Russia against Putin? The Orthodox Church Warns Against 'Revolutions'

By Nina Achmatova
12/13/2011
Asia News (www.asianews.it/)

The protest movement has proven to be anything but violent

The central government fears uprisings along the lines of Ukraine's orange revolution, but people just want to see their right to transparent elections respected. Medvedev opens an investigation into possible election fraud. Anti-Putin groups plans another rally for December 24.

Anti-Putin protestors in Russia

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MOSCOW,Russia (AsiaNews) - After a wave of demonstrations throughout Russia on 10 December denouncing alleged electoral fraud and against the ruling party United Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church is urging people not to allow scenes of civil war .

The white balloons, flowers and coloured ribbons that filled Balotnaja Square in Moscow, where the largest demonstrations of the Putin era were held, are seen by the central government as a possible sign of a dreaded "colour revolution", along the lines of the one in Ukraine in 2004 which led to the annulment of the presidential election.

The Orthodox Church seems to share the same concerns. "We can not but express satisfaction with the fact that the demonstrations in all Russian cities were peaceful and within the law" - said Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin Head of Department for relations between the Church and society at the Patriarchate of Moscow.

"But the most important thing now is to maintain civil peace and not allow new 1905, 1917, 1991, 1993" referring to the dates of the major revolutions and social unrest in Russia of the last century. Quoted by Interfax, Chaplin later admitted that "serious questions were raised, which are inconvenient for the authorities, who we hope will respond in an adequate and honest manner."

The protest movement has proven to be anything but violent. It is demanding the release of the protesters arrested last week, another vote and the removal of the head of the Central Election Commission. "We have a constitutional right to transparent elections - said Kirill, 30, a young protester - we do not want to overthrow any power, but only go to the polls convinced that our vote is worth something." If its demands are not heard, the opposition is planning a major new demonstration for December 24. From the Moscow stage a letter was read from the blogger Alexei Navalny, arrested and sentenced to 15 days detention for "resisting police" and urging Russians to "break free from the chains."

After initial indifference and total censorship on public television, the Kremlin has been forced to face the protest. President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered investigations into allegations of fraud in the vote held on December 4 last, which crowned United Russia victors by a slim majority. On his Facebook profile, the head of state said he did not share the slogans of the protest, whose main targets were the Prime Minister Putin and the government. "Russia without Putin", "Russia without corruption", "Free elections" shouted the people of the square.

For experts a new middle class is emerging, comprising educated young people, small businessmen, professionals and intellectuals. Within 10 years, they will represent 60% of the national population and yet are without any political representation. In the aftermath of enthusiasm for the "revival of Russian civil society," as some media have called Saturday's protests, the question of who can lead and form this emerging sector of society is already being asked.

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1 - 5 of 5 Comments

Pyotr Patrushev
1 year ago
Re Everett (responding only because his is such a widespread view).

Civil society is not created by the whim of a Czar or a Party or even Providence. It is created by people over centuries of hard work, The basic life conditions depend on geopolitical situation, resources, level of population, and productivity, in its most basic sense.
Read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jarred Diamond as a start. Then all the books about how the West temporarily git its "killer apps" -- not Russia (Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest). Then some good books on history of Russia like:
The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture by James H Billington (a very good history of religion, etc., in Russia)There is a long list on Amazon of Russian history books...

Forget about Russian "traditional intolerance" or even genes. We are all shaped by genes, environment, and culture. The devil is in the detail and most people are too lazy to get to the detail (or they get mired in the detail, like Eamon).

Best of all go to Russia and spend some years living there, in order to at least to get the level of knowledge of an outsider like David Remnick: Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire.

.
Everett Mann
1 year ago
While Eamon and Pyotr are correct in their assessments of the current situation in Russia they are incomplete. The systemic oppression of the Russian peoples since the middle ages has created a generational ignorance of all things democratic. Dare I say it is in the Russian DNA to not understand how the democratic process works. Further, the Leninist/ Stalinist regimes since 1917 have only served to further grind the anti-democratic stain into the fabric of Russian society making democracy shaky at best. And it did not have to be like this. Had the czars listened to the people and actually saw what the rest of Europe was gravitating towards, they could have broken the cycle. Unfortunately, they ignored the democratic movements going on outside their borders. Then Lenin made the crucial mistake of ignoring Marx's teachings which pointed to the United States as the model for the Marxian Utopia. Marx said that in the US, the systemic progression from a primarily agrarian culture to an industrial culture will allow the American people to create a socialist system (of course this subject for another debate). The crucial part is that Americans built their democracy from the ground up taking advantage of colonial merchantilism which required infrastructure for good commerce. The czars certainly did not pay attention to any infrastructure in Russia. And when Lenin took over, then Stalin, they went straight to attempting to build an industrial nation and get to the Soviet Utopia. This rush into industrialization also forgot the agrarian basis and the infrastructure required for this to work. Instead, Stalin's reign was dictatorial instead of democratic that further removed the Russian people from democracy. While perhaps not as heavy handed as Stalin, the post Stalin leaders did not show any real understanding of what needed to happen for Russia to have democracy. Not until Glasnost and Perstroika by Gorbachev did any Russian leader seek to break the cycle. And now, in 2011, some 20+ years since Gorby, we are witnessing the first generation of Russians that have experienced some democratic freedoms. Hopefully, they will become educated enough to be able to learn from their history, not repeat the mistakes of the past and move toward a more democratic society. I suspect what we are witnessing is the early democratic process much like the mistakes our forefathers made in the US first couple of generations.
Bulbajer
1 year ago
On the one hand, Putin and his party are ridiculously corrupt, and everyone knows it. On the other hand, the second-biggest party represented in the Duma is... the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Not only do they promote communism, but they also promote Stalin in particular - even though millions of Russians died at his hands. I don't know what to think.
Eamon Hatley-Smith
1 year ago
The current situation in modern Russia can also be used as the juxtaposition for events represented in the dialogue between the Big Three at the Yalta Conference of February 1945.
Roosevelt and Churchill repeatedly pressed Stalin to allow free elections in the Baltic States, Poland, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe (Pechatnov & Edmondson 2005: 21). Stalin agreed in principle but reassured his foreign minister that the Kremlin could implement such a process in ‘our own way later’ (ibid). This own way implementation seems to have motivated the United States to make ‘frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria’ (Trueman 1963). Democratic historians may all agree with these historical events. Communist historians might see such events in a different light. And current events in modern Russia seem to present similar themes, which again believe that the ‘multiparty Western parliamentary democracy cannot produce politicians that would enjoy the trust of the overwhelming majority of their citizens’ (Putin 2011). Could this be similar to Stalin’s own way?

Pechatnov and Edmondson, In John Lewis Gaddis, The return of fear. In John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History, (2005), 21.

Putin, V., We thought over plan we are offering voters – Putin, (RT, Oct 17, 2011).

Truman, Harry., Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, I947 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963).
Pyotr Patrushev
1 year ago
There is no doubt that Russia is corrupt and stagnant and that the Church, as always, supports the status quo, embellishing its injunctions by a few "spiritual" platitudes, Yet, it is right to call for tolerance and patience in the interim. It will take Russia a long time to catch up to the level of normal, institutionalised corruption found in most developed Western societies. Russia is so wounded by the 70-odd years of Communism that it will take time for it to rise from the neo-feudal, "scavenger bazaar", oil-addicted quagmire it finds itself in. As long as no nukes go astray and there is no civil war, and Russia does not join some rogue states aspiring to "reshape the world" out of pride or desperation, this is all that can be hoped for at this stage.

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