2,000 Protest the War in Chechnya

By Carl Schreck
Staff Writer

At least 2,000 people gathered on Pushkin Square on Saturday to call for an end to the war in Chechnya. It was one of the largest antiwar protests in years and also provided a rare public platform for broader criticism of President Vladimir Putin's rule.

Protesters listened to speeches from prominent antiwar figures and chanted slogans like "Peace in Chechnya!" and "Down With Putin's Politics!"

They held "No to War" balloons and signs that said "Putin Is Killing Our Freedom," but they also held posters of jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and photographs of people who died in the storming of the Dubrovka theater in 2002.

Saturday's protest acquired an extra sharpness because it fell on the second anniversary of the beginning of the Dubrovka hostage crisis.

The protest, which began under gray skies at 4 p.m. and lasted for about two hours, was organized by For Human Rights and the Committee for Antiwar Activities and supported by the Committee 2008.

Lev Ponomaryov, head of For Human Rights, focused attention on Putin's plans to scrap elections for regional governors and abolish single-mandate seats in the State Duma.

"If the authorities don't hear us, if the State Duma votes for legislation that we consider a constitutional coup, then we'll gather again," he said on Ekho Moskvy on Saturday.

There was some debate about how many protesters showed up. Ponomaryov said there were 2,500 to 3,000. City police, who had 200 officers on hand, counted about 2,000 protesters, Interfax reported, citing city official Sergei Vasyukov.

But in any case the number of participants was well higher than anticipated, Vasyukov told Interfax, noting that organizers had predicted around 500 people would show up when applying for permission to hold the rally. Vasyukov complained that this made providing security difficult.

Speakers included prominent human rights activist Valeria Novodvorskaya, journalist Anna Politkovskaya, State Duma Deputy Oleg Shein of Rodina and Vladimir Kara-Murza of Committee 2008.

Politkovskaya, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta who negotiated with the hostage-takers during the Dubrovka crisis, addressed the crowd from the podium and above a sign that read, "Five Years of Putin, Five Years of War and Terror, Enough Already!"

"Someone has to stop shooting first in this war," Politkovskaya said. "The residents of our country should demand this of the Russian authorities. Only in this way can we create peace in Russia."

The protest also drew participants angry at the increased role of the security services under Putin and the proliferation of criminal cases they see as politically motivated.

Several participants brandished signs reading, "Free Russian Political Prisoners," with a list that included Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev, Alexei Pichugin, Mikhail Trepashkin and Igor Sutyagin.

Yukos billionaires Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are facing charges of tax evasion and fraud in a case seen as retribution for Khodorkovsky's political ambitions. Pichugin, a former Yukos security chief, pleaded not guilty earlier this month to charges of organizing a 2002 double murder linked to the besieged oil major.

In May, Trepashkin was sentenced to four years in prison in a case that he and human rights advocates said was retribution for his investigation into allegations linking the Federal Security Service to the 1999 apartment bombings.

A Moscow City Court jury found Sutyagin, an arms control researcher at the USA and Canada Institute, guilty of treason in April for selling information on nuclear submarines and missile warning systems to a British company that the FSB claimed was a CIA cover. Sutyagin maintained that he drew his information from publicly available sources such as news reports, and that he had no reason to believe that the British company was linked to U.S. intelligence.

Interfax reported Saturday that central district authorities were dismayed that some participants and speakers -- citing specifically Novodvorskaya -- strayed from the antiwar message and encouraged general anti-government sentiment. Novodvorskaya wore a sign around her neck that read "Putin Is Not Yeltsin's Successor, But Rather Andropov's," referring to former KGB chief and Soviet leader Yury Andropov.

(From The Moscow Times, 25.10.2004)

_____________

"Demonstrating Resilience"
Comments by Evguenia Albats

Saturday was an ultimately gray day, with low clouds and no sun at all. Moreover, the rain started at 4 p.m., exactly the time that an antiwar demonstration was scheduled to begin on Pushkin Square -- the venue for many perestroika-era demonstrations (if for no better reason than the fact that Alexander Pushkin wrote, almost 200 years ago, in his poem "To Chaadayev": "Russia will start from her sleep ... ")
The location of the demonstration was cordoned off by policemen, and they had installed two metal detectors, thereby creating a long line of demonstrators bearing signs declaring: "Putin Should Step Down," "KGB -- Hands Off," "No More Killing in Chechnya," etc.
I watched the crowd of some 2,000 people arriving from a makeshift tribune.

The majority of demonstrators were in their 50s and 60s, with far fewer of student age or in their 30s and 40s.
I was looking at them, standing in the cold and rain, carrying their signs made from cheap paper and cheap ink -- and I kept asking myself the same question: What brought these people here?
Of course, they are of the generation that remembers how things used to be.
They remember the years when decent books in bookstores were as rare as meat in grocery stores; when xeroxed copies of forbidden manuscripts were distributed and had to be read in a single night (for which a jail sentence was the likely reward if caught by the KGB). They remember the times when there was nothing but propaganda on television, no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia (as a popular joke had it back then).

They experienced firsthand all that is history for those born after perestroika.

And yet the question remained: What had brought them out into the cold and the rain, to face a careful screening by several hundred policemen and FSB men?

After all, the Soviet intelligentsia has been among the hardest-hit by the past 15 years of reforms. Their savings were wiped out in the early 1990s, their jobs at universities and research institutes were cut or their salaries reduced to below the poverty line. Their trust and belief in the young reformers, who in the early 1990s had come to power on their backs, was irrevocably damaged by the corruption of those who preached freedom to them and later labeled them demshizy, or democratically minded schizophrenics.

Time and again I thought: Why are they listening to the speakers' calls to defend the Constitution, to fight for our right to elect governors and members of parliament, to support the freedom of the press, to stop the bloody war in Chechnya and to help defend our rights to be citizens as opposed to speechless, zombie-like consumers? Why on Earth should they be concerned about all these things that will not obviously make them any better off or their lives any easier?

There were few, if any, cameras from the Russian networks, and none of the leaders of the current liberal parties and groups were present at the demonstration -- just old-time human rights activists and a few journalists. Yet they managed to hold the crowd's attention for as long as two hours. It is a bitter irony that the liberals who lost in the State Duma elections last year didn't even bother to come to speak to the people who, despite the misery of their lives, have continued to cherish democratic hopes.

I was also thinking about all those analysts in the West who choose to believe that Russians do not want freedom.

I wish that they would talk to people like those at the demonstration for a change, and compare their views to what they get fed at glamorous gatherings -- along with plentiful sturgeon and caviar -- by politicians in their Brioni suits, arguing that Russia needs a "strong hand."

Sure, the people who came to the antiwar demonstration on Saturday may have no clue about democratization theory and the advantages of autocratic rule over popular democracy in periods of transition.

I would guess all they have are the Pushkin poems that, for many Russians over the decades, were a substitute for prayer:

"Comrade, believe: It will arise, / The star of captivating joy, / Russia will start from her sleep, / And on the ruins of autocracy / Our names will be inscribed!"

Yevgenia Albats, who hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy on Sundays, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.

(From Moscow Times, 25.10.2004)