Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Protest in a Russian "island"

Joshua Tucker, who is an Associate Professor of Politics at New York University and contributes to The Monkey Cage blog, wondered whether the Putin/Medvedev government was running into problems similar to those faced by Yeltsin and whether the results would be different.

Stirrings in Russia? Protest and the Economy

The popular perception of Russia these days is of a largely autocratic country with a fairly docile mass public… Nevertheless, it is certainly worth noting that figures released earlier this week show that the Russian economy contracted by 7.9% in 2009, the worst the economy has performed since 1994, which includes the economic collapse following the 1998 ruble default that did so much damage to the credibility of Yeltsin’s reforms.

While last weekend’s Anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow followed the traditional recent pattern of small numbers of protesters and a forceful response by the Russian policy, a protest in Kalingrad, a far-Western Russian region that is located between Poland and Lithuania, took an unexpected turn when upwards of 10,000 people joined the protest, and, perhaps even more unexpectedly, was widely reported on in Russian newspapers (although largely ignored on TV).

The photo above is from the protest, and the sign mocks the ruling United Russia party by saying “United Russia - United Against Russia”. For those interested in more analysis, see this post on the always excellent Power Vertical blog at RFE/RL.

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Labels: economics, politics, Russia