132opinion

middle of the central square of the most populous city in Turkey instead saw … penguin documentaries and cooking shows. Many protesters who ended up pitching their tents in Gezi came initially because they were struck by the contrast between numerous eye-witness accounts – accompanied by pictures, videos and live footage flowing into their computers and phones – and the extreme, blatant censorship by the country’s media channels. ‘It was like they were ridiculing us,’ I heard repeatedly. ‘We hadn’t planned this, but when we saw this media censorship and police repression, we felt like we had to act.’

This ability to mount a significant protest without planning or organisation is both a potent source of strength and, frequently, the Achilles heel of social media-fueled movements. The internet’s ability to enable collective action without pre-existing infrastructure means movements can emerge without an organisational capacity or a collective leadership. However, this lack of this capacity often becomes a hindrance in the days after participants have been in the streets for a while. Many of the protesters I spoke with in Gezi did not know what their next step would be, how it would be organised, and what political steps would follow, if any. When the government forcibly dispersed the occupation a few days later, many protesters retired to neighbourhood parks. Here, fervent discussions continued, but still without any organisational structure capable of making decisions or mounting a political challenge. The AKP government, meanwhile, looked forward to the elections in 2014, when its superior organisation, resources and strategic savvy will almost certainly deliver it another electoral victory.

Zeynep Tufekci is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina and a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. She has closely followed the protests in Turkey, interviewing many participants. She writes regularly at her personal site, technosociology.org.

Five myths about Putin’s foesIt’s fashionable to see Russia’s opposition as the Moscow stirrings of a ‘global middle class’. Forget it, says Ben Judah: Russia’s underground is not what it seems.

Myth 1: This is a leaderless networkIn fact, it’s the exact opposite. Russia’s opposition is a one-man show called Alexey Navalny. Politically he is populist, a cross between an Islamophobe and a liberal. But Navalny sells his absolute charisma before his policies. After a decade of TV news dominated by faceless Putinist bureaucrats, his Aryan looks and laugh-out-loud wit have electrified a capital bored without politics.

Navalny understood that the initial December 2011 protests were his big chance. While other actors dawdled, he became the movement’s orator. By the end, he was its uncontested leader. Ever since, he has been so good at shining forth like a white knight fighting ‘the bloodsuckers’ that the opposition had become the Navalny movement.

However, the building of proper opposition institutions failed. Online election for the opposition ‘parliament’ flopped. The Kremlin barred their attempts to register a party. Then it frightened away a real funding base. Hamstrung, the opposition fell short in the local elections outside Moscow.

This has turned the opposition into a leadership cult. The ‘other Russia’ has pinned all its hopes and all initiative on Navalny himself.

Ironically, Vladimir Putin has only reinforced this. Threatening to jail Navalny has underscored his bravery and built up his legend. Polls show that his name recognition and popularity is soaring. Leadership cults

Juncture \ Volume 20 \ ISSUE 2 © 2013 The Author. Juncture © 2013 IPPR

IPPR_J_JJ_20.2_30_8_13.indd 132 30/08/2013 17:28

133opinion

are tricky things to kill, and Putin is now in an awkward position. Throwing the ‘hero’ into a Siberian prison camp will turn him into Russia’s Nelson Mandela. But neither can he leave him at large, nibbling away at his own image of invincibility.

However, Navalny’s cult of personality is troublesome for the opposition as well. It detracts from the hard, necessary task of building a real movement, like Poland’s ‘Solidarity’, capable of eventually turning people power on Putin himself.

Myth 2: They are middle classRussia now has a huge middle class: as it stands, roughly a third of Russians can be considered as such, making over $30,000 a year. But don’t think of them all as supporting radical change.

Russians are quick to remind you that being middle class does not make you ‘independent’. Roughly 50 per cent are state employees. Fear keeps most of them off the streets. In Russia’s enormous outback, its doctors, teachers and bureaucrats would never dream of taking to the streets. They know that’s a sure-fire way to lose their jobs.

