Aside from all the encouraging news I’ve been learning about from an increasingly well organized small business community in Russia, two recent stories about Russian activism give me hope that civil society has not been squashed by authorities. First, a nationwide driver’s union was recently formed after horrible misfortune struck an innocent driver in Altai region. This driver had gone over a hill and was on the decline when suddenly a entourage of official vehicles came hurtling at ludicrous speed onto him, causing a major accident and killing the regional governor. The driver was thrown into jail and left to rot. However, word of this injustice spread and drivers across the country were outraged. Civil society came to the rescue and since then a national drivers’ union has formed and begun vigorously defending the interests of its members. The best news is that western donors have contacted this union, wanting a piece of this success story and no doubt credit for some of it down the road. The head of the union, however, has no time to talk to westerners about how to get their money. He seems to recognize that for his organization to do its job, the movement must be created and led by the Russian grassroots. Developing countries need more of this. Bravo.
I learned about another story from an article in www.theglobalist.com in which blogging plays a major role. Apparently some blogger’s mother and a ton of other pensioners were fooled into buying ultra expensive sugar pills from a Moscow based company called Farmit, with promises that the drug would cure all kinds of ailments. The Blogger whose mother had been wronged appealed to masses of cyber activists enraged by unscrupulous businesses taking advantage of pensioners, and sparked a national consumer attack on the company, flooding it with phone calls and fake orders to places far outside of Moscow’s city center. All of this internet traffic and the cyber attacks attracted the attention of Duma Deputy Evgeny Roizman, who ordered an investigation into consumer fraud. The campaign got plenty of media attention and the company received plenty of justifiable, but unwanted attention from the authorities. My best guess is that the company’s days are over, and cheers to the demise of unscrupulous businesses that give capitalism a bad name in former communist countries.
These stories, as Evgeny Morozov the author of the second article, points out, indicate that activism is not dead in Russia and the youth may not be as complacent as we are led to believe. It is possible that the youth have simply found different mediums for their activism, as they have in other parts of the world. Russians have a history of fiery reactions to injustice endured too long. I am not saying that Russia is about to rise up in anger about the suppression of civil society. However, as Putin’s regime is showing signs of its fragility through fractious infighting among clan members, and as Putin plays with the political order to keep power, we may see some of his legitimacy decline. While many Russians will swear their allegiance to the regime, get into any Moscow taxi cab and ask the driver’s opinion of Putin and the government. In most instances you will learn that polls don’t tell the whole story. Sure, Putin is a major improvement on Yeltsin in the eyes of most Russians, but corruption is still rampant, and ordinary people still don’t trust their government to protect their interests and turn Russia into a developed country. While opposition is almost nowhere to be seen and civil society appears all but dead, there are reasons to believe activism still exists and civil society is still evolving in Russia. We may be watching only the beginning of this evolution, however, history shows that when homegrown activism finds its roots, Russia’s people are a force to reckon with.
Published Date: October 26, 2007