Support needed for Russian activists arrested in Kazan
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In January and early February, widespread protests, mainly by youth against corruption, demanding freedom for political prisoners and against the Putin regime shook the country. They followed the return of opposition leader Alexey Navalny to Russia following his poisoning and then his imprisonment for 3,5 years. Over 10,000 were arrested, several dozens ended up with prison sentences. Navalny’s office has announced there will be no more mass protests until the summer. They will concentrate, they say on the autumn’s parliamentary elections and rely of foreign pressure to push for the release of prisoners.
In the election, they will use the same strategy as they used in local elections last year — ‘smart voting’. In each constituency they will pick the candidate in the best position to defeat the Kremlin’s “United Russia” party. Last year, this often meant supporting candidates from the so-called “Communist party” or the “Just Russia” party — widely seen as pro-Kremlin — or openly liberal pro capitalist candidates.
The Kremlin has of course jumped on the announcement that the opposition will rely on foreign pressure to present the protests as being organised by anti-Russian forces.
The announcement that protests would be postponed was met by many with consternation. After all thousands had been prepared to face down police violence, be arrested and sacked from work for participating. Indeed, just today an orderly at one of Moscow’s emergency Covid hospitals who has worked for months helping the ill was sacked.
The decision underlines two very important points that supporters of Sotsialisticheskaya Alternativa have been arguing from the very beginning. Firstly, the protests need to be organised by democratically organised committees and secondly, if corruption, authoritarian rule and poverty are to be defeated, then we need a socialist struggle, independent of the pro-capitalist forces.
Last weekend, Navalny’s office announced that a torchlight demonstration would be held — at 8 o’clock on Sunday evening supporters gathered in courtyards with torchlights to demonstrate their position. On Saturday, a ‘Women’s chain’ was held in Central Moscow in solidarity with Yulia Navalnaya. “Love is stronger than fear” was the theme! The ultra-right turned out to threaten participants including activists from SotsFemAlternativa.
But Sotsialisticheskaya Alternativa uses any possibility to press its arguments for organisation. We participated in the courtyard gatherings to make contact with others so we could organise further. In some parts of the city there were even spontaneous demonstrations where enough people gathered.
But we also send a delegation to Kazan, an important city on the Volga, capital of the Tatarstan Republic. For some reason, the authorities there had sanctioned a small protest on the Saturday, theoretically this meant that participants could attend with no danger of arrest. But the police had other ideas. The square was sealed off so that no more than 200 could gather. Hundreds of others were fenced off.
Youtube video showing liberal organisers objecting to banner — viewed by 47,000.
But SA and SFA were able to hold their banners and even speak. The liberal organisers did not like the SFA banner which read “Against the regime, oppression and poverty” and called for a 2-hour strike to mark International Women’s Day”. Thanks to their complaints, on leaving our supporters were attacked by the police and nine detained. Six were later released without charge, two were fined and Dzhavid was imprisoned for seven days for ‘disobeying police orders’ — in reality for the crime of speaking at a meeting.
This injustice of course was widely covered in the opposition press. The Russian “Voice of America” broadcast even carried our banner at the head of its news bulletins. Our visit however did not just raise our profile we now have new supporters in Kazan. Local sympathisers are ensuring that Dzhavid gets proper food, something the local police do not provide.
