Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

If a tree falls in the forest...

If a protest takes place in Russia outside of Moscow and there's no reporter there to see it, is it visible?

Journalists, like tourists, tend to stay in the biggest cities and on the main roads. That's one reason those of us who depend on news media lack some perspectives. Kathy Lally, writing for the Washington Post, got outside of Moscow and tries to explain why political dissent and protest are less common in the hinterlands.

Far from Moscow, protest is a lonely pursuit

The protest movement that erupted so vigorously in Moscow and St. Petersburg over the winter has had difficulty taking hold in provincial cities such as Ulyanovsk, where the constraints of daily life make dissent a dangerous and lonely affair.

People have plenty to protest here [Ulyanovsk, a Detroit-like city, with a faltering auto industry… and a once-thriving aviation industry that has been overwhelmed by competition.] — the steady decline of manufacturing and loss of jobs, low pay, lack of political freedom — but most grumble quietly at home. Few risk gathering in a square to demonstrate their discontent. The politically aroused who can afford it travel to Moscow to join major rallies.

Unlike in international Moscow, demonstrators here are more susceptible to reprisals because greater majorities work for government-dependent agencies…

Still, the politically aware say change is inevitable, even if very slow in coming across the vast expanse of Russia and its nine time zones…

Alexander Kruglikov, a long-time Communist, said the authorities are making a big mistake in suppressing dissent. “I have to say that the Soviet Union fell apart because there was no real opposition in the country,” he said with a wry smile. “No one was listening to individual voices.”…