing the essential politically-motivated forest — are the kind that wouldn't happen in a normal country.  He noted the absence of an independent judiciary — and who could argue with that when we see just how trumped up all these cases are, and with the same template? He talked about the rampant corruption — and while people may be tired of hearing about the Ozero Dacha Cooperative, it does kind of say it all.

To be sure, he and others had unrealistic expectations of "throwing the bums out" and the only practical proposal of running in municipal elections — which will be just as unfair and rigged as any in Russia. It would be great if the Russian opposition didn't imagine itself coming to power as a means of inspiration, but could expect a role of being the permanent alternative needed in a civil society.

But as I said, it's their country and they are going to do it the way they like.

Russia Will Be Free

What I really don't see as justified at all is the snottiness and snark directed at these people from the Putin-friendly blogosphere of Rothrock at Global Voices, Adomanis at Forbes, Ioffee, and others like Cory Welt endlessly finding excuses to support the "stability" of the Kremlin sort. People are going to jail unfairly and it's wrong; and of course there are far larger human rights dramas than the Moscow intellectuals and their demonstrations, when you think that 427 people disappeared in the North Caucasus by official admission along, and that last year, Russian forces killed or captured more than 900 reported extremist insurgents in Dagestan.

If for the bloggers like Rothrock the cheers of "Russia will be free" are seeming shopworn and threadbare after a year of dwindling numbers and Putin only reinforcing his position, the they'd have to concede that their sneers are staring to get as shopworn when in fact people are going to jail for no reason. There's such a thing as not kicking a man when he's down, but there's also such a thing as admitting that getting even 10,000 people on the square (it doesn't seem there were any 50,000) is actually quite an accomplishment, given that only three years ago, Lyudmila Alexeyeva of the Moscow Helsinki Group, and her strange bed-fellow in insisting on Constitutional principles, Edvard Limonov, were only getting at most 100 in Moscow parks at their pickets.

In discussing Surkov's department, Rothrock has cited some speculation that he could start a second party outside United Russia and Just Russia that might actually amount to something. I don't see what the power base could possibly be or the source of financing unless they can get some of these big oligarchs whose funds are now all going to soccer clubs and charity to cook up an NGO that looks benign enough to pass scrutiny from vigilant Justice Minister bureaucrats — let along a party.

Even so, some Russian political technologists have learned from Obama and friends that you can spend 20 years on "community organizating" from a socialist platform and work on single issues like "education" or "the environment" and arrive at the White House in the end.  So under the banner of "science" or "innovation" there may be some who have the foresight to start planning for the post-Putin world even now. One chit they should call in are the Silicon Valley companies like Intel or IBM that have invested in Skolkovo — the people that McFaul once led to Russia on a tour called #rustechdel on Twitter that also featured investor/movie star Ashton Kutcher. Putin probably doesn't want to lose those people's money, so maybe there's a little leverage there, but likely not if the people involved aren't patient and savvy enough.

One thing that grated the opposition-haters — and which I, too, also found grating even though I am church-going and celebrated Easter — was the "Christ is Risen" sloganeering from the platform. At one level, it might be normal enough to expect people to issue this greeting on Easter Monday. But at another level, given that the crowds had to be very diverse, with Jews, Muslims, and non-believers as much as Russian Orthodox, it being Moscow, it seemed, well, odd. I dare say most of those people on the platform hadn't been to an actual church service the day before, anyway.

So as I said, I get it. Even so, in our time, nobody's voice should be stuck at 10 paces or even 30 meters when there are in fact many of them and the things they are talking about are indisputable — the basic elements of civil society such as independent elections and civilian oversight of government spending.

The Russian intelligentsia in Moscow has always lived without feeling the rest of the country under its feet and if its own voice isn't heard at 10 or even 30 paces, it has never ceased to imagine the people "out there" and that their job as intellectuals is to "go out to the people" and hunt them down in every smoking room and communal kitchen to reach with a scripted message, instead of listening to what they say and incorporating in a national movement.

But all the changes, good or bad, in Russia have come from leaders from the provinces and it will be no different next time.