"We are half a step away from a police state."
The changes in Russia, according to one of Putin's critics, have reached a tipping point. The Guardian (UK) reported that an organizer of Saturday's protest in... Nizhny Novgorod, argued that "There isn't much point in talking about democracy in Russia any more."The next time we teach about the political system in Russia, the narrative will be different than it was this semester. There will be a new president, and since the beginning of 2007, it has become more and more obvious that the regime is changing dramatically.
(Dr. Nick Hayes, historian and Russia expert said recently in a radio interview that Russia under Putin has become a mafia state, run by a tight-knit group of gangsters. Even if he's right, public opinion polls in Russia suggest that most people there are grateful for the stability of oppression.)
Excerpts from The Guardian report:
Supreme court ban on liberal party wipes out opposition to Putin
"Russia's next parliament is likely to have no genuine opposition after a court in Moscow yesterday banned a leading liberal party from standing in elections.
"Russia's supreme court announced that it had liquidated the small Republican party, claiming that it had violated electoral law by having too few members. The party is one of very few left in Russia that criticises President Vladimir Putin...
"Hundreds of demonstrators are expected to gather [Saturday] in Nizhny Novgorod... The protesters from The Other Russia, a coalition of opposition groups, are expected to march despite attempts by pro-Kremlin officials to prevent them from demonstrating...
"The mayor's office announced a children's festival on the site of the proposed march, and blocked off the road to carry out what it said were urgent repairs.
"'Taking to the streets isn't our plan,' said Denis Bilunov, a member of the march's organising committee. 'But the problem is that the opposition is being pushed out of the legislative process. This is the only way we can protest legitimately. We are being barred from federal channels and from parliament.'...
"The Kremlin argues that its new electoral law - which says that all political parties must have 50,000 members and be represented in half of Russia's provinces - is meant to streamline Russia's untidy political scene. Critics say the legislation is designed to kill off smaller parties that oppose the Kremlin."
Backstory from The Guardian:
Russia's tiny opposition is represented in the current Duma by four or five MPs.
Pro-Kremlin parties predominate among the 447 deputies.
- The small opposition Republican party, banned yesterday, was formed by defectors from the Soviet Communist party. It emerged in 1990 on the wave of liberalism encouraged by then-Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
- The Republican party has one MP, Vladimir Ryzhkov; its other attempts to win seats have repeatedly failed. But it has played a solid role in the liberal opposition.
- The liberal Yabloko party also has two MPs.
- Two other anti-Putin MPs sit as independents.
In theory, the opposition includes Russia's Communist party and the far-right Liberal Democratic party. In reality, they rarely if ever voice opposition to the Kremlin, observers point out.
from the New York Times on March 25:
Russian Police Trample Anti-Putin Protest
"Riot police officers swarmed on a group of several dozen journalists and demonstrators on Saturday in Nizhny Novgorod... cutting off a protest against the government...
"The police, vastly outnumbering the protesters and wielding night sticks and metal shields, detained about 30 people... A protest organizer said the number of people detained at the raid was more than 100, plus another 100 who had been arrested in an earlier roundup..."
posted by Ken Wedding @ 11:59 AM
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