Evgeny Feldman
On June 12, Russians protested in 210 cities across the country. Demonstrators in Chelyabinsk held a duck, referencing Vice President Dmitry Medvedev's mansion, which includes a duck pond. Other protests were held in Yekaterinburg (upper right), Moscow (bottom right) and Nizhny Novgorod.
Thousands of Russians took to the streets to protest government corruption on June 12, an official holiday called the Day of Russia. According to official data, 1,719 people throughout Russia were arrested at the anti-corruption demonstrations. In Moscow, some 4,500 people were in the streets, with 866 arrested. In St. Petersburg, officials estimate 3,500 people attended protest rallies, and 658 were arrested. People protested in 210 cities across the country.
The marches were spurred by a recent investigation featured in a film by opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Navalny, who has declared his intention to run for president in 2018, also heads the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Investigations by the Foundation have exposed a range of alleged corrupt activities by Vice President Dmitry Medvedev, including illegal purchases of real estate, yachts, and clothing.
Navalny, the main organizer behind the June 12 protests, was arrested in his house before the protest and put in jail for thirty days.
Student Yuriy Vasilev, who joined the demonstrations in St. Petersburg, was arrested after he and his fellow students brought a huge inflatable duck and started moving it through the crowd. The duck became a symbol for the latest wave of anti-corruption protests after aerial video from one of Navalny's investigations of Medvedev’s illegal real estate dealings revealed a sprawling estate complete with a pond and a duck house.
The recent protests in Russia are being called the “protest of the young,” as scores of college-age students and high-schoolers have swelled the ranks of protestors. Seventy-three minors were arrested at the June 12 St. Petersburg demonstration. Vasilev, 21, has been attending protests for the past two years, and says he was dismissed from his first university because of his political activity.
The recent protests in Russia are being called the “protest of the young,” as scores of college-age students and high-schoolers have swelled the ranks of protestors.
“I attend almost all protest actions, because I think that what's happening now with the authorities needs to be changed,” Vasilev says. “I do not agree with the current political situation with its absence of power turnover. I also go to the protests because of lack freedom of assembly—we need to return this freedom to us.”
Maria Lakertian, a student of political science at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, was arrested at the protest in St. Petersburg. She spent 24 hours at the police station and was later sentenced to three days of detention and a fine. “The corruption in our country destroys our economy because they are stealing from the budget. Young people don't have a future and our country doesn't have future, except for those people who steal and for those who have friends in power who steal,” she said of her reasons for attending the protest.
The last major wave of protests in Russia occurred in 2011 and 2012, when people took to the streets against corruption and for fair elections, focusing their ire on Vladimir Putin. That movement dissipated after the implementation of a number of laws aimed at making attendance at non-permitted protests very expensive for those arrested and charged.
Now, the threat of fines seems to bother people less.
“People don’t care if the protest is allowed or not, they go out anyway,” Vasilev said. “I hope that ultimately the authorities will not be able to set the conditions for where we can go, and people can go out to the main city squares, to those places where the protests are never allowed.” But fines for repeat attendance at unsanctioned protests can be ten times higher than for the first time.
Additionally, Maxim Reznik, a deputy in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, explained that the recent protests are totally different because of the concerns of the younger generation. “People are protesting for their rights, the right to freedom of speech, because if you give away this right, then it will be possible to take away other rights,” he said.
Irina Yatsenko, a civic activist who attended the rally in Moscow, agrees that anti-corruption activity is actually not the primary reason behind of the protests.
“Of course, corruption is the basis of a lot of problems in Russia, but I think what we should primarily fight against is that we don't have our rights,” he said. “Our constitution is violated, we have been deprived of the right of speech, the right to choose, the right to hold a protest, the right to have a personal opinion and express it freely—that is what we should fight against.”
Katya Danilova is a documentary photographer, videographer and freelance journalist in St. Petersburg, Russia.