So forget the idea of a ‘middle class’ revolt. Despite its huge size – perhaps 40 million people – the scale of dissent is still tiny. There are roughly 80,000 hardcore Navalny supporters and no more than 400,000 loosely affiliated ones. So who are the people marching in the streets and throwing themselves into the frenzy of online activism?

First, this is a Moscow affair. Almost 40 per cent of the opposition leader’s almost 400,000 Twitter followers are in the capital; by comparison, not even St Petersburg scrapes above 5 per cent. Second, this is something well-to-do – there is a snobbish tinge and an elitist, clubby feel to it. The leading lights of the movement – like their followers – are both richer and better educated than the rest. Russians talk about them as being ‘intelligentsia’, from a class of professionals, intellectuals and civil servants. Their British equivalents would be

the London upper-middle class, with a strong dose of Oxbridge.

Myth 3: They are pro-westernRussia’s opposition movement is pro what they call ‘European values’. That means a free media, free speech, free assembly and visa-free travel to the west. They broadly believe that Putin’s anti-American and anti-British propaganda is hysterical and faintly silly.

Just don’t confuse them for passionate supporters of NATO or the EU – these are no adulators of the west. Navalny and his team increasingly see Europe – especially British elites – as complicit in the ‘pillage’ of Russia, as stolen billions find a safe haven in London property, the French Riviera or Austrian banks. They join Putin supporters in being irritated by European ‘lecturing’ and American ‘hypocrisy.’

Navalny does not have a NATO worldview. He believes that Russia, Belarus and Ukraine should reunite into one great power. He passionately supports the ‘independent’ South Ossetia and Abkhazia, carved out of Georgia. He would even recognise the Russian enclave of Transdinestria in Moldova – something that would horrify Brussels.

Myth 4: They’ve had no impact It’s tempting to dismiss the Russian opposition as having had no impact. But that’s not quite true: quite by accident, they have made Russia much more repressive, xenophobic and homophobic under the Kremlin crackdown.

However, Navalny’s campaigning has also forced policy action. Putin has started shoring up his public support with a frenzied series of initiatives – stolen from the opposition. There has been a purge of corrupt officials and billions are about to be invested in bad roads.

This is most evident in Moscow. Navalny is running for mayor, leading the Kremlin to throw huge wads of cash into public goods neglected for years. Putin’s candidate had appropriated opposition battle cries, such as battling illegal immigration. He has even installed a cycle hire scheme. Before Navalny’s surge it was

© 2013 The Author. Juncture © 2013 IPPR Juncture \ Volume 20 \ ISSUE 2

IPPR_J_JJ_20.2_30_8_13.indd 133 30/08/2013 17:28

134opinion

inconceivable the Moscow authorities would have done something like this – because people wanted it.

Myth 5: They want a revolutionNot one bit. Russians, even those protesting, are terrified of revolution. What the opposition hopes to achieve is to delegitimise Putin and his cronies – those they accuse of pillaging Russia – among the rulers of Russia and their apparatchiks.

The aim is to make Putin a liability. The hope is that the closer we get to the 2016 parliamentary and 2018 presidential elections an ever-increasing number of petrol barons, police chiefs and provincial governors will realise that repression will cost them their positions. The hope is they will ditch Putin and install a new leader who could legitimise their positions before finally holding fair elections. And of course, Alexey Navalny aspires to be that man.

Ben Judah is the author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Love With Vladimir Putin.

Juncture \ Volume 20 \ ISSUE 2 © 2013 The Author. Juncture © 2013 IPPR

“ Forget the idea of a ‘middle class’ revolt … First, this is a Moscow affair … Second, this is something well-to-do – there is a snobbish tinge and an elitist, clubby feel to it.”

IPPR_J_JJ_20.2_30_8_13.indd 134 30/08/2013 17:28