Tipping Point?

Just over a decade ago in Moscow, I interviewed Alexey Navalny, who was then only beginning to carve out his profile as a blogger, activist, and politician. It was May of 2008. Russia was benefiting hugely from the oil boom, and President Vladimir Putin had just castled over to the position of prime minister, placing Dmitry Medvedev in the role of president.

There was a general feeling of political resignation in the air. I asked Navalny how long he thought it would be before things changed. He was not optimistic.

“You know, the majority of the population, and even a significant portion of the liberal-oriented people and democrats, feels that nothing needs to be done…”

Then he explained what would be his group’s focus.

“Our organization is founded on the idea… that the basis of the regime is corruption in exchange for political loyalty. That is, if you declare your political loyalty, and you do not get involved in politics, then you can steal all you want.”

Over the ensuing decade, Navalny and his team doggedly documented that corruption exchanged for loyalty, exposing the sprawling mansions and ill-gotten gains of those in power, and giving the United Russia ruling party the telling moniker “the party of crooks and thieves.” It stuck.

At the same time, Navalny ran for Moscow mayor (receiving 27% of the vote), endured show trials, led demonstrations, leaked documents, and produced sensational videos. Last August, he was poisoned in Siberia, narrowly escaping to Germany, followed by the jaw-dropping telephone confession of one of his poisoners when Navalny himself posed as an FSB internal investigator trying to sort out some of the details of the case. Then, in January, he audaciously returned to Russia, followed by his all-to-predictable arrest.

In the past, Navalny’s activities have elicited mixed reactions from Russians – some saw him as a western plant, others painted him as a crusading hero, yet most were indifferent. But this time there is something different. There have been mass demonstrations all across Russia not because Russians agree with Navalny’s right of center political views, but because they are indignant at how the system has treated the brave activist. They are fed up with the systemic corruption and injustice. Over 40 percent of those demonstrating say they have never come out in the streets before.

The writer, dissident (and later Czech president) Vaclav Havel told the allegorical tale of a greengrocer in communist Czechoslovakia who put a “Workers of the World Unite” placard in his store window. He did it not because he was an ardent supporter of world revolution, but because he just wanted to be left alone. In fact, he was making a public expression of political preferences that differed from his real, private preferences. When the greengrocer later snapped and made an attempt to “live within the truth,” he was predictably demoted and made to pay a huge cost for going against the regime.

It was fear of such repercussions that kept the communist regimes propped up for decades. The scholar Timur Kuran has named this phenomenon “preference falsification,” showing that, while most observers were surprised by the 1989 revolutions, actually “the regimes of Eastern Europe were substantially more vulnerable than the quiescence of their populations made them seem. Millions were prepared to turn against communist rule if ever this became safe to do.”

Many were privately against the regime, and it only took the diminishing of fear for the tipping point to arrive: “When the masses took to the street, support for the status quo just vanished. In one country after another a few thousand people stood up in defiance, joining long-persecuted activists. In so doing they encouraged additional citizens to drop their masks, which then impelled more onlookers to jump in. Before long, fear changed sides; where people had been afraid to oppose the regime, they came to fear being caught defending it. Party members rushed to burn their cards, claiming they were always reformists at heart.” 

So, how much preference falsification exists in Russia today? What percent of Russians are sufficiently dissatisfied with the status quo to make a public stand for change? While a recent poll showed that 75 percent of Russians in big cities fear the repercussions of joking about politics online, 43 percent of Russians feel the country is on the wrong track, and 34 percent disapprove of the job Putin is doing (nearly twice the level of three years ago).

Those are not insignificant numbers, and the large number of previously indifferent non-demonstrators on the streets this winter might point to a significant change afoot. Or at least a challenging fall Duma election for United Russia.

The other piece of the puzzle has to do with the sense of fear and the risk of dissent. In this context, Navalny’s return to Russia (and, his simultaneous release of a video expose of a massive Putin Palace built on the Black Sea) can be seen as an attempt to poke the ruling elite, to force it to make a hard choice. If it did nothing and let him freely return, this could show it as weak and contribute to a lessening of public fear about dissent. But if they overreacted, as they have done, and arrested him, they would show another sort of weakness: that they actually fear the activist whose name they dare not utter.

In any event, the Powers that Be, in their heavy-handed response to Navalny and to the public demonstrations, clearly want to show that the cost of demonstrating and dissent is still very high. This was underscored by Navalny, at press time, being handed a 32-month sentence for failing to check in with his parole officers – while he was in a coma in Germany.

And yet, despite record numbers of demonstrator arrests, a pandemic, Russian winter, and city centers on lockdown, Russians all across the country continue to cast fear and false preferences aside and come out onto the streets in large numbers.

Perhaps the greengrocers have had enough?