Internal

In a move likely to lead to federal legislation, St Petersburg is seeking to pass a bill outlawing ‘gay propaganda’. This would put Russia’s beleaguered gay community even more at risk, Kathryn Dovey reports for Human Rights Watch

Vladimir Putin’s one great achievement is the restoration of bureaucratic order after its near destruction by Gorbachev and privatisation by Yeltsin. Yet the end game is fast approaching, and the longer Putin clings on, the more likely he will be instead remembered for letting greedy friends and bureaucrats run amok, writes Vladimir Pastukhov

Intellectuals are excited that this winter’s protests are a sign Russia could finally be turning into a democratic state. Andrei Konchalovsky urges them to look back into the country’s past and see how far Russians still must travel to become normal Europeans. The protesters must show caution, he argues, or risk the kind of bloodshed that has accompanied other attempts to modernise the country.

Young, liberal figures such as Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Milov are building bridges between democratic and nationalist wings of the protest movement. Will this marriage prove a mix that mobilises a nation against the Putin regime, or will it taint the legitimacy of both sides in years to come, asks Nicu Popescu?

Russia’s growing nationalist movement has alarmed many liberal commentators, who wonder how the country that defeated Adolf Hitler could have given birth to so many young men overtly sympathetic to his ideas. Journalist Olesya Gerasimenko, who has covered several neo-Nazi trials, wondered where the defendants came from: how Russian boys could go out and kill foreigners in cold blood. She persuaded three of the convicted murderers’ parents to talk to her.

For many Western readers the Kuril Islands are famous chiefly for being the subject of an post-WWII territorial dispute between USSR/Russia and Japan. Amidst the political wrangling, the Kuril islanders continue to go about their daily lives, reports Ksenya Semyonova, a native of nearby Sakhalin.

oD Russia continues publication of a remarkable exchange between two leaders of the Russian protest movement — writer Grigory Chkhartishvili, a.k.a Boris Akunin and politician-blogger Aleksey Navalny. In this part, the discussants compare their forecasts for the year ahead. 2012 will present an historic challenge to the authorities, they conclude, but will Russia's "arrestocratic" class be able to muster anything in response?

By electing to follow an aggressive policy of imperial nationalism, Putin and his inner circle missed the emergence of a serious domestic crisis that threatens the very existence of their regime. These same factors may also, however, subvert the country’s growing pro-democratic protest movement, says Andreas Umland.

Just before the last Moscow demonstration on December 24, two of the protest movement’s most popular leaders — writer Boris Akunin and politician-blogger Aleksey Navalny — got together for a fascinating public conversation. The three-part interview, published on Akunin’s blog, is arguably the fullest profile of Russia’s leading opposition politician and covers many of the more uncomfortable aspects of Navalny’s politics. ODR is pleased to present the full English translation of the interviews.

The recent wave of demonstrations against election fraud across Russia were preceded in the spring and autumn by protests from grassroots fishermen’s organisations, who marched to defend their right to fish for free. Authorities soon climbed down from their controversial plans to privatise rivers and lakes, but not before radicalising an estimated 15-20 million amateur fishermen, writes Oleg Pavlov.

As Russia’s largest and best organised ‘horizontal’ community in Russia, football fans have found themselves at the centre of governmental attempts to control informal groups, write Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov. Perhaps more surprisingly, they have also become guinea pigs for international data exchange programmes, with Russian authorities picking up the very worst of surveillance practices from their foreign colleagues.

It’s an age-old adage that things always look greener on the other side of the fence and this is particularly true of married women looking at single women’s life and vice versa. Elena Strelnikova gives a wry account of the problems encountered by single women in the Orenburg Region, where she lives

The Putin regime has little to fear from the latest public protests which, despite drawing large crowds, are apolitical. True politics will only become possible in Russia when both the opposition and the regime focus on the tedious work of practical politics, says Nicolai N. Petro in his highly personal view of recent events.

Moscow’s protest movement is gathering momentum, bringing in greater numbers and a wider constituency of supporters. What is as yet unclear, however, is whether it has the organisational clout to become a sustained force for change, write Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov.

The first indications as to how the Russian regime might react to the country's unexpected protest movement came this Thursday, when Putin took questions during a live TV broadcast. While there was plenty of the old belligerence on show, a new approach to the country’s intellectual elite suggests that Putin has yet to make up its mind.

Russia's blogosphere has until recently been largely written off as a politically blunt parallel space. The Facebook mobilisation of 50,000 protestors has challenged such assumptions, writes Julien Nocetti.

For years, a pact of loyalty in exchange for roubles fostered the growth of a largely apolitical middle class in Russia. On Saturday, that middle class turned against their creator. They are, however, some way off uniting behind a single opposition candidate, write Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov.

Apparent fraud in Russia’s parliamentary elections has unleashed an unprecedented display of anger against Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party. Many Russians who had been happy to go along with the political status quo finally decided that they had had enough. Last Monday, Alexandra Krylenkova attended a protest for the first time, and found inspiration and release in her subsequent arrest.

The protests against widely perceived fraud in Russia’s parliamentary elections were broadcast throughout the world and went viral on the internet. The role of social networks in spreading discontent and organising the demonstrations in Russian cities is a crucial development, but with the leadership of the opposition in disarray, profound change is not an inevitable consequence, says Grigorii Golosov

United Russia may have obtained a technical victory in Sunday’s disputed parliamentary elections, but their failure to obtain 50% of the votes has imparted serious psychological damage on the ruling elite. It has also emboldened the public, which for the first time in a long time realises it can make a difference. These developments makes yesterday's result extremely significant, writes Grigorii Golosov.